one thing i highly recommend doing is reading arianne cohen’s excellent investigative piece on working at trader joe’s in this week’s ny mag. i think it perfectly captures what’s going on in nyc now, which is that young creatives have nowhere to go (in rent-paying terms) but organic, discount chain groceries. Thankfully those places embrace their quirky employees and make them feel like part of some bohemian supercrew. i was just in the TJ’s wine shop this weekend to buy some cases of 2 buck chuck (class act), and the guy loading up my wine onto a dolly actually put down the cases, broke into “billie jean”, and got a few of his cohorts to start an impromptu dance party. part of me thought, total awesomeness. where can i sign up? and then i realized that i had a job a lot like this at 16, working at roly poly, and that my 24-year old self was thinking of scanning foodstuffs again. telling.
