Soy Rage: The Dark Secret of Trader Joes

Dear Asshole In Line At Trader Joe's:

First of all, you smell, and I wouldn’t have gotten in line behind you in the first place if it wasn’t the most convenient checkout near the exit. Then, when I asked you to hold my place for a second so that I could grab an Orangina which was around six feet away and you said, “Hold your place? What does that mean? I don’t think so,” I noticed that your breath smelled, too. Also? Get a decent haircut.

Love,
Sweatpantsmom

p.s. Your goatee is stupid.
p.s.s. So is your earring.

As you can see, I had another bad encounter today at Trader Joe's.

The last one was a few weeks ago, when I was waiting for a parking space and a woman pulled up behind me, got out of her car and started yelling at me to "get going." My girls were in the car so I didn’t get a chance to tell her to get her wrinkly, pale ass back into her Mercedes, but I wanted to. Then I wanted to grab her by the hair, swing her around a few times and throw her so far she’d have to have the Space Station retrieve her dehydrated, lifeless body. When I got out of my car a guy who had witnessed the whole thing shook his head and said, “What is it about Trader Joe's that brings out the worst in people?” I thought he was reading my mind, but really he was just talking about that awful woman.

It’s a mystery I’ve been pondering lately. Why does Trader Joe's, which by all appearances attracts a fairly upscale, socially conscious, tree-hugging, organic-loving clientele, have more than its fair share of aggressive, self-involved jerks? It’s not just based on my experiences – our local Trader Joe's had to hire a security guard to watch over its parking lot because of the number of altercations between soccer moms and studio production assistants. I couldn’t believe they hired him for that reason – surely it was because someone was caught making off with cases of $2 wine, or they had too many incidents of Fair Trade French Roast being snuck out under coats. But the manager confirmed that they had to bring in the big guns after a series of fist fights that had taken place between the Range Rover and station wagon crowd.

I even witnessed an incident around a year ago where a guy chased a woman into the store because he swore she rammed a shopping cart into his Prius after she thought he had stolen her parking spot (I’m sure he did.) He was quickly surrounded near the organic vine-ripened tomato display by a cluster of cashiers in Hawaiian shirts and escorted out.

And it’s not just at my local store – I’ve heard similar incidents from people in other cities, although one friend insists that the crowd at Whole Foods is even nastier. And I have to admit leaving that store in a boiling rage more than a few times when I had to pay eighty dollars for a single organic potato and a loaf of sprouting rye bread.

In contrast, my local Ralphs supermarket has no such problems. I’ve never been yelled at once in the six years I’ve been going there (although my husband insists it’s because everyone’s too drunk to raise their voice.) Sure, most of the people shopping there are missing half their teeth and are wearing their bathrobes, but I’ve had people save my place in line and even let me get in front of them when I’ve only had a couple of items. I’ve helped old ladies sort out their coupons, and had strangers offer to lift heavy cases of water into my van. Okay, so their selection of organic cheese is marginal at best and I once found a three-months expired pack of cold cuts in the deli section, but I’m telling you these are nice people.

Honestly, I’m beginning to think there’s some sort of connection between excess amounts of soy milk and asshole behavior. Or maybe there’s some link between consuming too few preservatives and a tendency to act like you own the whole fucking planet. Are the people who shop at Trader Joe's so tired and worn down from trying to save the world all day, that by the time they get around to buying their muesli it’s just too much to ask to be civil?

I’d like to collect stories from people who’ve had similar encounters in Trader Joe's, send them to a social anthropologist somewhere and have them do complete scientific study. You’ve heard of Roid Rage, could this be a similar affliction, Soy Rage?

Stay tuned while I get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, I'm taking a crowbar when I go over to Trader Joe's to pick up my free-range chicken, just in case.

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tags: trader joes | trader joes parking lot | soy rage

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