The Secret Mornings of Whole Foods

Howdy my friends. Not to long ago I wrote a story about my once a week social journey to the grocery store. One of the grad students would drive me to Walmart and I would proceed to take part in Hi-Jinks with the fried chicken lady. Well, my friends, these adventures are no more. Now I ride my bike to the much closer Whole Foods. It is about a five mile bike ride to the store, but most of the ride is through campus and the beautiful swan filled Audobon park. I was pretty hesitant to buy groceries without a car. I eat a lot of food, and I could never carry a week’s supply in my back pack. The solution? I ride to the store about three times a week! It’s a great bike ride, its not too hot in the morning, and I just pick up the food that I want to eat the next couple of days. All in all, a very nice way to live.

Whole foods is a fancy place with fancy organic food. Good stuff, but expensive. Anyway this morning my powerful legs exceeded my own already incredible expectations: I arrived at the store toot sweet! The store wasn’t even open yet! I was sort of oblivious to this “not being open” shit, because I didn’t notice the people hovering around the automatic doors that would not automatically open. I just force the door open, grabbed a basket and started shopping.

Inside a manager, a security guard, and the flower arranging lady all yelled at me. “Woah, woah, woah, people. I made a simple mistake. I’ll just wait outside for the store to open.” The flower lady was cool and said I could just sit and wait in the flower section of the store. And so I did. Seated, and surrounded by lovely blossoms I overheard all the secrets of Whole Foods:

On the intercom some guy said “LETS GET READY TO….SELL PROOOOOOODUUUUUCE! Just like a boxing announcer.

The manager kept running around pumping up employees. “Lets get this aisle SPOTLESS! WOOO!---he actually screamed “WOO” a lot. So did the lady employees in response. “WOOO!”

The announcer announced the recent marriage of one of the checkout ladies. The other checkout ladies responded with cries of “WOO!”

I got excited and shouted out “WOO” myself.

Conclusion: I like Whole Foods. It sucks that I can’t afford any meat there except for turkey cold cuts, and I don’t really buy into all the organic food hype. I also don’t like that they won’t carry genetically modified food. I like genetically modified food (I like feats of engineering in general). I do however like how the store pays their employees a good salary. I like how things look clean, and I like how the food products (except for the vegan “meat like” products) actually look like food. No purple ketchup here. The dairy stuff also taste really good. I bet if they sold fried chicken, it would taste awesome.