The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr

Author:Benjamin Lorr [Lorr, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

Which Bleeds into a Larger Question

As an employee, Walter is sharp. Unlike almost everyone else I work with at seafood, he knows where the fish comes from, and can pay lip service to the different ethical regimes that are advertised endlessly as guarantors of wholesomeness. This is a natural accumulation of knowledge from working the front, earnestly answering questions, the slow development of expertise. In a different era of America, Walter, even without his college degree, would rise through the ranks based on his endless energy, enthusiasm, and willingness to do just about anything asked. Yet, in our current era, his fate at Whole Foods seems like an open question. He receives regular raises, but they bump him up by literal nickels and dimes, not into meaningful money for the New York he lives in. And thus, while the vocabulary around his title might change from “team member” to “supervisory team member,” he basically stays in the same place. And the entire experience has embittered him.

The reality of Whole Foods is that its myth of abundance and efficiency is based on the idea that there are an abundance of Walters out there, willing to pour six years of their life into a $15-per-hour job, yet remain cheerful, eager, ready to serve all that virtuous food to those who can pay.

My experience is that there is an abundance of labor. I went to three different Whole Foods hiring sessions, and each one was packed with hopeful applicants. But that does not translate into an abundance of Walters. Unfortunately for WFs, they don’t seem to care about the distinction. Payroll costs are an immediately identifiable flag to any consultant worth their MBA, while the faint aura of having a Walter behind the counter instead of a clueless replaceable me is something built and lost over time. It isn’t intangible. It just often evades eyes whose financial pupils have shrunk from long hours staring at spreadsheets and can no longer see qualities that do not have clear metrics attached to them. They also likely assume Walter’s capacity can be trained in others for less than it takes to retain him.* Walter knows this and has grown sour on the chain. Our last conversations are filled with how much Whole Foods has changed, how his health insurance and the slightly-above-average pay that he has ground out prevent him from easily leaving even as he feels completely ground down by management.

When I ask him if he feels like he has any job security, he says, “No! It frustrates me. It wears on me. I’ve worked here six years. I got no security. I work hard. So I’d like to know I have a place as long as things are going right . . . I don’t feel that way. Not at all. I feel like they might cut me at any moment.”

On a different night, I close with him. We pull in the seafood, a dramatically quicker process than banging down all those pans to

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