As many of you may know, I have a problem with Whole Foods. I’m all in favor of natural foods sold at exorbitant prices. But I have a real problem paying these prices when the workers who sell me these expensive goods are poorly compensated. At Whole Foods, staff members are paid so badly that recently one of them was fired for “stealing” a tuna sandwich out of the trash. This is in addition to the idiot libertarian CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, and his constant annoying proclamations. Most recently, he corrected an earlier statement that Obamacare was socialism by saying that it was really fascism.
(This is really aggravating to me. Because they are CEOs, people like Mackey get a lot of press when they make statements about economics. But they are almost to a man extremely ignorant. In fact, they are also usually just plain stupid. We are supposed to listen to them because they are successful in business. But anyone paying attention should have noticed by now that it doesn’t work that way. Their success in business is as much a function of luck as anything. They show with their proclamations that they would have been hopeless had they gone into any other field. But as a society, we continue to look up to these fools and there doesn’t seem to be any level of foolishness that will convince us that they aren’t worth listening to.)
As a result of all this, I have made a decision to not shop at Whole Foods. This is very difficult. Because of my lifestyle, shopping at Whole Foods is extremely convenient. It is often very hard not to dash inside to pick something up. But I’ve managed to avoid that. Almost completely. There is just that bagel exception. Occasionally, I have bought bagels there. I rationalized it because unlike everything else in the store, bagels are a decent deal. They are only 99¢ each, for a pretty good bagel. Now, it’s true that I can get a better bagel for only 89¢ at the local health food store. But I’m not near it very often, so Whole Foods has gotten some of my business on this one product.
That all changed today. I wanted a couple of bagels and I was close to Whole Foods, so I ran in. And the price is now $1.50—a full 70% more than the locally owned health food store where the bagels are better. Well, that’s it! There is no longer a bagel exception. The new price is ridiculous but beyond that, what’s with the more than 50% increase in price? Regardless, that’s a high enough price that I will either go without or go to the local health food store.
My recommendation to all of you is to avoid Whole Foods if at all possible. And definitely stay away from the bagels.
I’ve given up on finding a decent bagel. That was the best thing about living in New York. There are little shops that sell their own bagels, and sell so many of them that they’re fresh. You can get wonderful, diverse food here, but quality bagels have eluded me. At least nothing anywhere near my bus routes. (Most American bread products suck, pretty much anywhere you go. But we did bequeath to the world eight thousand perfections of the snacky chip.)
A bagel’s a tricky thing to make right. If you cram it full of preservatives, it tastes rubbery. If you don’t, but they’re not fresh (within a few hours, at most), they solidify into hockey pucks. You can make your own, and they taste fabulous, but it’s really an extensive process, and again they get stale quickly.
Stick with your Whole Foods boycott; they’re swine. But I can’t blame anyone for wanting a decent, convenient bagel now and then . .
@JMF – Finding a good bagel is hard. Here in my home town, we used to have the Grateful Bagel, but it is gone. Down in SF and the south bay, they have a small chain called House of Bagels that is great. What I now do is buy a bunch when I can, cut them up and freeze them. It isn’t great, but it works.
The problem is that there are two kinds of bagel like products at the grocery store. There are, as you say, the rubbery things that at least are bagels, even though they are tasteless. And then there are these things that are simply bread baked in the shape of a bagel. I don’t know who they are trying to fool.
If the Old Testament God exists, He is pissed off about this. Forget the fags, God hates fake bagels. I wouldn’t be surprised if He allowed 9/11 because of this and the spread of Noah’s Bagels.