Feckless Friday: Panic! At the Whole Foods Edition
There are two things that I buy at Whole Foods: Ecover dishwashing powder (because it’s the only brand that works) and Snowville Creamery 1/2 and 1/2 (because Weiland’s is always, always out of it and it’s soooo flippin’ good). But one time, I needed chia seeds and hemp powder and raw cocoa and goji berries in order to boost my post-run green smoothies, so I had to go there. If you’re not familiar, that store is huge and just way too hip for me and just too, too much. I called Kristen no less than 3 times while looking for those 3 things. But that’s not the worst part.
After that, the kids and I got some pizza from their cafeteria-type thing. Holy crap, mine had pears, bacon, and gorgonzola on it and I almost converted to making the Whole Foods pizza counter a weekly thing. We ate, gathered up all of our garbage, er, “waste” and when I looked around to where we were supposed to either throw stuff away or recycle it (2 things I can handle), I saw that there were, like, 47 other choices besides garbage and recycling.
Each bin was labeled with words and pictures of acceptable stuff. So the garbage one looked like this:
The compost bin looked like this:
I shushed the kids while they screamed, “MOMMY! WHY DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO USE WHOLE FOODS?” And then I stuffed our garbage into one of our recycled, reusable grocery bags (“I used to be a plastic bottle! Now I make poor people feel bad about themselves!”) and I took it all home with me.
I took my garbage home with me.
I don’t know how to use the Whole Foods. The end.
This is my Feckless Friday post. Please play along.
September 25th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Wow, that is disturbing, hilarious, sad, fun and scary all at the same time. I have no idea what I would’ve done in this situation but I’m glad you wrote about what you did!
Out of curiousity, was this the Lane Ave Whole Foods?
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I can hook you up with the dishwashing powder from my Frontier coop. It’s probably cheaper than buying from WF and then you can avoid it.
Have you tried shopping at clintonville community market for the half and half and other weird things? It’s closer, smaller, and no waste options. Only the hippie smell to contend with, which is really an OK trade off for the other benefits.
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 9:21 am
@Andrew It was Sawmill. Kristen says the one on Lane is more manageable, but I’m scarred.
@Rachel I would love the coop hook-up! You’re swell. I vow to only go to the market for weird stuff now. I forgot about them for 1/2 and 1/2, too.
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 11:05 am
[...] feckless friend Abby has started a new Friday game and she wants us all to play along. It’s called Feckless [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I once went to Whole Foods and couldn’t even figure out how to get a pizza. (Apparently going to the cafe and saying “I’d like a pizza, please” doesn’t work.) Now I’m not going there any more because the CEO is a rabid right-winger and I’m done giving him my money.
[Reply]
Molly Reply:
August 27th, 2010 at 10:41 am
That’s odd, I thought right wingers hated the earth???
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Sorry, I can’t play. I just committed suicide I because read your post. I ate McDonald’s and threw the trash out of my car window into my front yard because if it doesn’t blow away I know Royce will pick it up later.
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
switch “because” and “I.” (weird typo…)
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
@Karen HAHAHAHA So funny. Now I want some chicken McNuggets.
@renee I’ve been reading weird things, too, so I’m going to use that as my excuse now instead of just being too scared. Good plan. And, this part got cut from my post, but when I got my pizza, I was very nervous and I really had to talk myself up just to get the dude’s attention and then again to ask where to pay. I didn’t know we paid at the register. I thought there was some kind of register in the food area. I didn’t know!
[Reply]
September 25th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
you’re freakin hilarious!
[Reply]
September 26th, 2009 at 9:13 am
@Pennie! Go ahead, Chef, laugh it up. I’m glad my inadequacies can be a source of joy for you. *sigh*
[Reply]
September 29th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Here’s the sad thing. I don’t even know where the nearest Whole Foods is. We go to The Grain Train. And it’s 20 minutes away on a good day. I do, however, have a local farm down the road where I can buy dilly asparagus for 12 dollars a jar. So there!
[Reply]
September 30th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I have been in Whole Foods just a couple of times. Never ate there.
@renee… you haven’t been giving him money anyway.
The average corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives…. At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: The top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company.
In 2007 CEO reduced his pay to $1. For 2008, his salary was $1 and bonus was $33,380.
The average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while Whole Foods’ CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation. (He raised the salary cap for Executives to 19X average employee salary). Considering that Whole Food Execs would be headhunted for salaries MUCH HIGHER that they get, the small bump in cap makes sense.
CY 2007 he earned about $160,000 (3 months of FY 2006 were at regular salary)
Prior to that, Exec salaries + bonus (from 1996 to now) ranged from 100,000 to 500,000 annually.
[Reply]
Abby Reply:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Dude, Tony, you have to let people make off-handed comments without getting all technical. Please, for the love of the internets. You’re dangerously close to being diagnosed with IA (Internet Assperger’s), which is close to regular Asperger’s, only it’s spelled different. And it manifests on the internet. And I just invented it. So it’s pretty much different from real Asperger’s, but still similar.
[Reply]
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I would have done the same thing …that was intimidating. I knew someone that moved into a small town and thought he and his partner were going to have a hard time adjusting (being accepted because they were gay). It wasn’t his “gayness” that disturbed the locals (there was actually a big community and lots of resources in that little place…go figure) but his choice of food and his bad manners in trash disposal….got a “Talking to” from his elderly neighbor about his heavy carbon footprint.
[Reply]
August 27th, 2010 at 10:44 am
HAHA! Internet Asperger’s…. and that post was hilarious!
[Reply]