Trader Joe's and Communist Poland

I love Trader Joe’s.  I love how your checker is either a super hot young person who hasn’t gotten a hair cut in a year or an eccentric middle aged woman wearing a hat in the shape of a pig.  I love the $3 wine.  Oh – how I love the $3 wine.  I love the $4 wine.  When my husband and I got married, we served it at our rehearsal dinner.  Let me repeat that.  We paid a $20 corkage fee per bottle to have the $4 Trader Joe’s wine at our rehearsal dinner.  I don’t mind the lines, or the waiting, or the spots in the parking lot that are only 4 inches wide, so you practically have to crawl under your car to get to the store.  If you can find a parking spot at all, which you can’t unless you go when all normal, responsible people are at work.  Now that I live in Europe, I miss my family, friends, and old job the most – but man oh man – I also miss Trader Joe’s.  Of course there are plenty of wonderful grocery stores here, all full of delicious food.  But they don’t have what Trader Joe’s has – and that, my friend, is limits. 

And those limits are the best part of Trader Joe’s.  You don’t have to worry which kind of the 45 different kinds of corn flakes you should get.  You just have 1 kind to choose from, and it’s Trader Joe’s brand.  Where there are choices, they are actual CHOICES, not some kind of bullshit choice.  For example, milk at Trader Joe’s is all Trader Joe’s brand.  They have conventional skim, low fat, and whole, and those choices in organic Trader Joe’s brand.  That’s it.  You don’t have to say, ok, I want conventional low fat milk.  Which conventional low fat milk from which dairy do I get?  Do I get the store brand that is cheapest but might come from cows that are not having fun?  That way I can save more money and buy more cookies.  Do I get the one from the fancy dairy that might have happier cows but probably not, and it costs much more, so am I just a chump?  Or am I too cheap if I get the cheapest milk?  Will people come to my house and see my cheap milk and think I don’t love my children enough to get them good milk?  Or, if I get the pricy conventional low fat milk in the glass container from the chic dairy will people come to my house and think I spent my money in stupid ways and am a complete asshole for being a milk snob?  Aren’t there better things to spend money on than fancy milk?  Am I just paying for the jar and not the milk? Am I not going to be able to go on vacation this year because I spent all my money on fancy milk in a glass jar?  But then again, isn’t spending money on good food supposed to be good for your body?  I mean, I don’t want to die five years too soon because I was too cheap to buy good milk!

The British have a great expression for this.  They call it, Spoiled for Choice.

And that’s the beauty of Trader Joe’s.  You don’t have to agonize over these internal arguments with yourself.  But, eventually I left the Land of Trader Joe’s, and I moved over here to Europe and met some nice new buddies.  One evening, an American friend of mine and I were talking about our mutual love of Trader Joe’s.  Our Polish friend who has never been to the United States overheard and asked what was so great about this grocery store in America.  After our lengthy, laudatory description, our Polish girlfriend said, “Ok – so the food is good but there are long lines and limited choices at this Trader Joe’s.  It sounds like grocery shopping in communist Poland, only high quality.”

And that’s where we are, people.  That’s where we are.  In America, we have consumer choices up the proverbial yin yang, yet we stand in line to get to shop like they did in communist Poland.  What in the world happened?  Do we actually crave having fewer choices?  Do we want to live in a simpler world?  I’m guessing that Real Simple Magazine would not take off in a communist dictatorship. 

  Of course, democracy and consumer choice are awesome, and life behind the iron curtain was repressive and difficult – anybody who lived through that experience will tell you just that.  And those of us of a “cough” certain age remember communism, back when it was something we really had to worry about.  My parents often told me how lucky I was to live in America, where we could choose what we wanted to wear and eat and say and read.  But somewhere along the line, something about that consumer choice thing went a bit too far.  At some point we got tired of spending all that mental energy trying to figure out which of the thirty-one flavors we wanted.  At some point it ceased to matter what we chose.  All those thirty-one flavors are delicious.  What mattered was that we had the opportunity to make the choice.  And every time someone goes to Trader Joe’s, he or she makes the choice – consciously makes the very important choice - to decide, “You know what, I’m happier with fewer consumer choices.”