Category Archives: Uncategorized

Risky Activities

Uncategorized

Risk aversion is life aversion

  • Arriving at work
  • All assigned activities
  • Discussing nihilist philosophy with the regional
  • Putting the ice cream you bought in the break room freezer
  • Humor
  • Expressing opinions about life, the universe, or Sandy
  • Treating customers like regular people
  • Asking a customer if they found what they were looking for
  • Having knowledge
  • Suggesting good ideas
  • Trapping raccoon
  • Expressing a desire to learn
  • Asking questions
  • Adding vodka to your water bottle
  • Adding vodka to Captain’s water bottle

Trader Wisdom Cookie — November 2023

Uncategorized, , , ,

…a fortune for every day of the month!

  1. Hold your horses! It’s only November first and you’re already hounding us about Jingle Jangle!
  2. Training is useful because it affords the new hire the chance to get their questions answered. However, training cannot answer the Crew’s questions as to why the fuck this person was hired.
  3. Q: Is this Chardonnay oaked? A: Your mom is oaked.
  4. Taxonomic distribution is never talked about in the store. Instead, it is discussed using the veiled terms “aisles,” “shelves,” and “it doesn’t matter where we fucking put it because they won’t find it anyway.”
  5. Members of the Art Team will be angered by your temp sign.
  6. Maintaining a single beverages shelf is a way to prevent customers from learning the terrifying truth: that they can tear open any package of drinks to get one, and then leave a huge mess on the shelf. For civilization to stand, customers must never be allowed to learn this.
  7. Mini Taco Flavor Roulette: No one actually loses, but no one truly wins
  8. Whether you quaff an entire bottle of Charles Shaw White Zinfandel in a single sitting, or an entire bottle of a French Rose in a fancy bottle, both will be equally regretted when peering back through the lens of time while upside down in a ditch soaked with gasoline and being smothered by a deflated airbag.
  9. TikTok plants the seeds of stupid in the fertile loam of customers’ heads, which when nurtured by their need for shallow excitement will result in annoying questions after mere minutes of incubation. You can write a cease and desist letter if it makes you feel better, but it won’t stop them.
  10. Who are the members of the Safety Team? Attend their monthly meeting in a dim top-floor conference room at the Hilton to find out. To maintain secrecy wear street clothes, not your uniform.
  11. A box with “LIVE” written on it may actually be a GO BACK that has not yet been checked. A box with “GO BACK” written on it may actually go up if it is part of a boat pull.
  12. One must understand facings to understand the concept of GO BACK. One must understand @TOS to understand facings. One must understand QIL to understand @TOS. One must understand the supply chain to understand QIL. One must understand Regan, Category Manager for Quinoa Dry Line, to understand the supply chain. You must come to peace with the truth that a person who lives in a dumb California suburb controls how many times you pick up a box. Regan believes that you are a robot.
  13. Falling in love with your coworker is probably a bad idea, but it feels so good. It feels weird. It feels good weird. Equalizing AR reserves is key to making it last.
  14. Welcome to The Holidays! Time to move everything from one side of the back room to the other side of the back room.
  15. Bane’s First Rule: Any product a customer asks you to find is either discontinued, or will be arriving on a truck in 4 hours.
  16. We are a national chain of neighborhood TikTok franchises.
  17. Don’t be fooled. Shallots are just weird onions.
  18. Three out of four American adults suffer from Jingle Jangle addiction. The rest are lying to you.
  19. Spiced wine is a gateway drug, a slippery slope leading children to switch to vomiting surprisingly quickly.
  20. Fun fact: most aisles are more than a thousand “EXCUSE MEs” long during the Holiday Season.
  21. When you stop and think about how magical the Holidays are… You don’t have time for that! Get back to work!
  22. Remember when you looked under the shelves before inventory and found all that weird stuff? It was kicked under there LAST Holiday. Now the cycle begins anew.
  23. Policy update: Instead of putting half-dollar coins in the tray section for large bills, they should now be thrown directly into the trash.
  24. $2 bills are for grandchildren, not me.
  25. When did we get THAT? Not customers, not Crew, not Mates, not QIL, nobody knows the answer.
  26. Make time to set aside the Limited Buys that you want, because otherwise they will be gone and then what was even the point of all this?
  27. “The wine is actually not too bad,” and other unbelievable tales from the Tall Blue Bottle Universe.
  28. Every customer interaction is actively whittling away your telomeres. By January you may only have a few peptide bonds remaining. Wear comfortable shoes I guess.
  29. When the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, definitely put yours on first before assisting any customers, because they are going to try to suck the life out of you.
  30. Label every register “EXPRESS LINE 9 ITEMS.” Enforce rigidly, no more items, no fewer. Then put on full riot gear and allow one person through with a full cart.

