Typical Day
Natalie Urall—Nat, for short—wakes up at 6:50AM. Going into the kitchen of her tiny apartment, Nat fixes herself breakfast: organic muesli and dried banana chips (bought on a surreptitious trip to Trader Joe's) with Greek yogurt. Nat feels guilty every time she walks into the Trader Joe's across town, but she has no choice; she can't afford to buy most of her groceries at the Green Foods where she works.
Speaking of which, Nat heads to Green Foods, arriving at 7:30AM. She's wearing her basic white shirt and slacks and has her nametag pinned to her shirt—good to go. In the half-hour before the store opens, Nat surveys the aisle to make sure everything's set up and stocked for the day, then supervises the delivery of organic milk, cheeses, and other perishables.
Ten minutes before the store is set to open, Nat calls the employees into a "team huddle," as the company calls it. According to company policy, Nat must also be known as the team leader, not the manager.
Nat finishes up the morning news and assignments, then claps one of the store employees, a cake decorator, on the back. She glares back; Nat remembers her asking for a raise two months ago, and she couldn't give it to her.
Nat adjourns the meeting as she always does, by having everyone recite the motto in unison. They love that. Nat grins like a lunatic. When she was a clerk, she hated team huddles. Now she does her best to keep the momentum and energy up, but sometimes she has to really fake it.
After the huddle, Nat heads to her office to do some administrative work. She doesn't like to spend much time in the office, preferring instead the time spent on the floor supervising employees and interacting with customers. But some days accounting or inventory has to be dealt with, or she has to compile the weekly assessments that go to the regional manager—which is what she's doing now.
Before heading back out to the floor, Nat eats the lunch she brought from home: lentil soup, reheated in the kitchen microwave; a peach, organic because she knows peaches are on the crazy-amounts-of-pesticides list; and half of a toasted ham and cheese sandwich.
By 2:00PM, Nat is back on the floor, chatting with some of the guys from the deli counter.
"Hey, boss," Dale says.
"Hey now, what did I tell you about that word "boss"? You don't have to say that. I'm just Nat."
"Right, of course," Dale says with a grin. He continues to slice the deli meat. Roast beef, it looks like. Organic, grass fed, totally natural, just the way Green Foods markets itself. Though, if anyone asked, Nat would explain that the industry term "natural" doesn't mean that much anymore—practically anything can be "natural."
Just yesterday, an elderly customer was asking for insight on which type of banana to buy. Nat steered her to a sign describing Green Foods' new "Responsibly Grown" scale, devised precisely to solve those problems.
Instead of relying solely on words like "organic" or "natural," which describe the product itself but not how it was grown, Green Foods adopted new language of "Good, Better, or Best." Nat's working hard to make sure all store items are rated by the end of the year.
Leaving Dale to his meat slicing, Nat wanders over to the ladies working behind the bakery counter. Today, they're giving out samples of some variety of muffin that looks a little odd. Nat tries a piece. She considers it her duty as team leader to know and be able to describe all the products and items in the store. At least, that's how she rationalizes all the little sampling she does, including this honey-glazed organic spinach and flaxmilk muffin.
After returning to the computer for a while to go over the inventory lists, Nat takes another snack and smoke break around 5:00PM. No one on the team or in upper management knows she smokes—it doesn't fit the image of the company. And Green Foods, like all health stores, is all about its image. Still, she's been trying to quit, and hopefully will soon.
Nat leaves the store shortly after 7:00PM, handing over the final two hours of its management to Ryan, the Junior Team Leader. She'll continue to do some work at home later in the night (who would've thought keeping a 38,000 square foot store stocked with food is hugely time consuming?), but she prefers being home for dinner.
On rare occasions she needs to go back in, like that time Ryan caught a kid stealing trail mix, or that other time a union rep showed up at the store.
Tonight, however, there are no emergencies and she eats dinner with her family. She's in bed by 10:00PM and only wakes up once—to sneak a few spoonfuls of an organic, soy-based dulce de leche ice cream. What? She's only human. And it is organic.