Think "Office Space" is fiction? Read this NY Mag "insider" piece on getting hired at Trader Joe's.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

It’s not easy to enlist with Trader Joe’s. I dropped off an application that represented me as well qualified (college grad, extensive retail experience). Silence ensued. I called six times. On the seventh, a manager sighed and scheduled an interview so that I would stop calling. My interview took place in a citrus-smelling stockroom corner. “You’re lucky you got an interview,” said Gregory, a distractingly handsome manager, pointing to the weekly stack of 200 applications. “If you don’t hear from us in a week, well … that’s the breaks.” I didn’t hear in a week. So I called some more.

An important part of the Trader Joe’s experience is the mandatory three-hour “Captain’s Talk.” Captain Lance’s job is to keep the crew shipshape. Trader Joe’s is one of those companies where the culture pretends that the work is fun. Lance is a jovial, chubby, goateed guy, a dedicated and relentlessly wholesome company devotee. About a quarter of the staff fits this description. Lance lives 90 minutes away, in New Jersey, and has worked in other Trader Joe’s across the country. He is a spouter of state-of-the-art corporatespeak, like “kaizen.” Kaizen is supposedly Japanese for “one percent improvement each day.” Staffers seem to think it means helping others, or they deploy it sarcastically (“Let’s kaizen, guys!”).

Lance has a lot of hokeyness to catch the new hires up on. In the store’s nautical parlance, there are captains, first mates, second mates, merchants, novitiates, and crew members (better known to gay customers as “hot sailors”). Lance gabbed for a while about the “wow customer experience” and pointed at us. “Everyone is coming in because of you. They want to see you and you and you!”

The high point came when we each had to read aloud from a gooey company pamphlet called “Customer Experience: A Trader Joe’s Love Story.” Another new hire, a Pete Doherty look-alike in a black Johnny Thunders Born to Cry T-shirt, a black fedora, and black jeans, spoke in a flat monotone: “Without (customers), we’d be lonely, bored, and lovesick. Yes, we can build a beautifully elaborate cruise ship out of cases of pineapple, but if no one comes to buy any … we’re sunk.”

http://nymag.com/guides/money/2007/39958/index1.html

[sasquatch]

1. I'd like to die now

:scared:

[Sugar Smack]

6. Me too.

:cry: I applied there a week ago.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

16. Just show up wearing 15 or more pieces of flair and you'll do fine.

:evilgrin:

[Sugar Smack]

18. MY BROTHER was just teasing me about the "pieces of flair"

in my current job before he got on a plane to go back to San Fran. This was today. Weird. I think you have the best username ever, btw.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

19. Thanks!

:toast:

[grasswire]

2. I'm slightly less happy about the great stuff I get at TJ's now.

I love shopping there. Not because of the shtick or the employees, but because of the interesting, offbeat stuff and the cheese prices.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. Same here...

...they have a fresh...not frozen..."Pizza For One" that has mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and a couple of fresh basil leaves that you chop up and sprinkle on after it comes out of the oven. Their organic basmati rice also cooks up very well in my rice cooker. The store closest to my home is pure yuppie hell. I go in with a short list, get what I want, and get out. I'm sure for some it's a social event and a mating ritual all rolled into one, but for me it's a pizza and a bag of rice.

:toast:

[HughBeaumont]

4. Precisely why I'm retiring at age 60 or when I'm able. Whichever comes first.

Humans aren't meant to wake up at the asscrack of dawn and spend 12 to 14 hours a day away from their families, wearing uncomfortable clothes you otherwise wouldn't even think TWICE of buying (unless you were a Young Republican) to make money in a prison-grey fabric-walled cubicle with zero scenery besides your radiated blue desktop. Your golden years should be YOURS, not some goddamned retail company's. Corporate America is NOT entitled to cradle-to-grave wage-slavery.

And at least 98% of us don't have "Google jobs", where there's pool tables, pinball machines and health clubs.

We get 2 weeks of vacation if we're lucky and health care only after we pass a 6-month probationary period. We deal with nasally-voiced bosses with bad hygiene that make Bill Lumbergh look like a saint in comparison. We deal with mental abuse, guilt, depression; the constant fear and the voice in the back of your head that states "Is this going to be my last day here? Am I doing something wrong?".

Corporate America no longer works for the average stay-in-one-place Joe, and even less so now. It's beginning to look as if an MBA will no longer help a worker advance to any higher level of salary, but merely a requirement to their employability. An MBA. Just to remain employable. How did that happen? What's the point of HIGHER education if there's so little ROI from it?

As the years go by and more and more ladder-climber extroverted sociopath Repukes control the upper echelons of management, the chances of advancement simply to get ahead in life, God Forbid, just dwindle.

