Fresh supermarket receiver - reject, claim or accept-with-condition SOP, each path bound to its authority

You are a receiving-process consultant for a fresh-food supermarket.
Write me an archivable SOP for "what happens after a problem is
found." The delivery check itself is done by the checklist; this SOP
only handles disposal.

Input I will give you:
- The store's role ladder (receiver / fresh supervisor / store
  manager) and what each can decide alone
- Claim deadlines from the main supplier contracts (I'll supply what
  I can find; leave variables where I can't)
- What device photos get taken on and where they are filed

The SOP body is three paths. Each path must state four things:
entry conditions / who decides / paperwork and evidence / follow-up.

Path 1 - reject on the spot:
- Entry conditions (red-line list, concrete): temperature far out of
  range with no defrost explanation, packaging broken or contaminated,
  falsified dates, visibly spoiled
- Authority: the receiver decides alone and reports after - red
  lines cannot wait for a supervisor; the wait is when the pallets
  come off the truck
- Actions: freight stays on or goes back sealed, rejection ticket
  raised, driver signs, photos (item, label, reefer readout),
  ticket filed and copied to buying

Path 2 - accept and claim:
- Entry conditions: quantity shortages, minor quality issues -
  real losses that don't block selling today
- Authority: the receiver annotates the variance on the delivery
  ticket at signature (mandatory - a clean signature prints
  "received in good order" and guts the claim), the supervisor
  confirms claim amounts
- Actions: annotation + photos + claim filed inside the deadline +
  tracked to credit; no supplier response inside the window
  escalates to buying

Path 3 - accept with condition:
- Entry conditions: minor defects sellable today (lightly wilted
  greens and the like)
- Authority: the discount decision belongs to the supervisor or
  above; the receiver may only propose
- Actions: entered in the conditional-accept log (item / discount /
  approver); anything unsold today must not reappear as full-price
  stock tomorrow
- This path exists on purpose and the SOP must say why: deny minor
  defects a legitimate lane and they take the dark one - quietly
  accepted, logged nowhere

The driver-refuses-to-sign plan (a section attached to all three
paths):
- Photos including license plate and product in frame, a third-party
  witness (security or a second employee) countersigning, the freight
  sealed and untouched, immediate escalation. These moves must be
  pre-agreed - the moment a driver refuses is the highest-pressure
  moment on the dock, and nobody invents process under that pressure

Do not:
- Write "resolve through negotiation with the supplier" or "handle
  case by case"
- Blur authorities across paths - especially, "receiver decides"
  may never appear on the conditional-accept path
- Invent a claim deadline number; leave the variable for the contract
- Exceed one page; three paths as a three-column table the receiver
  can index into from the dock

Why it is written this way

The receiving desk's real dilemma isn't detecting problems - the checklist does that - it is not daring to act on them: am I allowed to refuse this? Who owns tomorrow's empty shelf if I do? What if the supervisor is at lunch? Unclear authority reliably produces flexible mercy, calibrated to individual nerve and mood. Binding a decision-maker to each path distributes the decisions in advance, so the day of the event is pure lookup.

Conditional accept as its own path is the linchpin. A system with only reject and claim breaks down in the gray zone of "not great, but we could sell it today": reject honestly and tomorrow's produce wall is bare; accept, and the system says you shouldn't have - so it happens off the books, noted nowhere. Give the gray zone a legal lane (log + authority) and it stops corrupting the other two paths' statistics, and stops being a private arrangement between one receiver and one supplier.

"Annotate at signature" looks trivial and decides claims: a cleanly signed delivery ticket reads as "store confirmed in good order," and every later dispute starts from that floor. Making the annotation a mandatory act inside the receiver's own authority gives the claim its first brick.

The refusal plan must be pre-built because its trigger is the moment of maximum pressure - a driver on a schedule, possibly loud, and a receiver inventing "who witnesses this, where does the freight go" in real time. A contingency plan is the morning's thinking, moved to this afternoon.

Variables