You should get one of these for your car for the next time you go there:
Posted on 07/31/2010 12:28:04 PM PDT by SamAdams76
So here I am driving through the local strip malls on a lazy Saturday morning, saddled with the responsibility of purchasing groceries for the family as the wife is occupied with other tasks at the moment. It's a clear, crisp morning with low humidity so I bring the dog with me so we can take a walk in the woods along the way.
After a brisk walk in the state park with the dog, and a large coffee at the Dunkin Donuts, I'm tooling around town, dog bouncing around in the back seat, deciding what supermarket to stop in at when I see Whole Foods Market, sandwiched between the usual other yuppie haunts like Trader Joe's, Starbucks and a few obnoxiously pretentious shops with foreign sounding names I can't remember and wouldn't be able to pronounce anyhow. So anyway, I'm feeling that I should give this Whole Foods a chance, and maybe come home and surprise the family with some wholesome and natural foodstuffs.
As I pull into the parking lot, I immediately get the sense that things are a little off. For one thing, all the cars are foreign made (Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, Saab) and sport the predictable liberal touchy-feely bumper stickers like "War Is Not The Answer" and those stupid "Coexist" bumper stickers with all those religious symbols forming the word (every religion except Christianity it would seem).
There was also a preponderance of those very annoying oval stickers that seem to be all the rage these days among the pretentious yuppie set. You know the ones, the oval stickers with the white background and cryptic letters like "DE", "ULV" and "NDU". I've always wondered what the heck those stickers are all about so I did a little research on the Internet.
Seems that over in Europe, the license plates are all the same type, making it difficult to tell what country the car is from. So that's how the oval stickers with the white background came about. Drivers from Germany would have to sport "D" stickers, people from France would have "F" stickers and people from Denmark would have "DK" stickers, and so on.
Of course, visiting yuppie American tourists couldn't be content with letting Europe have their little stickers. Of course not! Why they just had to import them to America, in order to show off to their other yuppie friends how cosmopolitan and worldly they were. Even more interesting is that these oval stickers, designating the country of origin, are actually mandated (across most of the world) by the United Nations! Hence, you can now better understand the desire of the UN-loving scumbag yuppies to affix one of these stickers to their own cars.
So back here in America, among the pretentious, oh-so-trendy yuppie set, it was soon not enough to merely own a BMW or a Volvo. No! In order to establish their bona fides as genuine yuppie scum, they had to sport these European stickers on their cars over here too. In that manner, they would evidently have their yuppie friends drooling with envy, as their Volvo would now appear to have been imported directly from Europe as opposed to the oh-so-pedestrian method of simply purchasing it from the local auto dealership.
Of course, enough yuppies got jealous enough whereby a market was quickly developed here in America to sell even more of these little oval stickers. At first, they were content to simply sport the sticker from their favorite European hell-hole, but before too long, all the trendy vacation spots here in America started selling their own oval stickers in their overpriced gift shops - all of which were quickly snapped up by yuppies and wanna-be yuppies, who immediately affixed them to their own cars to show off to all others "in the know" that yes, they too, apparently had a vacation home on Martha's Vineyard (MVY), the Outer Banks (OBX) or Vail, Colorado (VCO). Proven of course, by their little oval sticker. Oh, aren't you precious, Margo and Todd!
So here I am, still only in the Whole Foods parking lot, and already I am getting very annoyed. So I find a shaded space (for my dog) between a Land Cruiser sporting an Obama sticker and a Saab with a rainbow sticker and an oval sticker with "PVT" (Provincetown, evidently). Just wonderful.
So I crack the windows on my car to give the dog some air and head on in. Right away, I notice that I am the only customer in the store wearing socks - everybody else being in flip-flops, sandals and what not. However, I need to hit the rest-rooms as that Dunkin Donuts coffee has percolated through my system. However, there is not a "Men's" room or a "Women's" room but two "unisex" bathrooms, both with OCCUPIED signs on them. So I have to sit there and wait, with my legs crossed like an errant child, for the two women to get done already and vacate one of them. One of the advantages of being a man is that the men's room is always open. After all, if the stalls and urinals are occupied, there's always the sinks. (Ladies, that's why there is never a line at the men's room). However, Whole Foods has taken away the advantage of being a man by making their bathrooms unisex.
