Category Archives: Lists

Trader Wisdom Cookie — April 2021

Lists

…a fortune for every day of the month!

  1. Technically, yes, some chocolate is better than other chocolate. But you don’t have to be an arrogant dick and bring it up.
  2. We’ve got crackers that would make your grandma piss herself!
  3. Child: Momma, where do the boxes go? Mother: Child, they go to flatness heaven.
  4. Consider which is worse to be broadcast over the store radio: A live stream of conversations from the back room, or, a live stream of whatever is being watched or read on phones in the bathroom.
  5. When scanning multiple hamburger packs, you are forced to pause two seconds between each scan. Otherwise an infinite number of products would constantly be purchased and the universe would explode and you’d have to ring a three-bell.
  6. Where is the rendering plant that takes care of all the other parts of the romaine animal beside the heart?
  7. Eating animals doesn’t seem fair. Being vegan and missing out on Belgian Chocolate Pudding also doesn’t seem fair. You need to choose what gets unfairly treated.
  8. A new Captain is the perfect time to make a power play to take over Bars.
  9. Anyone who tells you Charles Shaw is crap doesn’t care enough about wine to need to drink as much as possible on a limited budget.
  10. Sweet potatoes come in lots of crazy shapes. They can look like anything. They are totally unregulated.
  11. If you think about it, everything we sell over in the cold juices area, except the orange juice, is a little bit weird, and you should probably keep an eye on anyone buying them.
  12. Am I glad that we sell Paper Towels? Yes. But am I disappointed that they are not appreciably stronger than the Bath Tissue? Yes.
  13. Do we sell sesame seeds? Here, follow me to the intercom and I will answer you: NO! WE! DO NOT! SELL! SESAME SEEDS! Sorry, that was triggering.
  14. Child: Momma, what are the stripes? Mother: Child, that is a barcode. Child: What is that? Mother: It is how Satan smiles.
  15. Assignment: Create a portrait of your least favorite Mate using only spoiled broccoli.
  16. Raw popcorn kernels can be hard to find. Make sure it stays that way.
  17. When a truck arrives, it may be daytime or dark. It may be on time, or it may be late. It may be yesterday’s truck, or a truck full of miscellaneous items you didn’t order. Every truck is a story that begins when you see it, and seems to end when it leaves, but discovering the exceptions is the climax.
  18. Congratulations if today is your birthday! You are reading nonsense. You are celebrating how you are more important than nonsense! Go celebrate with an Icelandic Yogurt and Hemp Seed crunch blob!
  19. Customer: Is this easy to cook? Joe: Yes, just follow the directions for cooking the burrito printed on the package. You can use the microwave! Customer: It wants me to cut holes in the frozen burrito? It want me to wrap it in a towel? It wants me to cut holes in the packaging? It wants me to cook at several power levels for over 5 minutes! This is not the Microwave Future that I was promised in 1979! I am disillusioned, and I can’t hog the microwave for 8 minutes. I am going to unwrap it all, put it on a plate, and cook it for 5:30 on HI power. Joe: Yeah, I think that will work fine.
  20. When you know the shit is lining up to hit the fan, and you’re going to have to be right there to watch it, don’t wait to get a yellow cone.
  21. We are out of that and we are sorry.
  22. Insisting that the floors are dirty is a way to draw attention away from how dirty the shelves may be.
  23. Fire escape doors are always unlocked, but only from the inside. Don’t get stuck in an outside fire.
  24. A smoothie begins life as a combination of ingredients that are either more liquid or more solid. Use açai to mediate this conflict.
  25. If you are having a hard day, advise customers in the wine aisle of the unadvertised ability to sample the flavor of a wine by licking its label. Hang around for a while and see if your mood improves.
  26. If you feel cold, climb a stepladder.
  27. Some registers should never be opened.
  28. Orders not yet written will almost always be written. Orders that have been written can almost always be unwritten.
  29. The seemingly random codes printed on the bottom of boxes contain both information and meaning. It’s okay though, you don’t have to think about it.
  30. A dull knife is more likely to injure you than a sharp one, because if you are using a dull knife you are probably lazy.

