There's a good chance all the employees there are having sex.

Business

There's a good chance all the employees there are having sex.

Slate

June 18, 2023

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When Jeremy worked at the sterile, fluorescently lit grocery store chain Albertsons, he and the other employees rarely connected. The store was too big, and there was too much to do. Imprisoned for hours at the register in the stale, lightly chilled air—surrounded by People magazines, Tic Tacs, and Slim Jims—he spent most of his time waiting to leave.

Things changed after he started working at Trader Joe’s. The place just seemed alive—everyone was friendly, the store was small enough for friendships to form, and the endearingly tacky Hawaiian shirts and punny foodstuffs made it seem fun. More importantly: Everyone, it seemed, was banging each other.

Referring to Trader Joe’s as the “single most incestuous company [he] ever worked for,” he described his first few months there as a sort of carnal “mayhem.” “We worked late shifts, and everyone lived nearby,” explained Jeremy, who spent 10 years at a California Trader Joe’s. “I noticed it with the staff at first, but it was even with the managers. They’d make jokes about it. There was a manager who met his wife through Trader Joe’s. Whenever we’d get new managers, they’d introduce their partners by saying, ‘Yeah, I met them at the manager party.’ Two of the people I was hired with became managers and got married. It was nonstop.”

For some people, shopping at Trader Joe’s is affordable-grocery blood sport, a battle with other customers to get the last Mango Jicama Slaw or new frozen item. For others, there’s a sort of quivering horniness in the air, a tension floating between the shelves of Tomato Feta Soup and Everything but the Bagel seasoning. You know it when you feel it.

Or maybe you already have. “Either everyone at Trader Joe’s wants to fuck me or everyone at Trader Joe’s is fucking each other but something sexual is definitely going on there,” Rachel Sennott, a comedian and actress, wrote online at the beginning of 2020. Megan Johnson, a writer from Boston, concurred: “I’m not sure of very much in life, but I’m pretty confident in my belief that the staff of Trader Joe’s is having sex parties after they close the store.”

I cannot confirm the existence of midnight post-lockup orgies, but after many interviews with current and former Trader Joe’s staffers, and delving deep into the Trader Joe’s employee subreddit, I can report: Yes, Trader Joe’s has seen a whole lot of hookups.

Erin, another ex–crew mate who worked at a tri-state Trader Joe’s throughout her college years, was taken aback at how amorous the staff was. “There were tons of intrastore couples,” she told me. “At my first store, a manager there fucked one of the employees who was married to a separate, other employee. At that same branch, two of my co-workers had a baby together.”

Two employees she worked with had hooked up in the freight elevator, the stuff of legend at her store.

Jonathan, who currently works at a Midwestern Trader Joe’s, is seeing one of his co-workers. “It’s awkward because she used to date a guy who still works here,” he said. “I can’t really look him in the eye.”

Another former crew member, Sarah, told me two employees she worked with had hooked up in the freight elevator, the stuff of legend at her store. Allison, who worked at stores over the course of five years, said the situation in her area was so heated that colleagues from different locations around her area coordinated their lunchtime crew meals for a bit of afternoon delight. “As Drake says, ‘The things we could do in 20 minutes, girl,’ ” Allison said. (Like nearly everyone in this story, all these people asked me not to use their real names.)

All of these accounts mirror the replies of a forum thread posted to the r/TJCrew subreddit earlier this year. The topic reads, simply enough, “Why does everyone fuck each other?” The poster, who goes by Maryneedswifi, recounted the rat nest of interlocking affairs, trysts, hookups, and love stories that have plagued her Trader Joe’s location. Specifically, she noted that one of her crew mates, a 29-year-old man, broke up with his long-term girlfriend after it came to light that he was cheating on her with a newly hired 18-year-old. “It’s all so weird and I hate the environment, can any of you relate?” she asked.

Sure enough, the responses quickly piled up, illuminating many stories of unbridled Trader Joe’s lust. Some of the posters agreed that the rampaging libido left their stores sick with hurt feelings and bad vibes, but others simply described Trader Joe’s as a bacchanalian free-love environment, akin to a verdant hippie commune, or a polycule that pays $15 per hour.

“I work at a store where most everyone is involved with one another to some degree,” posted one user. “There’s virtually zero drama. The largest entangled group is really cool, inviting, accepting, and inclusive.” The person added: “I dunno how my store has been able to keep up this wheel of love for so long, because people have joined and left over years like a Ship of Theseus kind of thing, but it works really well and I’m not going to knock it.”

