“...shoppers from Maine to Oklahoma had to abandon baskets of groceries...’
Shoppers abandoned their baskets of groceries. They didn’t HAVE to. They could have returned the groceries to the shelves/refrigerators/freezers. Instead, they just abandoned them for store employees to have to put back the groceries where they belong.
the refrigerated items may not have been
salvagable-—the store where I work does not
try to determine how long something may or
may not have been out of the cooler.
if it is abandoned, at any point in the store,
it is “defected” out of the system-—the store
eats the loss-—