The Plan So Far

General Malaise, Lists
  1. Alarm. Coffee. Toast with toothpaste on it. Soak shirt in deodorant the night before.
  2. Leave house early to allow time to buy lunch before shift.
  3. Emergency stop at gas station to buy dinosaur juice.
  4. Arrive at work. Stare transfixed at swirling masses of customers, like excited seagulls at the beach.
  5. Pause to regroup. Clock in.
  6. A couple bags of 2-pound tortilla chips won’t fit on shelf, but too few to go back. Momentary confusion. Decisively take a facing away from Restaurant Style. Restaurant Style can fight to win back its territory when its case arrives. Sucks to arrive late. Sucks to suck.
  7. Unexpectedly discover store now has dragon fruit! You are selling dragon fruit to people! You are helping people buy dragon fruit! Wow, that’s cool. You wonder what it looks like INSIDE, but it’s kind of expensive. Ask customer to come back and let you know what it was like.
  8. Sell 23 of the 99% Fat Free Burritos to a customer, which has never happened before. After lackluster probing, customer reveals they are his favorite and he can’t get them anywhere else.
  9. Lunch. Glad you bought it before lunch, but sad you forgot to buy a drink.
  10. Sad walk to the Dayforce gallows to clock in.
  11. Start mental list of what you should buy at the end of the night. Beer? Probably. Better put it in The Box to chill now. You can pay later.
  12. Overhear Crew in back room complaining about 2-pound tortilla chips being stuffed on shelf and they can’t put up the Restaurant Style. Schadenfreude.
  13. So much garlic, and all of it from Gilroy, California. Imagine how that town smells.
  14. Customer attempts to tip you, but you graciously decline, but they leave a dollar on the counter and walk away. You are essentially powerless to stop their generosity, but also are unsure what to do with the dollar now.
  15. Store succumbs to the night.
  16. Mark off dozens of bread loaves that are perfectly fine but have stickers on them with bad numbers. Or no stickers, so nobody can ascertain whether they are good to sell.
  17. Buy a couple things. Sour Swimmers are going to make Netflix even better.
  18. Go home. Turn on Netflix. Realize you forgot beer you put in The Box.
  19. Several seconds of feeling bad in complementary ways.
  20. Lose fight with sleep beast.
  21. Wake up 2 hours later and remember the huge 99% Fat Free Burritos purchase. Text someone about it. Hopefully their phone is on silent mode.
  22. Receive immediate reply. They couldn’t sleep.
  23. Unrealistic adventures behind jittery eyes.
  24. Call from work asking if you are coming in today.
  25. Shit.

How to Avoid Trouble While Drunk in the Store

Lists
  • Don’t be drunk in the store.
  • If the bathroom is available, use that instead of pissing your pants.
  • Double-check your schedule, because you may not even be working and you should leave immediately. Or, if you are scheduled to work at this time, then you should also leave immediately. It is also your prerogative to make worse decisions.
  • Your elaborate plan to get a refund for something you didn’t buy is less feasible than you think.
  • Suck a steady supply of breath mints to cover up for your slurred speech. Or claim you just had a root canal.
  • Don’t be the Captain.
  • Carts can have a stabilizing influence. Use one even if you don’t really plan to buy much.
  • If you have a choice, avoid working glass items.
  • Don’t touch anyone.
  • Ask yourself, are people going to remember what you’re doing? If the answer is yes, stop doing that thing.
  • Don’t scream obscenities, and in general just don’t scream.
  • If you are merely suffering from a nuclear hangover, resist the urge to demean the character of Vodka of the Gods in front of customers.

