Posted on 07/25/2011 1:52:36 PM PDT by pabianice
Late Friday afternoon, an employee of the Whole Foods Market in Toronto sent this epic resignation letter to the entire company. It's an alternatingly amusing, enlightening, and occasionally infuriating read — but a good read, nonetheless.
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Dear Whole Foods Market,
My experience at Whole Foods was like an increasingly sped up fall down a really long hill. That got rockier with every metre. And eventually, just really spiky ... With fire, acid and Nickleback music. I was hired about five or six years ago. I appreciated and respected what the company said it's philosophies were at that time. The "core values" essentially. However, it didn't take long to realize what complete and utter bullshit they are:
Oh, you don't recycle properly? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
Oh, you throw out enough food to feed a lot of hungry university students. (Caring about our communities and our environment)
Oh, you're asking me to put latex gloves on the sales floor so customers can throw a pair out for every handful of gummy bears they take? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
Oh, you've installed massive television screens all over the store, sucking up energy and polluting the environment with tacky advertisements. (Caring about our communities and our environment, Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
Oh, you waste an absurd amount of energy, ink and paper in your offices for useless bureaucratic nonsense. (Caring about our communities and our environment, Supporting team member happiness and excellence, )
Oh, you just write off 10-20% of the product that you buy for your bulk department because the bins look nice. (Caring about our communities and our environment).
Oh, you sometimes intentionally order too much just to guarantee a full shelf, knowing full well the product will most likely be thrown out? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
Oh, you don't actually audit or evaluate each product you sell? (Caring about our communities and our environment, We sell the highest quality natural and organic products available)
Oh, you force team members to come in to work, on their day off, once a month, at 7 in the morning, knowing a lot of them live an hour away and the TTC isn't completely running that early in the morning and then force feed them useless updates on the company and embarrassingly artificial pep talks ([Redacted] once compared Whole Foods Market to religion... had to throw that in there. That was definitely a "Did she really just say that moment.")? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence, Caring about our communities and our environment)/
Oh, you buy poorly made, ugly t-shirts for your employees that will just be thrown in the trash and pretend they're gifts when they're really just advertising tools? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence, Caring about our communities and our environment)
Oh, the food here is really quite awful on average? Almost everything that prepared foods makes is terrible. The pizza used to be pretty good but the slices have shrunk, the toppings are sparser and it's usually extremely overcooked. The sandwiches are the stuff of nightmares. (It's amazing what advertising can make people think. It can even trick their senses.) (We sell the highest quality natural and organic products available)
Oh, you let some customers abuse your employees and then actually reward the customers for their behaviour and then trample on the integrity and honour of your abused employees? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
Oh, you practice discrimination by offering "healthier" employees better discounts? And you think having different rules for new smoker employees versus old smoker employees is a good idea? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
Oh, you purchase products from Israel (Or any distant country) if they're slightly cheaper than local alternatives? (Caring about our communities and our environment)
Oh, you've somehow created the worst computer program I've ever used to run your entire buying system? IRMA is some Windows 95 era stuff, guys. I could design a significantly better interface in 30 minutes on a pad of paper. I know several students who could create a superior program in their spare time. Was someone actually hired to create that thing? Was it the Realplayer dudes? Even Captain Picard couldn't facepalm hard enough to express the amount of failure in that... that, thing... (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
Oh, you push employees into greater responsibilities without compensation? Often having them essentially do all the work of a higher position without the pay? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence) Oh, you ambush employee's [sic] using two managers when you want to write someone up? No warning. No representation. All reasons and excuses fall on deaf ears. (Supporting team member happiness and excellence) Oh, you'd rather attempt to create some sort of fake "culture" with signs and forced meeting than let it happen naturally by letting employees socialize lightly as they work? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
Oh, you like to manage "systems" instead of people? You don't hold critical thinking and discretion in high regard? You encourage blindly following rules? I.e., no recourse in challenging write ups. Employees given cold shoulder when they attempt anything like this. (Supporting team member happiness and excellence) Oh, you want us to politely call and let you know if we'll be late... but you'll still write us up when we arrive? Kind of a dick move, guys. (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
Oh, you actually think being 20 minutes late matters? You know Whole Foods Market is just a grocery store, right? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence) Oh, you don't believe inflation exists? Cost of living raises aren't given here? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)
I notice a trend... Honestly, I could go on and on and fill out the details but since most people will just dismiss this email I should probably not put too much effort into it. I should have kept a blog…
Now the employees have lost a lot of their former power and the store is being sucked into some centralized monster. Quality is being thrown out in favour of the people at the top having to do a little less work. Competition is being destroyed and you're not even pushing that many healthy products. Every second endcap is potato chips or pop or some sort of salt filled snack (Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education). A lot of the stuff in Whole Body doesn't even work or has absolutely no credible evidence to back any claims up. You're kind a faux hippy Wal-Mart now. Great. Job.