So bladder relieved at last, I head into the store and start my shopping. First up is the produce section and at the Whole Foods, it's not enough to just have apples, oranges and carrots in the produce section. No. You must have 37 varieties of apples with little color-coded placards announcing what country they are from. Also the Belgian endive and other exotic produce that Mike Dukakis famously raved about to the Iowa voters back in the 1988 presidential campaign. At the Whole Foods, you must inspect the produce carefully because more often than not, the blackberries ($4.99 for 8 oz) have mold on them and the corn-on-cob is likely to be infested with worms. After all, no pesticides allowed for Whole Foods produce. Fortunately for the corn on cob, they offer a trash barrel so you can shuck the corn yourself and ensure yourself of worm-free produce. Throughout the produce section, signs abounded proclaiming (or disclaiming) that wax was used to keep the produce looking fresh. I see summer squash and zucchini in a small section, priced reasonably. However, most of the shelf space is taken up with summer squash and zucchini already all cut up (ready for grill!) and packaged for triple the cost of just buying it and cutting it at home yourself. I guess many people think cutting up squash and zucchini is too much trouble to save 2/3 of the price. All in all, however, I was pretty happy with the produce section, although by the time I was out of there, the cost of my purchases already exceeded what I would have paid at the Stop & Shop for my entire wife-supplied grocery list.
Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" is playing over the PA as I venture out into the rest of the store. One thing I'm noticing is the preponderance of people who are of "questionable" sexual identity. Perhaps this explains the unisex bathrooms. Many of these people would definitely have trouble choosing. I saw one person over six feet tall that was wearing a hemp skirt and a pink T-shirt that said something along the lines of "Save Dharma". Must be a Lost fan. At any rate, she/he had a face like Robert Plant circa 1973 and long scraggly hair down to his/her breasts. He/she had an excessive amount of tofu and soy products in his/her cart. Must be a vegetarian too.
While Whole Foods might cater to the vegetarian set, they definitely have a decent selection of meats/fish. That was my next section. I loaded up with $60 in marinated steak tips and almost another $100 of other meats. Already, I am starting to feel the wrath of my wife when she downloads the latest banking transactions. I didn't even bother with the fish, they were asking $15 or more per pound for just about everything in the seafood section. Hell, it would be cheaper for me to rent a boat and go deep-sea fishing on my own.
Next up is the cheese section. All kinds of free samples abound, with the little toothpicks that you can spike the cheese pieces with. I pretty much got a full lunch for free by the time I was done "sampling." I loaded up with some swiss, gouda, and cheddar and I totally ignored the cheese counter which has various cheeses with names I couldn't pronounce and prices I couldn't afford. The PA system is now playing a Bruce Springsteen song - Tunnel of Love, I think.
Over to the yogurt and eggs. Normally we get Stonyfield Yogurt (with cream on top) at the Stop & Shop but they also have this brand called Brown Cow, also with cream on top (best yogurt you can buy by the way). I piled into my cart several flavors of Brown Cow "cream-on-top" yogurt: Maple, Raspberry, Cherry Vanilla, Coffee. There is a very surly worker in that section re-stocking the various yogurts on tap. He scowls at me and tells me that if I want that much yogurt, I can call for it in advance, so that he can sell it to me by the case. My guess is that he's annoyed that I was reaching for the yogurt in the back (which has the later expiration dates). I then move on to the eggs and I am confronted with all kinds of "free range", "omega-3" and "grain-fed" egg options. I decide upon a dozen eggs from some local farm that I drive by on the way to work each morning. Yes, I guess I'll check these eggs out and see if they are any different than the Stop & Shop eggs.
Now one thing about the Whole Foods is that it is over-the-top pretentious. There are about a zillion brand names you've never heard of and all the brands you have heard of (Hershey, Kraft, Nabisco, Pillsbury, Proctor & Gamble) will most certainly NOT be available at the Whole Foods. Let the great unwashed who would allow such pedestrian products into their homes shop at the Stop & Shop (or Wal-Mart). That seems to be the general attitude at the Whole Foods, anyhow.
I'm in the nut section now and pondering whether I should buy the $7.99 raw cashews, the $8.99 roasted jumbo (but unsalted) cashews or the $9.99 roasted and salted cashews (but not jumbo). There is also cashew butter, just in case regular peanut butter doesn't float your boat. For that matter, there is pistachio butter, almond butter and sunflower seed butter as well. If you do want plain old peanut butter, you are going to have to bend over and get it from a tiny section on the bottom shelf. Also, it will be the type that has the oil layer on top.