Book Club, March 2021

Lists

Crew Autobiographies

  • They Can’t See Me They Can’t See Me They Can’t See Me
  • Loose Pasta Soccer
  • Shallow Conversations, Deep Meh
  • Avoiding Workplace Violence By Simply Labeling Boxes Correctly
  • Head of Lettuce, Head of Cabbage, Head of Me
  • Trust Me, You’ll Want a Fork
  • The Recommendation: The Story of I Have Tried It and It Is Good
  • Clocking Into I Don’t Fucking Care
  • They Cut Me Down Like a Box Half-Full of Attitude
  • Taking Go Backs to Hell



Customer Memoirs

  • Mumble and Point
  • I Don’t Want It Discontinued
  • Hummus Advisory
  • True Stories of Discontent
  • Everything INCLUDING the Bagels
  • Please Hold My Polenta
  • I Love Shopping Because It’s the Only Time I Don’t Have to Discipline My Children
  • I Was the Instagram
  • Lost Tahini Weekend
  • Putting Magnifisauce on Your Gluten Free Buns: Culinary Hookups

Pros & Cons: Shopping on Your Day Off

Lists

Advantages of shopping on your day off

  1. Get to talk to your friends
  2. Buying frozen stuff is an option
  3. Can shop earlier in the day before everything is sold out
  4. Have someone else bag your groceries
  5. Can carelessly discard shopping cart in parking lot like a used facial tissue
  6. Time to actually read packages
  7. Can invade as much personal space as customers
  8. No need to write your name on everything before putting in fridge
  9. Retrieve your water bottle that you forgot
  10. Virtually unlimited time to carefully consider what to buy


Disadvantages of shopping on your day off

  1. Have to talk to your friends
  2. Have to wait in line to get in
  3. Have to help regular customers who recognize you
  4. Letting a coworker bag your groceries likely to foment ill-will
  5. Temptation to face
  6. Admitting to coworkers that you have nothing better to do
  7. Limited access to fun stickers, latest @TOS updates
  8. Actually, you still can get in trouble for talking to your friends
  9. Shame at checking bread dates
  10. Virtually unlimited time to impotently ponder what to buy

Trader Wisdom Cookie — March 2021

General Malaise, Lists, Uncategorized

…a fortune for every day of the month!

