Fresh Produce... Always...

When I started the next part of this book. I was excited. 

Part II of Tracie McMillan's book, The American Way of Eating focused on her time at two Wal-Mart locations, including one near Kalamazoo. This chapter was loaded with incredibly interesting information about not only Wal-Mart but food deserts and the history of the American supermarket.

Now, I was excited because, as you can tell from my previous post, I'm still a little bit sore over my seasonal stint with the retail giant. 

Okay, I'm still VERY sore

But nonetheless, I was expecting an epic confrontation between her and a manager where she dramatically revealed her identity and revealed that she was going to expose the corruption that has been going on at Wal-Mart for ages…

Nope.

The passage had a lot of research jargon, figures and fancy words that I probably knew half of in some places… and then she’d come back and continue talking about her experience.
However, despite all the technical mumbo-jumbo, I really appreciated how casually she pointed out the serious problems that are within the store’s regulations.
Finding BIRDS residing in the produce department is one thing, but having a manager turn the other cheek is unacceptable and sickening.

She also mentioned the store’s decision to hire two part-time employees versus hiring one full-time employee. According to one of her managers, the company doesn’t like hiring full time employees, leading me to believe that it’s probably cheaper for them to pay part-time employees. 

Also, there was a part in the book where her manager pulled her aside to tell her she was working too much, and went over the allotted hours and tells her to take the following day off so she doesn’t use anymore hours.

When I worked at Wal-Mart, this was a constant occurrence and almost served as a fear among upper-level management that too many hours were being used up and people needed to take longer breaks or take a day off.

I also found it interesting that she mentioned how the old items were pushed to the back and the new ones be put up in the front to give the shelves a look of abundance. This is called, Zoning, which I did on a regular basis as an associate in toys.
Though my situation was different. The items I zoned were not perishable, however McMillian mentions that they were treated similarly because of the preservatives used in meats.

Trying to imagine myself back in toys, I would zone the board games and notice a minor film of dust collecting on it.
Working in grocery, hypothetically, I would pick up a perfect pound of ground chuck and dust the slight film off dust off of it.

It’s disturbing that this is the way that our food is being preserved now… and God knows it isn’t good for our health.