It strikes me that most of the customers here do not have to work for a living. They are evidently living off trust funds, or sponging otherwise off their moms and dads. How do I know this? Because based on their personal appearance, no respectable employer would ever hire these people, other than maybe tatoo parlors and independent record stores (if they still even exist). Many of them sport body piercing that makes you wonder if they accidently tripped on a boat during a fishing trip and landed face-first in a tackle box. Maybe that's what defines a liberal - one who does not have to work for a living. Be it somebody poor and on welfare, or somebody from a rich family who is living off a trust fund (or married to somebody rich).
The biggest section in Whole Foods is the prepared food section. This is for people who are not content to buy the overpriced foods and cook it themselves. No. They need to pay even more and have it cooked for them already. They have a salad/food bar where you can put together a ready made meal for $9.99 a pound. I tried this once at lunch a few years ago and when I got to the register, I was charged something like $23. It was a good lunch though. Most of the foods in the prepared food section however were way too exotic and overpriced for me.
Then you got your frozen foods and bakery sections which I sort of rushed through. They had entire rows dedicated to nothing but crackers, chips and cookies. Junk food, basically. Only you are paying a premium for it. Eating a box of "all-natural" Whole Foods cookies will make you just as fat as a Wal-Mart box of Oreo Cookies. Ditto for a bag of Whole Foods "all-natural blue corn tortilla chips" as opposed to a bag of Doritos at the Stop and Shop. Basically, Whole Foods has just as much junk food as your local 7-11. Only more expensive.
On my way to the registers, I passed the candy section and there were about 500 varieties of candy bars - all natural and healthy for you, of course. You had chocolate bars with fancy foreign sounding names that costed $5 or more. You could get a case of Mounds bars at the Wal-Mart for the price of one small bar of premium swiss white chocolate at the Whole Foods.
Still, I hit the registers with the feeling that I was going to return with a lot of healthy, wholesome food for the family. At the registers, I was confronted with a wide variety of "sports" bars that are intended for use when hiking the Appalachian trail or scaling Mt. Washington. More glorified junk food. I avoided the cashier that was wearing a burka and got a cashier that looked a bit like Fred Flintstone. He went through the whole routine of "Did I find everything I was looking for" as he zipped my purchases over the scanner. By the time he was 1/3 of the way through, my grocery bill was already in triple digits and climbing upward at a staggering pace. One of the baggers ambled over and asked me if I brought my own "bags", as if he actually thought I was the type that would bring those girly "recyclable" canvas bags to the supermarket with me. I just stared him down and asked him if he could "double-bag" for me so that I could use up twice as much paper. Besides, I like to use paper grocery bags for kindling when I start lighting up my wood-burning fireplace in the fall. However, my satisfaction with making the bagger double-bag was shortlived when I saw the final bill.
It came to $323.34.
This will be the last time my wife ever has me do the grocery shopping again, I guarantee it!
When I got back to my car, there was a concerned looking middle-aged woman staring into the back seat of my car. Apparently she was all concerned that I had my dog in the backseat and with a condenscending and superior attitude, she told me she was considering calling the animal rescue league or some such place if I took much longer getting back to my car. Meanwhile, the outside temperature is about 70 degrees and there is my dog happily sitting in the back, still in the shade, no hotter than it would be in my own living room at home, thriving on all the attention, with the windows cranked halfway down so that it could jump right out of the car if it really did get that hot and uncomfortable. As I loaded my bags in the trunk, I wished her good day and told her to remember to vote Republican this November and as she stalked off, I backed out of the parking space and began the long journey home to try and explain to my wife how I could spend over $300 doing the groceries.
Yes! That was the CEO of Whole Foods, and it does make me feel even better for choosing it as our main store.
Health is one of the reasons home gardening is growing expotentially...you know where your food comes from, and it is a heck of a lot cheaper than Whole Foods; or any other store, for that matter...
Talking about not being able to tell the men from the women....with redneck women you don’t have that problem.
“She had ‘disco sucks’ on the front of tee shirt”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiKUY261Cuo&feature=related
No. We get it from our paychecks, it takes a huge chunk out of them, and we have made the decision to forgo other treats in life so that we might eat healthy food, because it ends up making a difference, and it's damn tasty.
(Some) FReepers can be a very condescending lot.
My tongue-in-cheek article was more about the pretensions of liberals than the Whole Food store itself. I’m with you on the natural foods, been eating that way for years (and if you shop carefully, you can find a lot of wholesome foods at the regular stores for a lot less money).