  1. Give a man a nut and he will be confused. But teach him to hate the nut, and he will crush it, possibly making some kind of interesting new butter.
  2. Wisdom may be gained at the register, but be careful, it can also be lost.
  3. Those who climb ladders will always come down, but those who are tall never do.
  4. Every section contains something that smells weird.
  5. The weekend may be busy, but you can be slow in your mind.
  6. Rice grains on the counter are a warning.
  7. They will check the breakroom. They will check the Bridge. They will check the closet. They may even check The Box. But they cannot check the bathroom. The bathroom is the perfect hiding place. But you will still get in trouble.
  8. Anger caused by observing poor driving is fleeting. But anger caused by observing poor parking will endure as long as you can see the parked car.
  9. If all the seasonal products were kept in one place how would anyone know, since it would be empty?
  10. Gluten free, kosher, vegan: but no list for products that are none of these? Products that are inaccessible to all those groups, like the Organic Caesar Salad Kit, and probable future products such as the Pulled Pork and Shishito Pepper IPA (7.6% ABV).
  11. A cookie is either round or rectangular, or it is shaped like a thing. There are no triangular cookies.
  12. Some customers buy drinks containing vinegar. There is no way to stop them. You just have to watch it happen.
  13. Even the widest aisle can be blocked by a single oblivious person.
  14. A product that sells poorly from its shelf disappoints the Section Leader. A product that sells poorly from a register display disappoints everyone.
  15. A dull blade is dangerous. A dull wit is embarrassing.
  16. We honor canned corn by celebrating its contribution to a mythic corporate identity, yet fresh corn on the cob receives no such fanfare. A cultural reckoning is long overdue.
  17. Sometimes an unhappy customer can be bribed into happiness. Rarely can they be bribed to leave.
  18. A stack of wine is a temptation for a customer, or gravity, to try one.
  19. The secret tahini location may never be found.
  20. Popular Orange-Looking Easy Non-Taco Alternative
  21. Mules cannot make honey. And bees cannot make mule eggs.
  22. Your flat of diced tomatoes is not a trip hazard if you are with it. Always be with your diced tomatoes. Never leave them.
  23. The emergency exit screams when opened, like a child who doesn’t get what it wants. The emergency exit needs to take a timeout to think about how it’s acting.
  24. Secret taco recipe: Instead of using taco ingredients from other stores, use taco ingredients from Trader Joe’s…BAM! Tacos from Trader Joe’s on Instagram!
  25. Try to remember the last time you heard Huey Lewis and the News outside of the store?
  26. Nobody said the Joe Life was going to be easy, but also, nobody ever calls it that either.
  27. Some people are sad that they missed the one week when Candy Cane Joe Joe’s were available. That is because they believe in temporal existence.
  28. If a customer claims to be having a fantastic day, it’s okay to stop talking to them.
  29. If you find flowers underneath all the groceries in the cart, this customer may have undiagnosed dopamine issues. Avoid initiating discussions about neural architecture or Pai Gow Poker.
  30. Standard protocol for ringing up a cart that a child is sitting in, covered by groceries, should involve giving the child a shot of No Joke Ginger to drink. But unfortunately it does not.
  31. If your grandmother says she’s sending you $10 for your birthday, but when you open the card there’s no money inside, you probably won’t say anything because she’s your grandmother. But if your warehouse says they are sending you ten cases of Triple Ginger Cookies, but when you open the palette there’s no cookies inside, then you’re definitely going to say something because that’s hundreds of dollars and what are you supposed to put on the display now! Way More Chocolate Chips Cookies? Those were a zero ship too. Bastards.

Minimum Requirements

General Malaise, Lists

So you want to succeed at Trader Joe’s? You’ll need to have these minimum requirements.

…to get hired at Trader Joe’s:

  • Willingness to work days and times previously enjoyed unproductively with friends
  • A knack for tactfully discussing super weirdo products without coming right out and saying that they sound disgusting
  • Inside connections


…to work a register:

  • World-class ability to ascertain how people are doing today
  • Comfortable with policy of non-interference when customer knocks 20 chocolate bars off stuffed shelf
  • Basic grounding in technology framework of 30-year-old computer interfaces
  • Strong not-dropping-things skills
  • Comfortable around bells (bell will be provided)
  • Avid interest in deciding if the receipt paper needs to be replaced


…to be in charge of the line at the front door:

  • Ability to ask rudimentary questions and make simple requests, while avoiding angry onslaught of suburban hate kittens
  • Ability to use clipboard to keep track of store capacity while creating intricate doodles for the next person in charge to see
  • Willingness to count, or if unwilling, to ask another Crew member to check your count
  • Ability to proactively diffuse line revolt by explaining to the person at the front of the line that the person who just walked in was a Crew member
  • Ability to conduct cheerfully sympathetic conversations with frantic people who JUST. NEED. ONE. THING. THAT’S IT!


…to stock dry grocery:

  • Understanding of vertical can nesting principles, and simmering bitterness that glass jar science has fallen so far behind
  • Ability to unfold ladder facing the right way within two tries
  • Ability to kneel on concrete slab as if you’re about to be beheaded, while trying to force bags of almonds to stand upright in their dark and hateful cave home
  • Understanding of importance of not fucking around with stuff in glass jars because they WILL break
  • Ability to make facing look like it’s two-deep
  • Willingness to be vaguely aware that there are different kinds of wheat, like durum, and that semolina is not technically a wheat variety. No understanding of why anyone should care about these things is required.
  • Ability to differentiate canned skipjack tuna from cat food
  • Interest in opening Taco Seasoning Mix boxes without them ending up looking like a bear found them at a campsite
  • Desire to determine what type of thing tapenade is