And yet, the powers that be do absolutely nothing at all to change it. They want things bad, but our bellies full. Once our bellies aren't full, they know shit's going to hit the fan, so they continue to dangle the carrot.

"Gee, you don't like what you do, why don't you CHANGE it?"

Really? Let me see if that works. I want to be a rock star. Oh wait. That, like any artistic-based career, depends on people liking you for your success. I can sure pay these bills on a crapshoot, can't I? Not only that, I'd need equipment. I'd need a band. I'd need equipment to record with. We're already up to a few thousand dollars and we haven't even started.

"Change it." And do WHAT? Go to school for four MORE years (because I have a money tree in the back yard, of course. Don't we all?), consume all my time doing reports, oral presentations and other assorted busywork? All so I can do some MORE boring-ass corporate slavery, where I'd STILL be coming to work in prison-grey walls, having the worst luck with bosses that you can stand to be around, nothing but rote busywork 94% of the time . . . etc, etc, etc. Only THIS time, I'd be starting at the bottom and staying there.

How long does one do this until we say "enough is enough"? Before we're age-discriminated out of the work-force?

Does corporate America have to be THIS BAD?

[Chovexani]

33. Preach on!

:applause: :yourock:

[baldguy]

5. I thought "Office Space" was a documentary?

I used to work at IniTech... at least I think I did, that part of my life is a blur...

[zabet]

12. Hee hee...me too.

I worked with a bunch of mechanical and chemical engineers.
A weird bunch to say the least.
True story...
When the corporate office mandated random drug testing, the
engineering division and middle management fought it tooth
and nail. They managed to hold it off for about a year. When
it was implemented, not a single random test was failed by
the technicians, it was middle management and engineering that
continually failed the drug tests.
I knew then, that book learnin' don't necessarily make you smarter.
They knew for months it was coming, as did the technicians. The
college degreed workers did not have enough common sense to stop
the druggin' in time but, the common laborers did. :silly:

[DS1]

7. "Everyone is coming in because of you."

Aha ha hha ahhah ahha hah


I go there now and then because I feel like something different in the juice aisle.

[kwassa]

8. What's so bad about this?

I've worked retail, this doesn't sound bad at all. At least they have a great product, and they provide benefits.

Retail jobs always have relatively lousy pay.

I did get great service at TJs the other day. A clerk went back into the warehouse to get an item I wanted, and appeared to be out-of-stock. I didn't get the surly attitude I get at the major grocery chain around here.

The art connection seems related to this one particular store, as Trader Joe's is everywhere, of course.

[supernova]

10. What's so bad about it

is the fake camaraderie and forced gaiety, and don't forget your 42 pieces of flare. :silly:

Call me a curmudgeon but when I go into a store, I don't want to be wined and dined and swept off my feet by The Continental. There is a decided ick factor here that does not work in favor of the businesses who do this.

I want to be treated respectfully, pleasantly and shown the things I'm interested in or left to browse on my own. Apparently that's too much to ask.

[kwassa]

11. welcome to many job places

is the fake camaraderie and forced gaiety, and don't forget your 42 pieces of flare.

Many businesses engage in this type of team-building, all through corporate America everywhere. Particularly those involved in service areas.

Call me a curmudgeon but when I go into a store, I don't want to be wined and dined and swept off my feet by The Continental. There is a decided ick factor here that does not work in favor of the businesses who do this.

Who does that? TJs doesn't.

I want to be treated respectfully, pleasantly and shown the things I'm interested in or left to browse on my own. Apparently that's too much to ask.

Actually, this is exactly how Trader Joe's operates.

[supernova]

15. I'll be frank

Many businesses engage in this type of team-building, all through corporate America everywhere. Particularly those involved in service areas.

I'm well aware of that. I've worked in the Fortune 50 for 20 years. I'm also aware that I'm in the minority on this issue. However, this kind of atmosphere breeds incredible amounts of (completely unnecessary, IMO) stress. I'm almost totally introverted and forced smiles and overly cheerful interactions do become painful rather than fun for me. And no, I don't think inauthentic displays of friendliness replace genuinely warm interaction. That takes time.

Being introverted, I find that some extroverted employees really creep me out of they are too familiar too soon. I walked into a new furniture store once and had a salesman from off to the side say "So, how was church this morning?" :wtf: I also don't want to be asked about my family or any other personal topics. I prefer to keep it strictly professional. It's like when Dino knocked down Fred every afternoon after work. That's the way it feels to me. It removes the fun of shopping to me when I get a whiff of the inauthentic emotions. And yes, I can smell them a mile away.

I realize it is a totally subjective thing. Every place is different and I'm willing to try anyplace once or twice. But there are some places I do not shop because I find the overly friendliness just frightening rather than welcoming. :P

All I'm saying is be aware that not every likes to be "chummy" the first five seconds you meet someone.

