The Great American Video Game

“Do you have any debts?”

In late 2019, I was presented with a rare and exciting opportunity. At the time I was working for Trader Joe’s. It was my first grocery store job after nearly ten years of working in restaurants. Some small, hopeful part of myself thought that the change in post and pace might refresh me after so many years as a slave to knives and ovens. Restaurant work is thankless, fast-paced, and difficult. It wears down the body, saddles many people with alcoholism or drug addiction, and for me, exacerbated my worsening depression to dangerous levels. When I secured the job at Trader Joe’s I was elated — here was something that, while not special, was different.

My time at the grocery store — a small stint of only a few months — was lonely, frustrating, and slow. While it was refreshing to not have the pressure of tickets and prep sweating down my neck, the job was bloated with incompetence, a lack of clarity, and uninspired repetition. Despite believing that the work might save me some physical sacrifice, my knees suffered more in those few months than they ever did working kitchen lines. Worst of all, despite being organized as a “top-down” format that put the workers first, the corporate design and management of Trader Joe’s is appalling. Trader Joe’s is infamously anti-union, creating a sort of “union illusion” within their stores…