Feb 1
An Open Letter From the Trader Joe’s Sample Station
By Marnie Sloan
Dear Valued Trader Joe’s Patrons…If That’s What You Traitors Can Call Yourself,
It’s me, the Trader Joe’s sample stand. You remember me, right? You used to cruise past the bruised bananas and manipulative displays and make a beeline right for me. I knew I was something when people began passing by the all-things-pumpkin menagerie without so much as a passing glance. You needed me like an addict needs crack. I could see it in your determined, if not a little bit crazy, eyes, each of you trying to pretend you didn’t see the person who was clearly in front of you. “Oh, were you here first?” you’d ask, feigning innocence, with a look that said, “I may be vegan, but I will cut a bitch.” Because that’s what fatal attraction looks like, and I was here for it. You’d happily sip your tepid coffee in the tiny paper cup as the employee subjected to inane small talk all day faked their way through explaining to you what today’s concoction was.
“Oh! Lentils and black beans over brown rice?” you’d say while eating that thing as though you were Donald Trump eating a piece of chocolate cake. “I’ll just grab two more…for the kids,” you’d mumble as you headed over to the freezer, and I always admired that you said that even though you were clearly shopping alone. You magnificently bold liar, you.
Like a zombie who’s caught the scent of where the other zombies were going, you’d head straight over to my freezer and stand, where you’d grab the lentils, black beans, and brown rice, like a good little Trader Joe’s soldier. If you weren’t catatonic, you’d realize that no one in your family is going to eat that shit and will, in fact, wonder what you were on while you were shopping that made you think this was a good idea.
“No chocolate hummus?” one will ask.
“And what about the chocolate-covered graham crackers?” the other will opine.
“Honey, you did get Italian-style meatballs and spicy marinara?” your husband asks, looking concerned.
“I…I don’t know what happened,” you stammer. “I even had a list.”
These days, I lay abandoned, covered in products that should have never been made in the first place (I’m talking to you, mini white and dark chocolates covered in mini gummy bears). No one even looks my way. I see you walk by me, heading straight towards the Persian cucumbers like I don’t even exist. And you all wear face coverings now, just below the nose, so I suppose that’s where they go. Some of you smize at each other, but you mostly just go about your business or grumble with our employees about the supply chain issues. “Give me my cauliflower gnocchi and dark chocolate peanut butter cups or give me death!”
“What about me?” I ask. “When will the madness end so I can call you in like the siren I was born to be?” While I await my destiny, I will take small pleasure in the fact that my bathroom proximity is no longer subjected to your lentils and coffee intestinal bombs.