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.

Lessons Learned

Uncategorized
  • As you walk past coworkers, resist joyfully bragging, “I’m so important that the Captain decided to bring a Mate to our meeting!”
  • Tuck in the part of your shirt with the stain.
  • There’s more to getting promoted than buying your own Hawaiian shirt.
  • Kale has no season.
  • People waiting in line to enter the store have not yet earned the right to be called Customers.
  • When they told you to clean the thing, they actually were okay with it being a little dirty still.
  • Low Sodium Chicken Broth weighs the same as Chicken Broth with the regular amount of sodium.
  • The Super Amazing Kitchen Cloth cannot stop a wax fire.
  • If your name is on the receipt, your name is on the moldy strawberries that you rang up twice.
  • The only thing unexpected is that the cheddar is out of stock, and even then, not so much.
  • A Production Delay is a relationship issue between Supply and Demand, where Supply needs to be comfortable that Demand really is still devoted to it, and Demand needs Supply to understand that sometimes it needs to get tamales from somewhere else.
  • It’s pretty annoying when a customer is in a better mood than you, but also really annoying when they are in a bad mood. The best you can hope for is to encounter customers who are in the exact same mood as you. Avoid tipping the scales with casual discussion.
  • Green potatoes are the treacherous undertow of a WOW! Experience.
  • A review is not the place to brag about your juggling skills.
  • Not all bread should be shared.
  • Nobody cares that avocados are fruit, but extrapolating that guacamole is technically jam is  interesting enough to kill a little time while ringing up a big cart.
  • Claim you lost the hoodie.

Things That Can Be Crushed in The Baler

Uncategorized
  • Flattened cardboard
  • Unflattened boxes
  • Boxes full of dry snacks, such as chips, crackers
  • Boxes full of Spanish olive oil (Caution: glass hazard)
  • Flats of refried beans cans
  • Flats of Raspberry Lime Sparkling Water (1-liter bottles)
  • Six-packs of domestic beer in cans
  • Partial cases of Bath Tissue, or Super Soft Bath Tissue
  • Lugs full of various cheeses (limited effect for shredded)
  • Super Amazing Kitchen Cloth (no effect)
  • Fire extinguishers (Caution: actual real danger likely)
  • Shopping cart (empty)
  • Two cases of free-range eggs fortified with omega-3
  • Shopping cart full of polenta (Note: team lift)
  • Smaller baler (theoretical)
  • 20-30 cans of refrigerated Cinnamon Rolls puff pastry dough
    (Note: recommend high-speed camera)
  • Bread shares
  • Romaine lettuce possibly tainted by salmonella (Note: office directed baling only)
  • All remaining cases of Caveman Collagen bars
  • Items on quality hold
  • Flowers (Note: Separate individual blooms and place between white cardboard for best effect.)
  • Decorative ceramic soap holder from TJMAXX in the shape of a laughing frog
  • Case of Norwegian Crispbread held for Marsha Zimmerdell that she never picked up
  • Abandoned bird nests
  • Various broken wood things
  • Empty milk crates
  • Military grade tactical stink bomb (18 garlic cloves, 1 pack fresh salmon, 7 lemons, 1 jar Blue Cheese Dressing, 1 can beef dog food, 1 bottle sriracha, 1 bottle Tea Tree Oil, 1 jar Apple Cider Vinegar, 1 can French Roast Coffee – Turkish grind, 1 tin anchovies, 9 ounces brie or Manchego cheese, 1 jar genuine Vermont maple syrup, 8 pouches Yellow Tadka Dal, 1 bottle vermouth,
    3 jars Salsa Autentica, 18 jars ground cinnamon, 1 jar green olives, 2 bottles Peppermint Infused Cauliflower Face Wash, 6 jars sauerkraut, 3 jars kimchi, 4 white onions, 2 bags cilantro, 1 pack chardonnay chicken sausage, 1 bunch celery , 1 bunch eucalyptus, 1 jar Chili Onion Crunch,
    1 sympathy card)

Department of Homeland Disasters

Uncategorized

Re: The worst year ever

Many of you have commented that 2020 is the worst year ever. We can all agree that any year worse than this one defies imagination. However, after a thorough investigation, the DHD has determined that 2020 could still be worse. We cannot risk looking back on this year fondly, so we must insure that this year is terrible in the most possible ways. To insure our future sanity, no catastrophe short of total extinction can be ruled out.

