Buying locally

Bubba and I had the pleasure of being introduced to the Des Moines Farmer's Market on a glorious Saturday morning. The market is in downtown in the hip drinking area for all of the hets. We fetched Mr. DJ from his hillside abode, popped in for some coffee, and then hit the market.

And damn if it wasn't good. Kinda like the Raleigh Farmer's Market but downtown. Lots of produce but also lots of food and crafts and such. Families everyone - I think that people just spend all their time fucking here because there are kids EVERYWHERE. I literally cannot turn around at work without seeing a picture of someone's child.

Anyways - Bubba, Mr. DJ and I all surveyed the whole market (blocks and blocks and blocks) while getting a very nice sampling of all of the DILFs. Not alot of chicken (at 10am on Saturday, they are still in bed passed out) but Mr. DJ and I saw many a hot daddy.

So after some discussion, we picked our vendor of choice. Westrum Produce. Mr. DJ has a very urban look and you cannot miss him. He got his produce immediately. I was in a pink T shirt, breezy khaki linen trousers, flip flops and had my shades on.

OK I looked kinda gay.

So I tell Mr. DJ that I will catch up with him and Bubba when I get my produce. Well little Miss Teen-something with bad acne proceeds to help THREE other straight people before sighing and asking me if I needed anything.

Well Miss Scientist got her produce and then got a little bitter. The thing was that it was not really what was said - but how it was said. And that there were 3 other people standing around doing NOTHING! The one other person working was helping someone else at another table. I stood there for literally three minutes waiting to see how fucking long it would take for someone to help me.

So you have three people doing NOTHING and two people working. Sounds like Westrum Produce is less of a business and more of an entitlement program.

Westrum Produce will NEVER EVER get another dollar from me. I will furthermore tell every fag in town that if you shop Westrum Produce at the market, you will be supporting bigotry. Also you are giving your hard-earned money to a very inefficient operation.

Now Bubba thinks that I bring some of this on myself. Bubba is an "assertive" shopper - the girl does not wait to be waited upon. He steps up and, if there is an ambiguity in the situation, he clears it up. I, on the other hand, am more of a "passive" shopper - I refuse to beg anyone to serve me. It is me who is spending the money and it is the merchant who is working and I refuse to grovel them into providing me some fucking service. Therefore, I vote very carefully with my pocketbook and have a long list of places that I will not go to "ever again". I am a firm believer in this principle and I have become a Nazi about shopping in small shops and buying locally after living in DC.

What really did it for me is the fact that I could go to ANY place that was a chain in the Takoma area and INVARIABLY the person working there was from some other country and could not speak English. One day at Bank of America, it was so bad that I had to leave and try again another day - and I was asking a question about my Bank of America credit card. That is NOT acceptable.

So in choosing where to spend my money locally - I have a much higher probability of effecting change by being able to actually speak to a person who comprehends English and runs the business.

I was thinking about this last evening and I had a revelation! I now understand why the black community still supports Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Yes, they are race baiters and opportunists - but the community supports these efforts BECAUSE they expose the sin. When using these two whores, the community may not like the means, but the end is of value. Jesse and Al allow regular people to see who or what is engaging in activities that might have a racist tinge to them. Armed with that information, individuals can now make choices about whether to participate in a boycott or get more information about the concern.

I am a huge fan of boycotts - it is one of the few mechanisms that minority communities (of any type or size) have to make their point known. And chains have just gotten to the point where there is no point in going and the only thing they listen to is a large loss in capital - the loss of one or two people because of bad service is nothing for them to get exercised over.

My feeling on chains: The service is terrible. The stores are not clean. No one speaks English. The products tend to be cut-rate and break quickly. And the manager has no real vested interest in making things better for his 30K a year.

I'm thinking about this alot now that I am lining up my new favorite places to shop in Des Moines. And one of them will not be Westrum Produce. I'm sending them a letter to explain to them why I will not be spending my 20 bucks a week at their stand. It is not so much the soft bigotry that I resent - kids are kids. It is the fact that there were three people "working" who were standing there looking at me and not helping me. Soft bigotry is such a ephemeral phenomenon that I don't know if it is worth getting hyped up over (even though I still am bitter) but bad management of people is definitely worth a boycott. If I have to beg a 20-year old to stop talking long enough to get me 4 cucumbers and an onion, then I ought not reward that company with my dollars for their ineptitude. Unlike many aspects in life, the farmer's market has lots of choices and I'll be searching for another vendor!