Yesterday was my fourth day at Trader Joe’s. Yes, I officially now work in a grocery store. The Union Square store is absolutely crazy. It’s the only location in Manhattan and people flock. I tell you, when the store first opened, there was consistently a 20-minute wait before you were even able to enter the store. And once inside, the register line occupied the entire perimeter of the store. Things may look a bit calmer nowadays, but I’ve been told that sales have not dropped but that they’ve (…or I guess now “we’ve") gotten better at handling the crowds. It’s not uncommon to have to wait in line for thirty minutes in order to pay for your food.
There is simply no way to keep the shelves stocked. The moment that an item gets re-stocked, the vultures swarm and return the shelves to their barren, third-world condition. Every day, the store receives four trucks with a fleet of 30 – 70 employees (on the floor at any given moment) to unload and stock. And the amazing thing is that the customers don’t care. They have such a passionate loyalty to the products and the company that they are willing to overlook the mayhem.
Yesterday, the situation was exacerbated by the malfunctioning elevator. The first level of the store is for the public. The second level is where you’ll find the stock room, fridge, and freezer. So naturally, the contents of all four trucks, which arrived yesterday, had to be manually hoisted up a flight of stairs. That’s right: bananas, milk, bottled water, you name it. Regardless of how heavy it was, whatever was unable to find a home on the floor, had to find its way upstairs with no tool other than sheer human vigor. It took the repair men more than eight hours to get us back up and running.
Which brings me to my next point. When the store was designed, it was obviously not intended to handle this type of capacity. Who knew? Everything is too small. When you first enter the stock area, you find boxes of varying shapes and sizes lining every inch of available cubic space: the stairwell, the hallway…it’s even common to find the sidewalk, in front of the store, stacked high with massive pallets of food waiting to be broken down. Even the employee break room is too small. The store’s 200 employees have to share two tables, ten chairs, one toilet, one urinal, (and I don’t know what’s in the women’s bathroom.)
Speaking of bathroom…yesterday, some little Asian girl shit her pants. As we were trying to lug heavy boxes up the flight of stairs, using the method of a human assembly line, a visibly shaken six-year-old joined the frozen broccoli in the ascent to the second level. It wasn’t until later that we found big pieces of poop in the loading area. I guess it had fallen right through the leg of her pants.
My schedule, these days, is absolutely ludicrous. I’m working about 32 hours per week at Trader Joe’s in addition to teaching about ten classes. This week, I was awake before 5am to teach on both Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I have to be at TJ’s to start my shift at 5am. All of that surrounds my birthday on Friday, which I’m obviously going to have no time to celebrate. Wednesday is going to be a kicker: I work at Trader Joe's from 5am to noon. Then I take a class at Flatiron. (I actually requested to leave an hour early in order to take class. Yoga is my saving grace after being on my feet, lifting, and climbing stairs for eight hours.) After that, I look forward to an hour and a half commute (each way) to teach two classes in Connecticut. I won’t return home until after 10pm. I’ll be exhausted (and hopefully be able to fall asleep immediately because I have to start the whole thing over again at 5am the next day.)
But the people who work there are all kind of amazing. This is the guy who trained me on Thursday. He is one of three beat-boxing flutists in the world. I literally have no idea how he uses his mouth to create a beat and play the flute simultaneously. Seriously.