[Chovexani]

26. Consider it a minority of two

I got out of retail as fast as I could for that very reason. I am a low key kind of person with strangers, I can make small talk with the best of them if I have to but I'm just not that outgoing.

The forced comraderie with co-workers especially kills me. I've been a social misfit for most of my life and never have anything in common with my co-workers unless they're fannish types.

...yeah, I'm pretty much a Randal, unless I'm stuck with a group of Randals, and then I turn into a Dante (mostly because I have zero tolerance for incompetence).

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. Office Space is way too real

Waaaay too real.

I actually did have a boss who started everything off with "Ummm....yeah...." and ended it with "That would be greeeatt. Thaaaanks."

[HughBeaumont]

14. My boss . . .

. . . imagine the worst qualities of Milton Waddams, the look and voice of Bob Porter (the short squat Bob) and the buck-passing, micromanaging, MBA-ready fakeness of Bill Lumbergh combined into one loathsome individual.

The good news is that I'm getting a new one starting Jan 1!!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

17. I'm self-employed, BUT...I had a client who said "Ummm....yeah...." in every third sentence.

She makes custom gift baskets. I almost expect to find Earl Grey tea, English biscuits, assorted jams and a frigging body part in one of them.

[MorningGlow]

13. Tell me something about retail that I haven't lived

I worked at Borders 15 years ago, and it was exactly like the retail hell described in this article, but with Shakespeare instead of salsa. 'Twas always thus, and 'twill always be the same: Overeducated twentysomethings toiling in retail till they get a toehold in their field.

Sucks, yeah, but you know what? My time at Borders was also pretty freakin' fun, because all the employees were in the same boat. And we became family, knew way too much about each other's lives, dated each other way too much, and were just plain ol' way too insular.

Sure it gets old after a while, and then it's time to cut the cord and go out into the big lonely world (and creep back to the store to try to maintain your relationships till you grow a spine and force yourself to move on).

Know what else? I'd recommend that phase of life to any twentysomething. In a heartbeat. It's a rite of passage--and makes for great nostalgia farther down the line. Just don't get stuck there for life.

[Chovexani]

20. That goddamn Fish video

Those in service know what I'm talking about. :argh:

[Sugar Smack]

22. OMG!!! Holy shit! YOU saw that too??

Those guys in that fish market, on crack, throwing fish at each other and calling it "fun"?:wow:

[JVS]

24. Sounds familiar, but don't know why. I don't recall having worked a job that showed it to me

[Sugar Smack]

31. You may have blocked it out, it was so awful.

The employees at that particular franchise kept spouting about "fun" and "happy". They like their happiness, goshen to georgia, they do. It MAY have also been staged. :wow:

[JVS]

32. I think this shit actually made it to TV at some point

[Chovexani]

25. I've seen it twice!

AND THE SEQUEL! :puke:

It seems to be mandatory torture for the call centers out here. :scared:

[Sugar Smack]

27. THE SEQUEL???

Where their FUN & HAPPINESS pays off? I haven't seen that one yet (Thank God) but I suspect it's not as believable as the first. Where their insanity leads them to 7 dollars an hour and a perpetual odor of raw seafood. OMG. And I thought I was the only one here...I'm sorry, Chovexanni. :cry: :grouphug: :yourock:

[Chovexani]

28. It's boring as hell

Not as unintentionally funny as the first one. There's less forced wacky hijinx and more Serious Business about committment to the customer.

[JVS]

29. How about this sequel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oga_DBOP1Y

[Sugar Smack]

30. Oooh, good. Maybe the third'll be the new

"Jesus Camp". I haven't seen it, but from what I've heard, it could be franchised. Let's all watch out for each other, okay? :tinfoilhat: :pals: :yourock:

[Quantess]

21. I love Trader Joes and I don't really care if some of their stores are run like this.

Pretty sure the Home Depot is worse, when it comes to corny motivational schtick.

[JVS]

23. poor bastards

[krispos42]

34. Ah, the joys of the manufacturing job

No dress code except for long pants, steeltoes, and safety glasses. No customers to deal with. No false emotions to radiate. If the machine breaks, you call it a fucking piece of shit, tell your boss the fucking piece of shit broke again, and go and fix it. Your meals and breaks are not interrupted by customer surges, and are regular as clockwork. You can play whatever you want to on the radio in your area.

And the pay is decent, too. Or at least mine is.

And no 'flair'. :-)

[philosophie_en_rose]

35. I like Trader Joe's, but I hate fakey fake fakeness.

Seriously, I don't go to the store to socialize. I don't think this program is unusual, but I think it's disingenuous to pretend customers come for the psycho 'happy' employees.

Be pleasant, but for goodness sakes don't scare me with your theatrics. If I wanted to interact with blankly happy people, I'd take a personality test or open the door to missionaries.