I agree. But in the city you can’t grow everything. A small garden won’t cover a large family’s needs, but it’s fun for herbs and tomatoes.
It was actually in the Framingham area but I’m very familiar with the Bedford location. I also worked across the street from it (175 Great Road) at the time of 9/11. We must have crossed paths!
OK; I agree that I often feel that if the clerks I’ve befriended over the years knew how I voted, they’d overcharge me! But they are nice kids. I just don’t discuss politics with them.
The store where I shop is refreshing because the shoppers are very multi-everything. Families, elderly, all races, AND the young yuppies. But I’ve been to the store in West L.A. and seen my share of super-yupsters, and it is really sickening. Especially all the facelifts, and skinny 70-year-olds in leggings shopping next to the bubble-boobed young women that the 70 ladies’ husbands are sleeping with... Glad my store has a mixed clientele.
Oh, and I love TJ’s too. :)
"Let the great unwashed who would allow such pedestrian products into their homes shop at the Stop & Shop (or Wal-Mart). That seems to be the general attitude at the Whole Foods, anyhow." ~ sounds like the one with the attitude problem is you! I meet very pleasant people at Whole Foods. Glad you've decided not to shop there!
I’ve read on FR not too long ago that the owner of WF is a conservative. Can’t remember which particular issue it was (0thugga in general? Hellth Care???) but he is not a liberal.
I am a vegetarian who eats mostly (as much as I can afford cheaply) organic foods. Conservatives do not have to eat meat and/or junk food in order to have conservative values.
Get story telling, LOL.
As to some of the touchy replies you’ve generated, I have this for you:
“May those who love us, love us; and those who don’t love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping.”
Oops, GREAT story telling.
“When you’ve got a few extra bucks, you will treat yourself to a little something at Whole Foods.”
Exactly, only a dingdong would spend all of their money at WF. It’s a great place to pick up specialized items. The berry chantilly is a great reason to visit, though expensive.
Agree to all your points. Here in JAX there is only Whole Foods and small local store called Native Sun if you want to shop organic/all natural. Wal-mart has next to nothing for organics or all natural. The employees at Whole Foods are clean, decently dressed (as well as the customers), pleasant and smiling which is more than I can say for some of the less “pretentious” grocery stores.
I for one salute these capitalist entrepreneurs for providing a place to shop for irritating snobby "greener-than-thou" liberals. That means less of them in regular grocery stores. It also separates them from a lot of green they might otherwise donate to un-American causes.
Yes, it was Whole Foods CEO and founder, John Mackey.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
I was thinking about this healthfood business the other night - I mean actual food and not supplements. I’ve been to some health food stores where the produce looks shriveled and stunted - like something I might grow. And I’ve been to HF stores where the produce looks like it should be winning prizes at the state fair ... even though the HF store claims that artifical fertilizers, pesticides etc. have NEVER even been in the same zip code as their lettuce, tomatoes, squash etc.
Does anyone know if this is true? Has John Stossel or someone actually back tracked on some of these fruits and veggies in search of their provenance?
The reason I ask is if the HF suppliers are getting those kind of results without paying extra for fertilizers, pesticides etc. why would the big commercial growers ever bother with using fertilizers, pesticides etc.?
Something seems off. I mean I’m sure they could claim that every apple and potato has been bottle fed and raised by hand in a green house attached to the main house etc. and hence justify their higher prices but does anyone without a horse in the race actually know that?
And am I the only one who thinks that organic strawberries taste like their namesake - straw? I could be influenced by the taste/memory of the 5 acre strawberry patch we had when I was a kid but today’s organic versions are definitely off.
So typical and at times hilarious. Well done. I sometimes drop in when I’m driving through La Jolla (the only place I can go and see a movie without a car chase) to get a fresh sandwich or such for lunch. They do have good soup. I would use your story to populate the scene.
Exactly!
And when I compare costs at Whole Foods with other places, it is not that much more expensive. The meat quality is higher and so the amount of meat you need to buy is reduced because there is less waste. Great selections of under $10/bottle wine. Where the bill runs up is buying all the things that you cannot get elsewhere.
It is one of the few things in my life where I feel that i am actually engaged in a free market transaction, where I am free to make the purchase or refrain from making the purchase as I choose, and not as the government chooses, or as some rent seeking banking system bureaucrat chooses - extracting a fee for a service that I never wanted and would never choose to pay for.
You should get one of these for your car for the next time you go there:
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