Below is a list of proposed horrible events we plan to implement posthaste, pending feasibility studies. Public feedback is welcomed through December 30. 

  • Passing asteroid slows Earth’s orbit around sun, making year last longer.
  • Gandhi miraculously resurrected, dies from COVID-19.
  • Internet only available at libraries, Hampton Inns.
  • Paprika shortage
  • Idiot coworker becomes your idiot boss.
  • Men who are not rich also allowed free rein to do whatever they want, start “I Also” movement
  • Airport flight paths rerouted directly over your home.
  • Moon in retrograde
  • International Space Station crashes to earth after being contaminated with gravity. 
  • Sour milk not discovered until poured on last of the cereal.
  • Michigan militia begins day trips outside Michigan.
  • “Life Is Good” garments found to contain asbestos.
  • Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi begin dating.
  • Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, spewing old faithfulness across eight states.
  • California falls into ocean, polluting Pacific with bad ideas, good vibes, venture capital.
  • You find out that you hate your new boyfriend (Taylor Swift only).
  • No changes with Texas
  • 20% gratuity added to orders of eight tacos or more at Taco Bell.
  • Neighbor starts all-tuba band.
  • Citizens required by law to give a shit.
  • Change in solar wind causes smoke detectors to trigger whenever outside doors are opened.
  • An unflattering photo of you becomes a popular meme.
  • Canada declares war.
  • Widespread woodpecker attacks 
  • A disease is named after you.
  • Lincoln Memorial vandalized with blackface.
  • China develops 100% effective COVID vaccine.
  • Boss casually mentions you should bring change of work clothes to dinner party.
  • Cocoa trees go extinct.
  • Mexico also builds wall.
  • Your employer begins paying in Bitcoin only.
  • Mayan culture reinvigorated. Human sacrifices resume.
  • COVID-20 announced

Trader Joe’s Book Club (November 2020)

Uncategorized

Mystery

  • Signs in the Attic
  • The Early Truck with Nothing Broken Inside
  • The Radio Mistake
  • The Haunted Demo (a Nancy Drew mystery)
  • The Spicy Pumpkin

Adventure

  • Zamboni Riders at Noon
  • Double Bag ‘Em, Double Tag ‘Em: Grocery Warfare
  • Two-Hour Payload

Espionage

  • Yellow Cone Yes, Yellow Cone No
  • Three-Bell: Bad Strawberry
  • The Shaw Boundary

Autobiography and Self Help

  • There’s None in the Back!, by Karen McCloudy (Author of “Ask and You Shall Receive”)
  • Tales of Hardship: They Didn’t Have a Case So I Had to Just Buy Twelve
  • Gloves and a Bucket: Cleaning Time Breakdown
  • I Thought I’d Clocked In, But My Nightmare Was Just Beginning
  • TOS Means Forever

Non-Fiction

  • Disco’ed: Not Fun, Not Funky, Not Available
  • Deciphering the Bells: Mystical Signals
  • Needing Another Bag: Stories of Failure and Excess
  • Considerations When Choosing to Live Close to or Far Away from Your Favorite Store
  • Some People Don’t Mind Doing the Thing You Hate Most, But They Still Can’t Do It for You

Business Analytics

  • They Used to Work Here: Customer Demographic Analysis
  • Solved! How Trader Joe’s Turned Selling Products into a Profit Center
  • A Modern Treatise Concerning Bag Reusal
  • Pandemic Report: Same Things from A Different Vendor

Cooking

  • Pumpkin Spice Gluten Free, Vegan, Low Sodium, No Sugar Added, High Fiber, Weird Scandinavian Umami Cookies: Pumpkin Spice Doesn’t Sound So Bad Now Does It?

Books by Anonymous Crew

  • Now I Have the Thing but You’re Gone
  • Let Me Check the Disappointment Machine
  • Don’t Tell Me It’s Mango
  • Shift Posting: Work Here Without Working Here
  • They Found Me in the Breakroom