The new meat market

(From the Register-Pajaronian)

Trader Joe’s grocery store is the new Studio 54.

Some of you may be confused, but that’s only because you’ve never been to the after-hours party that is TJ’s after the sun goes down. You have yet to experience the co-mingling of image- and socially-conscious single twenty-somethings that stop off for whey protein and obscure microbrew beer on the way home from working overtime at the office or on the way home from a late class. But you will, because I have seen the future, and it only comes in biodegradable packaging.

Forget your old man’s grocery store, with its soccer moms in decline and vacuum-sealed lunchmeat. That place sucks. Every time I go to that place, the one with the logo that looks remarkably like Superman’s, I’m more disheartened to see that they have no coffee counter, a barely cursory selection of organic food and radio traffic like something out of a sci-fi movie.

The intercom squalls to life as I walk through the door.

“Bwaaaak! Uh, Shane were gonna need some more people up here. There’s, uh, people trying to buy food. I’m not sure how to handle it. Over.”

No matter what time it is, they’re always calling for help that never seems to arrive. It’s actually quite sad. As I approach the seafood section, the situation takes a tuen for the worse.

“Shane, uh, we’ve got a problem. Epiphany and Taylor went to lunch and this woman picked out the only milk carton in the city of Santa Cruz with a leak in it and didn’t notice it for the three hours she’s been wandering through the store. I’m going to run it back to the case now and make a lot of people wait. Over.”

They never have unsalted almonds. Why would you ever salt an almond? As I wonder this, all hell breaks loose up at the check stand.

“Oh, Jesus, Shane! We’ve got a hull breach in sector three! Seal the cabin doors and prepare to repel boarders! All hands to the stock room! Close all checkout lines except the one with the broken barcode scanner!”

By the time I get up there, the staff has been overrun by a platoon of white people buying single-serving bottles of Jagermeister and 30-packs of Cup-O-Noodles. It’s all I can do to hew a path to my car and flee in disgrace while the horde gorges itself on the slowest baggers.

But Trader Joe’s is different. While I hesitate to call any organization with outlets in 18 states a grassroots operation, there is at least a sense that the displays and employees were not assembled in Iowa and shipped out as a single unit. Some employees have body alterations or haircuts that the church would not approve of. A lot of signs are done by hand. It’s all prefab hipness, but then what isn’t?

Because of all this, the store attracts a different clientele, and elitist or not, I like it. Especially at night, you tend to get kids with a couple of brain cells and credit cards to rub together. Most folks have chosen to put on a shirt with actual sleeves before going out in public, and I respect that. More often than not, customers can follow simple directions to find what they’re looking for, and if they can’t, they resist the urge to bring the place to a screeching halt by demanding someone go get it and place it in their hand. Sometimes — and this still shocks me — they will even ask a stranger, meaning a conversation may blossom.

I don’t believe for a second that the bosses in the Trader Joe’s boardroom have any concern besides making money. But at some point, somebody thought, “you know, if we do a little something to keep the place from feeling exactly like every other food outlet in the country, maybe people won’t treat it that way.” That small measure of imagination, along with the fact that they trust adults to walk around the shop with a cup of coffee without dumping it on the merchandise, has won my business. As Wal-Mart and its brothers strive to create a transaction where the customer is happy to be faceless, where he doesn’t talk to anyone, where he just feeds his money into a machine and walks out the door with his uniform Hanes T-shirt and bland, ready-to-serve Campbell’s soup, even a token gesture of individuality is a great one.

Meanwhile, I’m brushing up on the layout of my local TJ’s, because this fall, there will be a lot of coeds wandering around looking for the vanilla soy milk, and I’m just the guy to show them.