Dispose of damaged or defective items, or return them to vendors.

“Dispose of damaged or defective items, or return them to vendors.” is a core task performed by Stockers and Order Fillers. Among the occupation's 30 rated tasks, workers place it 8th by importance (#23 most important). About 97% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Dispose of waste or debris. in Performing General Physical Activities
• Process shipments or mail. in Performing Administrative Activities

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Complete order receipts. · importance 4.7
• Answer customers' questions about merchandise and advise customers on merchandise selection. · importance 4.6
• Compute prices of items or groups of items. · importance 4.4
• Issue or distribute materials, products, parts, and supplies to customers or coworkers, based on information from incoming requisitions. · importance 4.4
• Keep records of out-going orders. · importance 4.2
• Stock shelves, racks, cases, bins, and tables with new or transferred merchandise. · importance 4.2
• Operate equipment such as forklifts. · importance 4.2
• Stamp, attach, or change price tags on merchandise, referring to price list. · importance 4.1
• Obtain merchandise from bins or shelves. · importance 4.1
• Itemize and total customer merchandise selection at checkout counter, using cash register, and accept cash or charge card for purchases. · importance 4.1
• Receive and count stock items, and record data manually or on computer. · importance 4.0
• Read orders to ascertain catalog numbers, sizes, colors, and quantities of merchandise. · importance 4.0
• Receive, unload, open, unpack, or issue sales floor merchandise. · importance 4.0
• Pack customer purchases in bags or cartons. · importance 3.9

See all tasks on the Stockers and Order Fillers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-23891,
  title  = {Dispose of damaged or defective items, or return them to vendors.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-23891}
}