real life

If you do this at the supermarket, you're clearly a monster.

It’s one of the saddest pictures the Internet has ever seen.

A lonely bundle of deli seafood, left to rot on a Coles supermarket shelf.

No one to love it, no one to take it home and cook it as part of a loving family’s weeknight dinner.

deli meat worst
"All by myself..." - this deli package, probably. Image via Reddit.

Not to mention, there's a whole host of hygiene issues that come with abandoning deli meat in an unrefridgerated aisle of the shops where it most definitely does not belong.

The image, uploaded to Reddit this week, has inspired hundreds of fellow shoppers to vent their frustration that a customer would be so wasteful.

Listen: Financial planner Canna Campbell shares how you can save on your weekly grocery bill.

"If you don't want it, take it back to where you got it you lazy prick," wrote one commenter, while another added, "If you got it from a fridge section, put it back".

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"What kind of person orders something from the deli, gets it all wrapped up, and then while looking at washing powder thinks 'I don't want this food anymore'" wrote another.

A MONSTER, THAT'S WHO. A SUPERMARKET MONSTER.

YES, YOU.

A small part of me agrees. Dumping random products all over the supermarket because, for whatever reason, you decide you don't want it anymore makes you THE WORST.

And I really wish I could jump aboard this shopping trolley of hate and ride it all the way down the car park ramp with the rest of the Internet.

But I can't. Because, I have a confession: I too, am a Supermarket Monster.

I'm so ashamed.

I'll happily admit I've never abandoned deli meat - or any sort of meat - in an unrefridgerated aisle. I would never push dealing with that smell later in the day onto anyone.

But I may have had every intention of buying a healthy yoghurt, only to change my mind once I got to the ice-cream aisle.

I may have popped a packet of Mint Slices into my shopping basket and realised once I hit the vegetable section that they weren't the best nutritional choice.

I may have decided, in amongst the packets of chips, that I may have been over-excited about Tupperware containers and took one (or six) too many off the shelves.

Put. The. Tupperware. Down.

It happens. Shopping is hard. Supermarkets are confusing.

Maybe this person entered their local shopping centre full of hope. They tackled that almost always ridiculously long deli line to get that seafood.

Then, by aisle ten, while tossing up which washing powder to buy for their third load of laundry that week, they broke.

Maybe they had a screaming toddler in tow. Maybe they decided "TO HELL WITH A SEAFOOD DINNER, WE ARE GETTING MACCAS".

So let's not be hasty to judge. Even though the smell of warm, rotting seafood is the worst.