One wonders how many times she/it was 20 minutes late.
Is she related to this genius?
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/5292946/brilliant-woman-solves-all-of-californias-problems
“Oh, you actually think being 20 minutes late matters?”
I agree—that is absolutely the best line out of the piece. This guy is totally unemployable.
I dislike shopping there and only go there occasionally when there is something I can’t find anywhere else. The customers tend to be rude and self absorbed and deadly with their carts. We have something here called Fresh Market with similar stuff altho more gourmet things and then Publix has a Greenwise Market with even more similar stuff but a more cordial customer base (and they often carry real stuff in addition so that I can get things Whole Foods doesn’t carry). In Texas they have a place I used to go to when I would visit in Dallas called Central Market, but they don’t have them here.
OK, worked at Whole Foods for 5 plus years. Did she get promoted after all that time? Did she make a living? Apparently so to work there for that length of time. Now that she’s quit, good luck in finding another job. I’ve heard McDonalds is hiring.
Waaaaaanh! Gee, really, it’s just a grocery store? And your first clue was ... the groceries? The check-out lane? The price tags?
Capitalism rears its ugly head; another delusion libbie bites the dust.
The employees at Whole Foods and Green Life are bitter leftists who feel that they deserve money, respect, and success in life with their English/Philosophy/Women’s Studies/Sustainability Studies/etc degrees. The letter writer says that management sides with the customer over the employee but 1.) I have never seen that happen and 2.) If it did happen, then the employee did something so over the top that management could not ignore it. They hold the customers in contempt and generally believe they are of much less intelligence than their worthless graduate degree selves.
I do not shop regularly at these stores but have been to them with my sister on occasion. The employees really do hold their customers in contempt.
Reminds me of the 1970’s punk band “Dead Kennedy’s”
This twit needs a “Holiday in Cambodia”
Poor girl, I can’t imagine how uncomfortable those handcuffs and chain’s are.
I’m surprised slavery didn’t come up.
This reads like a stupid valley girl wrote this...
I find Whole Foods to be a Science Fiction Alternative Universe experience (except for the wine section). Both the workers and the shoppers.
That's gonna really cramp her style when all those people she mentioned by name sue her for character defamation. The only thing that would make this any funnier is if she'd follow up with a life-long blog detailing every job interview she will fail for the rest of her life.
Work flows to the competent. In some categories, some workers can be 10x more productive than others (software).
Not doubting you, but my experience at the WF in my area is the opposite.
WF is a customer of ours...they are the customer you want to fire. They’re unorganized, wasteful and STILL drive high margins and business because well-meaning idiots pay HUGE prices for the “culture.”
I love a fun Opus.
Oh, when is oh enough already.
I laugh at the mostly young, politically zombie-like Liberals that frequent in droves two of the Whole Foods stores I know of in Manhattan;
believing as they do that shopping in Whole Foods is part of their own social-political agenda,
paying outrageous prices on mom & dads dime (most of them are students),
getting no better quality than what can be found in any number of places around town,
and patronizing Whole Foods in such numbers that I have quit shopping there because the size of the crowds is too often just totally insane.
Maybe as the resignation from the former “believer” gets circulated, those numbers will decline.
Am I “against” Whole Foods?
Not at all.
If there is one thing good which I do find some agreement on, with the person who resigned - though not in a way she appreciates I’m sure, it’s that this former convert to the political-religion of “Whole Foods” discovered that Whole Foods, the grocery store company, is just a business after all. That’s a good thing.
Now excuse me, I live in the east, and right now I need to go beat the slaves.
It's an unlikely business model but it appears to work on a lot of upper middle-class women and birkenstock-wearing men.
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