Why The Staff Love Trader Joe’s (and Each Other)

In an article entitled ‘the Supermarket of the Struggling Artist’ in New York magazine, Arianne Cohen gets a job at Trader Joe’s in NY to join all the other aspiring Filmmakers, actors, fashion students and marial artists. She explains why you get a different attitude with the store clerks at Trader Joes:

Vinny tells me to come at midnight for a tasting party. “You’re held to a higher standard here. Unlike at Shop Rite, you need to tell customers about their food.”

I arrive to find 45 employees gathered around fold-up tables along the meat wall. Ten crew members from the morning shift are here, along with dozens of artists of indeterminate art—only the fashion graduates are discernible, in buttoned cardigans and tank tops created from Trader Joe’s T-shirts. It’s a cliquey crowd, not unlike high school, but devoid of Queen Bee girls and King Jock guys. It seems odd to me that such a smart, creative group would come back at midnight by choice. Melody Louisdhon, a bubbly girl I’ve seen many times, stands giggling in the corner, despite the fact that she no longer works here. She came because, for these kids, the city can be a hostile place. It’s a cabless lifestyle of fearing the mailbox, and college friends who have moved on to jobs in their fields and who don’t understand.

The tasting features friends who understand and free grub. And sex. The crew can seem like an ongoing soap opera of sleeping around. Much of the sex is born out of the job: Crew members are constantly mobile, able to strategically station themselves alongside whomever they’d like. Once the store empties at night, I watched flirting extend to groping. After work, they frequent Beauty Bar down the street and sometimes go home together. It’s the only activity they can afford.

The tasting buzzes with last night’s gossip, something about a crew member sleeping with his girlfriend’s roommate. He’s a “Trader Joe Ho,” a term mainly reserved for guys, who see far more action than you’d expect for impoverished grocery workers.

How Trader Joe’s Kept Its Customers Coming Back - Money 2007 — New York Magazine