>Spain and Portugal hit by massive power outage causing blackouts
>Phones, traffic lights, Spanish parliament and newsrooms all reportedly affected as metro stations are plunged into darkness
>Spanish media reported that the national cybersecurity institute was investigating the possibility of a cyber-attack. The country’s national security council was also convened on Monday afternoon to discuss the blackout.
I thought that I could get on the IBEX for cheap today on irrational trading but the market has barely reacted to the news. I guess this level of ITZ doesn't really bother people anymore.
Good day to get your shopping done though. I've heard that supermarkets have to throw out all their stock when the power goes out.
>I've heard that supermarkets have to throw out all their stock when the power goes out.
Not strictly, I think. Only if it's been near or above the allowed maximum temperature. Most supermarkets will keep their food a few degrees below that temperature so they won't have to write it off everytime a cooler fails, but it then of course costs more money to cool. So it's a balancing act.
A friend works in a supermarket and what he did tell me was that they have to throw out refrigerated or frozen foods when lazy customers decide they don't want a packet of cheese or sausage after all and just put it somewhere on a shelf outside the cold section. It happens often enough that some larger supermarkets end up writing off over a thousand quid worth of food every month that way.
>>42400 When I worked in supermarkets, everything had to be kept in the cold chain. A cage of refrigerated goods from storage could only be on the shop floor for 45 minutes to decant the goods to the display fridges. If you still had half a cage left to decant after 45 minutes, it had to go back into the storage fridge for a while to cool it back down.
With fresh and frozen products left on random shelves, there's no way of knowing how long they've been out of the cold chain, so they're a health risk. I'm always very mindful of putting stuff back where it belongs, because to do otherwise is subhuman behaviour.
Supermarkets do seem to have pretty strict rules. A while ago, I bought a spray bottle of window cleaner, and at the till, I noticed that it was leaking. It turned out the top of it was screwed on wrong, and they told me that customers sometimes unscrew the lids of cleaning products to see what they smell like. So I said, no problem, I'll just screw it on the right way, but they said they were unable to sell that bottle to me, because the little bit that was spilled meant that there was no longer the amount in that bottle that was stated on the label. And so they sent somebody to get a new bottle for me from the shelf.