…to clean bathroom:

  • Ability to justify cursory cleaning efforts with arguments citing importance of speed
  • A strong opinion, although fire should never be used in the cleaning process, of why fire should be used in the cleaning process
  • Curiosity to find out why the strap on the baby changing station inhibits it from closing completely
  • Ability to give preference to coverage over accuracy when spraying
  • Level III Certification for maintaining 2-roll toilet paper dispenser, including spin direction and theory of second roll importance/usage.
  • Heroic willingness to lift terrifying gossamer trash bag full of the worst filth in the store out of the can without ripping it


…to be a Mate:

  • Ability to adjust circadian rhythm as needed, like a Navy Seal
  • Pathological aversion to Ron Jon
  • Willingness to yell at another Mate over the intercom after the store closes to check your math skills
  • Deep understanding of what jokes are inappropriate, versus what jokes are hilarious when the Captain is not around
  • Ability to resist involvement in shenanigans, even during extreme temptation
  • Remember when you were a kid and you played store and you had a little pouch that you put the money in that you took from people? What would you say if I told you that you could live that dream again?
  • Huddle Aficionado, Level 2+
  • Guiding through chiding philosophy

Things to Discuss

Communication, General Malaise, Lists
  • Customers who have never been in the store before and don’t really care anything about Trader Joe’s but just needed a bottle of water or a banana
  • Putting eggs on the bottom of the bag isn’t necessarily a mistake, but people generally have stronger feelings on the topic than they do about their preferred brand of toothpaste, so be ready for it.
  • If you’re going to get replacement eggs, make sure they aren’t also broken before you bring them back, cause, like that’s the whole deal.
  • Yes, we sell chocolate. Glad I could help.
  • No one’s ever heard of this kind of apple before, but it has its own produce code that actually works, which means it was in the computer before we even knew it existed…whoa. Glen said it’s pretty good.
  • My scanner area is special to me and it is fragile. Please put your basket on the special basket shelf. THIS IS ALL I’VE GOT! RESPECT MY SPACE!
  • When your children help me they aren’t helping. I’m happy to pretend and enable then to have a fun time at the store, but if they drop a bottle of pasta sauce then I will stand and watch you clean it up on your knees before I check you out.
  • If I’m not clocked in yet, and customers are asking me questions that require some investigation, but if I help them then I will be late clocking in, plus not getting paid for working, but if I tell them I can’t help them then I’ll probably get in trouble, right? Whew. Where to start with the rage?
  • Signs: The Pretty vs. Informative vs. Speed vs. If They Want a Sign They Can Make Their Own Damn Sign Debate
  • Only two people in the store know the truth about why we sell three different types of pizza dough, and they’re not talking.
  • The new guy: what’s his deal?
  • How to get out of helping a customer if you really actually are in the middle of something important and can’t help them. Or if you really have to pee.
  • Fives are legal tender. It’s not your fault they only left home with a fifty and only bought an apple. If you give them nine fives they have to take them. It’s the law. If you don’t open the drawer very wide then they probably can’t see you have tens.
  • Yes, I dropped the onion. Did anyone see me pick it up? I should have a clear conscience. It’s an onion. You don’t eat the outside parts. Does everyone think like this?
  • Is the truck here? Is the truck coming? It’s late again! What the hell! Why is the truck always late! How hard is it to drive an hour on the interstate! Where do they get these drivers! Is it the warehouse’s fault? Aaaaaaa! Everyone but me is stupid!!!!
  • The beautiful ultra-fit couple who refuse to engage in friendly chit chat and are only buying boring stuff: I bet they are unhappy and their friends talk behind their backs.
  • Have you tried that thing before? Yeah, it’s good isn’t it? Yeah.
  • Just because you are old does not mean it is okay for you to block the store exit. Also, doors have worked the same way since rock tombs. And they work the exact same way in Estonia too. So move over or get out. We’re through with your weird psychological game.