Trader Joe’s did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But several current and former employees told me the policy on the matter remains similar to a 2016 version found in the company handbook that was revealed in an unrelated lawsuit: essentially, that workplace romances are fine and dandy if they’re not happening between managers and subordinates, and crew members are allowed to “date” at will so long as it doesn’t interfere with work. (I’ll assume that date also means “bone.”) Managers interested in consensual relationships with their subordinates—or one another—have to notify a regional vice president before acting on their desires, and the VP can arrange for one of them to be moved to a separate store.

To be fair, some of the respondents on the Reddit thread seemed genuinely confused by their TJ brethren’s carnal accounts. Other respondents pointed out that workplace hookups are common at all businesses, not just Trader Joe’s. They have a point: If you’re a veteran of the service or retail industry, you’re certainly aware that casual interbreeding between employees happens all the time, especially when you factor in the late shifts, free alcohol in some cases, and often a roll call filled with younger people with a blissfully limited suite of responsibilities. And recent research from a trade group suggests that workplace romance in general is on the rise, even with more hybrid and remote work. The Trader Joe’s frozen aisle isn’t the only place co-workers are making eyes at one another.

Still, what makes this Trader Joe’s situation unique is that we’re talking about a grocery store that closes at 9 p.m. That doesn’t seem like an environment conducive to off-the-clock hanky-panky, yet for some people, it is—even more than other grocery stores, it seems. Jeremy worked at Albertsons before getting hired at Trader Joe’s, and Jonathan spent time at a Whole Foods. Both of them told me that those jobs never matched the wanton mess of their future employer because supermarkets, by their very nature, are prudish and antiseptic.

Everyone has their own theories about why Trader Joe’s is a sweaty outlier.

“I think it’s because a store like Albertsons is so much bigger,” Jeremy said. “I worked in produce at Albertsons, so I just hung out with the produce people. People at the registers were doing their thing, but you wouldn’t hang around them.” Meanwhile, at his Trader Joe’s, nobody was assigned to a specific task. “Everyone worked everything,” he said. “It created that family environment. Everyone had exposure to each other. You couldn’t avoid it.”

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Sarah agreed that Trader Joe’s puts a lot of stock into creating a breezy kinship among those wearing the apron—which is likely why so many of the store’s customers get the sense that the cashiers are flirting with them. In a podcast released by Trader Joe’s in 2019, the company’s president, Bryan Palbaum, said that Trader Joe’s specifically seeks out people who have “outwardly nice” personalities, because it’s difficult to “train someone to be nice.” “The general positivity and management practices at the store is contributive to being flirty,” Sarah said.

There might also be an even simpler explanation. During her stint at the company, Allison said, she couldn’t remember a single encounter with a Trader Joe’s clerk that she’d describe as “ugly.” When a gaggle of hot, young single folks stock shelves together, inertia tends to take over. “You can just feel the sexual tension when you walk in the doors,” she said.

Jonathan agreed that as a company, Trader Joe’s tends to attract prospects who are young, hot, and skeptical of traditional lifestyles. “A lot of the people are into the polyamory thing,” he told me. Apparently polyamory—and a variety of other alt-relationship precepts—is a frequent topic of discussion in Jonathan’s break room. “Everyone is very sex-positive,” he said.

And then there’s the store’s Hawaiian shirts and nautical promotional hierarchy: Managers are referred to as captains, and they are reported to by a galley of mates and crew members. Employees are immediately thrust into a sort of mild role-play in which their position and outfits are meant to reflect the sort of relaxed, anything-goes energy of a cruise or a tropical beach vacation. (I know soft kink when I see it.)

Erin offered my favorite theory. If you’ve cohabitated with someone, you’re likely aware of the quiet intimacy of grocery shopping: two lovers pushing the cart, retrieving things from the shelves, deciding what to eat tonight. Working at a Trader Joe’s—with its smaller scale, distinct workplace culture, and homey texture—manufactures a version of that tender sensation with your inherited crew mates. Heaven is peacefully orbiting the aisles with a mild crush around closing time. “You’re getting insight into how people take care of themselves and the things they do when they’re alone,” said Erin. “There’s something already very sexually charged about that.”

Trader Joe’s breezy identity has taken a hit amid its opposition to union drives, and the era of good vibes may be in decline. But nearly everyone I spoke to was positive about their co-worker experience, even with the bad politics of, say, a manager/subordinate fling or a disastrous breach of marital fidelity that makes you the star of a Reddit thread. A couple of 22-year-olds sharing a chaotic service-industry romance? That’s the spice of life, baby! “I genuinely think it’s harmless, healthy even,” Erin said. “It keeps people coming to work.”

Jonathan concurred. “This is the best job I’ve ever had. I wish I worked here years ago,” he said. “I would have more money, and I would’ve had a lot more fun.”

Source: Slate

There's a good chance all the employees there are having sex.

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