What shopping at Whole Foods Market can do to a man’s psyche.
Every once in a while we have to spoil ourselves. During my college years in Seattle, my then-girlfriend and I would go on monthly excursions to Whole Foods Market. There was something adventurous about these trips. Perhaps it could have been the warm sense of domesticity we both felt from grocery shopping alongside one another, or the fact that we had to borrow a roommate’s car just to get to the destination. But I think more than anything it was the fact that we were two relatively broke college students shopping at a ridiculously overpriced yuppie grocery store. We welcomed the irony with open arms.
While we would always shop at the weekly farmers markets, there was something different about Whole Foods. When I walked into the store, I could sense the First World Problems flowing out of the customers. The unmistakable scent of impending mid-life crises and infidelity captivated me. It was a spectacle. Mothers angered because they couldn’t get their Pilates session in that morning, fathers spending as much time as possible wandering the aisles so that they wouldn’t have to return home to their families just yet, and children complaining about having to endure yet another bag of kale chips for snacks. The whole organic circus that is Whole Foods Market entertained me in the most depressing way possible.
Graham Gremore sent along this short animation video he made on his Whole Foods Market experiences. This piece, entitled (Ass) Whole Foods, illustrates my sentiments completely.
Gremore’s animation makes me think of a wonderful speech by the late David Foster Walllace entitled “This is Water…” The speech, which Foster Wallace delivered for the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College, discusses what it means to be a well-adjusted person. In the speech, Wallace argues that a liberal arts education gives people the necessary tools to live one’s life in a more fulfilling and compassionate manner for oneself and one’s peers. I like to listen to the speech, which is posted below, at least once every few months to help me never lose sight of what’s important to me: That we’re all in this together. Who would have guessed that shopping at Whole Foods Market was in a sense a sociological road test for my liberal arts education?
Whole Foods seems to be a polarizing topic here at the Good Men Project:
Tom Matlack wrote about his hatred for Whole Foods Market in the succinctly titled Why I Hate Whole Foods.
Greg White went the opposite direction in his article entitled Why I Shop at Whole Foods.
Who knew grocery stores made people so conflicted?
Photo—ilovemypit/Flickr
I work at WF’s and I love my customers. They are terribly fun and interesting to interact with, including the picky ones or sometimes even the ones that want to talk about how they think WF’s and/or organics is b.s. or a conspiracy even though Trader Joe’s is in the same parking lot as us, Fry’s and Albertson’s are across the street, and Walmart and Target are a few blocks down. Always good for a chuckle later on.
I’ve only been to the Whole Foods in downtown Portland, which doesn’t have its own parking lot. I hadn’t noticed that the people were particularly unpleasant either (though I am generally not very observant of other people).
Whether consciously or not, shopping at Whole Foods allows financially comfortable (overwhelmingly white) people to avoid making much contact with poor people or people of color, on the whole. You are also extremely unlikely to run into anyone who’s obese, elderly, homeless, mentally ill, blue collar, uneducated, or anyone you prefer not to look at. In the Northwest, it’s nicknamed “Whole Paycheck.” Consciously or not, a lot of their customers are paying a little extra to avoid running into people they would rather not run into. It’s one of the first companies to jump on the green-label bandwagon – if… Read more »
Yeah, First World problem complainers are annoying, especially to those of us who have traveled the world, or are even just aware of real problems many face in the rest of the world. People who live in relative comfort tend to have trouble discerning between what constitutes a problem and an inconvenience. I had to laugh about “fathers spending as much time as possible wandering the aisles so that they wouldn’t have to return home to their families just yet…” Not sure if you have kids, but I certainly know that sometimes you need to decompress before walking into the… Read more »
Derek, Thanks for sharing Derek. I have tons of compassion for fathers looking for a break in their hectic family life schedule. Of course I was just pushing every situation to the extreme for comedic effect. I firmly believe that being a responsible and good parent is the hardest job in the world, and if shopping at Whole Foods can act as a decompression in your day for you then that’s great. I just think grocery stores are bizarre in that a lot of people use it as their “me” time. Everyone is escaping their daily problems in this contained… Read more »
Thanks Omar…I like to cook and I definitely like to eat so I actually don’t mind the grocery store. If I really wanted “me” time I would hit happy hour, but that is not always conducive to good parenting.
Just FYI, the link to Greg’s “Why I shop at WF” article is the same as the “I hate WF”..
Thanks for pointing that out, Chris. Maybe that was a Freudian slip on my part.