Because I love it that’s why. It’s one of my favorite things about living in Park Slope. It’s hard to explain but I’ll try.
My work shift: The best part: I can listen to Brian Lehrer and Lenny Lopate on the radio while I work.
I love when it’s done. I have to add everything up and it all feels very complete. A task well-done.
Shopping: I love the selection of food and the sense that I am buying products that are better for me and my family at a decent price. The produce is GORGEOUS and such fun to select. The selection inspires me to try new things. I love the linens they sell there, the calendars, candles, and cards.
Check-out: I hate the lines BUT I enjoy conversing with the check-out person about what I’m buying and interesting ways of cooking, say, Bok Choi.
Caveat: Yesterday I worked my shift but ended up shopping at the dreaded Key Food.
Why? I needed to have the food delivered. I felt like a stupid idiot but I had to do it that way.
I got hardly any produce. And no items like Amy’s Pizza, which are twice the price at Key Food and Back to the Land.
Overall: To be part of the most successful member owned and operated Food Coop in the US is pretty cool. The very fact that it works as well as it does, that it is a well-oiled machine, is pretty exciting.
The coop is a business of which all members are a part, and a job a member is required to go to, albeit once a month, not “volunteering”, as there is a benefit to the work. Like the job I go to more often, I choose to maintain a positive attitude. Always too many people on a shift? That’s not my observation. When people fail to show up (on holidays and nice days) there is inadequate staff to get food on the shelves and get members’ choices checked out.
Following up on a comment I made not too long ago, I’d like to report that having finally left the COOP a few months ago, I still haven’t looked back, except in relief. I have since been able to continue eating organic fruits and vegetables and meats at low prices by shopping at Fairway (free delivery for bundles over a hundred dollars) and the local greenmarkets in Prospect Park on Wednesdays and Saturdays (including incredibly fresh local fish.) Sadly, it just turned out that the controlling forces at the PSFC were less interested in supporting sustainable agriculture and local farmers than they were in supporting their own clubbiness disguised in pseudo-socialist dogma.
This says it all (from above): “I love it when [my shift] is done.” Yes!
The sense of relief I get at finishing mine is palpable. And there’s another one in 4 weeks, rain or shine or Christmas. Sorry, but the *only* reason probably 90% of members are there is to save money (and, to be fair, have access to good, organic food.) But the pettifogging rules of the Coop have been well satirized elsewhere.
Why can’t the Coop board recognize this all allow a degree of flexibility (and ! reduce the work load, since every shift I’ve been on for 5 years has too many people?) Or allow you to pay extra to not work?
And reduce the gobblygook? Do they *need* a “Diversity Committee” (read its purpose, it’ll make you laugh, “to boldly advocate on behalf of those who can’t do so themselves.” Ok, I exaggerate a trifle.) Do they need a “Disciplinary Committee?” They probably have a Shooting Squad lurking somewhere.
But I guess it does force one to have a sense of gritted-teeth humor.
Dear Herbert George Eloi: Snore…Why do you assume I am 12 yrs old? Shucks, I do all of the above, am a “bourgeoise” adult with family/career/house/cars (don’t care for the beach though, I burn too easily), and while I think the Food Coop is a nice hobby if that is how you want to spend your time, don’t make it into a religious experience/institution. It is essentially about buying groceries for crying out loud. That’s sounds like a good film: “Liberals+Groceries”
Leave it to someone like Anonymeese to somehow mistake the Coop of all places as being some kind of hideous, cruel bourgeois abortion.
Look: lots of the houses in this nabe run upwards of 2-3 mil. It’s the wrong place to live if you hate money and the people who know how to earn it.
The truth is, we are all bourgeois here in Park Slope. On purpose. Doesn’t mean we can’t do liberal, community-type stuff, too. Far from it! We’re just not into being broke, that’s all. (And guess what? Neither are poor people.)
Heck, you should try making a few bucks of your own sometime, Anon (instead of wasting Daddy’s $$ on more Che shirts). Here’s how:
-Go to school every day.
-Get a decent job.
-Don’t be an idiot in life.
That’s all it takes. Then you’ll see that you, too, can live the good life even as the lazy sit back and curse your modest success. See you on the beach!
I admire the mission of the Food Co-op since it brings people together in our otherwise-very-isolated society.
It is amazing to hear how working in the Food Coop can be fun as a volunteer. I’ll bet if the lawyers and writers and finance people (or at least their stay-at-home partners) had to work in a supermarket for low wages as a matter of survival, it might not seem like so much fun..but that’s what is so interesting and dynamic about the Slope, it always comes down to Morlocks vs. Eloi. And the Eloi are always so unaware of how they sound to the 9-5 Morlock crowd