05 August 2008

Whole Foods guilt trip bullshit

Here are some of my existing reasons I hate Whole Foods:

  • Their gigantic 'Buy Local' banners plastered all over their stores when less than 20% of their produce is sourced locally (and good luck finding locally produced products anywhere else in the store either). They can't even get garlic from this country, when Gilroy, CA (the garlic capital of the world) is a hour's drive away.
  • Their ever decreasing product diversity as they push their high profit-margin 365 brand and drop other brands to make room.
  • Their stores are ridiculously large, but offer less selection than stores 1/5th their size.
But I'd like to add a new one. Every time you go through Whole Foods checkout now, the following two things happen:
  1. If you bring your own bag, they ask you if you'd like to donate the 5 cent bag credit to a charity or take it off your bill. With a line full of people behind you, they basically are saying "Are you an asshole that can't even give 5 cents to charity?"
  2. They ask you if you want to buy this bag that will feed 100 children, basically asking you to say in front of the line of people, "No, I think today I'll let 100 children starve"
This kind of guilt trip bullshit will not make the world a better place and Whole Foods could make a REAL difference in the world by doing the following:
  1. Carry only local, in season produce
  2. Carrying non-organic products only when there is no alternative
  3. Not selling health and beauty products that are a toxic waste dump of petroleum-derived ingredients

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