Unconscionable capitalism: How Whole Foods values policy over workers’ well-being

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk Whole Foods Market at Sixth and Lamar in Austin, Texas 

UPDATE July 12, 2007 The Wall Street Journal reported Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey has admitted to posting anonymous messages on Yahoo’s stock forum. Using the name “Rahodeb” — an anagram of his wife’s name — he “posted positive comments on Whole Foods’ financial earnings. The Journal also reports he bashed competitor, Wild Oats Markets Inc… Mackey’s alter ego was revealed in a Federal Trade Commission document that came out of its effort to stop the Whole Foods–Wild Oats merger.” (Source: Austin Business Journal) Read more about John Mackey’s dubious online shenanigans on Austin’s Only Blog.

Everyone thinks of Whole Foods as a Wonderful Place to Work. In fact, Fortune magazine ranked Whole Foods number five on its 2007 list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.” Whole Foods has been ranked in the top ten for years. I thought it was up there, too — until I worked there. Going into it, I believed Whole Foods was an exception to the corporate rule. I thought I’d be treated fairly as a person and allowed to think for myself. I don’t believe those things anymore.

I decided to work for Whole Foods after reading an essay by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey entitled “Conscious Capitalism: Creating a New Paradigm for Business.” It begins like this:

Do we need a new way to think about business, corporations, and capitalism for the 21st century? Do we need to create a new business paradigm? Corporations are probably the most influential institutions in the world today and yet many people do not believe that they can be trusted. Instead corporations are widely perceived as greedy, selfish, exploitative, uncaring — and interested only in maximizing profits.

Mackey argues that we must implement a new business model that applies concepts of interdependency to business in order to stimulate the shared interests of the company, community, workers, customers, and investors. This complexly interdependent system of symbioses, he explains, “balances value” for everyone involved. Though not averse to profits, Mackey believes businesses are mistaken in pursuing the bottom line. Instead, businesses should act more like the functional arts — architecture or engineering, for example — in that money should be an incentive, not the goal.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk Whole Foods’ corporate headquarters 

I was impressed.

His perceived relationship between worker and company interested me particularly: “At Whole Foods, we consciously reject the command and control management style. This top-down, ‘Do It My Way’ approach is the opposite of team member empowerment”; “Team members must also be treated as ends and not means. Their well-being and happiness must be an end in itself, not merely a means to the profits of the business”; “There are no entitlements; we share together in our collective fate”; “I also believe that it is absolutely essential to trust team members…”; and so on. I believed him. This is a company I could go far with, I thought. A fair company. I’d start as a cashier and do what I could to move my way into Public Relations, maybe. Optimism filled me.

But like I said, I don’t believe those things anymore.

Fired over a 50-cent bottle of water

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

Late in the evening on New Year’s Eve — a Sunday, no less, when all the liquor stores close for the day and no one can buy beer until noon — the flagship Whole Foods store at Sixth and Lamar was a madhouse. I had just returned from my break at the height of the rush to find my hopper was in the middle of a large order. (A hopper is a roaming cashier who “hops” between registers, temporarily relieving cashiers for their allotted thirty-minute breaks.) I was very thirsty because the water station at the front of the store was broken and the coolers in the break room were empty, which was usually the case. I told her I was going to grab a bottle of water, and she asked me to hurry because she was behind on her breaks.

I took a 50-cent bottle of water off a shelf and started walking back to my register. I grabbed a bottle because cashiers are required to have a lid on all liquids while attending a register.

Owing to the excessive number of people in the store and the time-crunch faced by my hopper, I decided having my hopper ring me up would be the most efficient way to go about things. The hectic, crowded environment and frenetic pace of business was stressful, and I was feeling anxious. My hands were sweaty, my mouth parched. Without thinking, I opened the water and took a sip on my way back.

When I returned, my hopper had already pulled her drawer, so I couldn’t have her ring me up. The line was long, and the customers were becoming increasingly irritated as the evening drew on, so I set the water down to begin checking the next customer. What else could I do? People in lines are easily irritated — revelers particularly. And you have to do anything in your power to please the customer. “Happy workers make happy customers, happy customers make happy investors. Happy workers make happy customers…”

I was planning to ask the cashier at my back to check me for the water after I rang up the first order. But before I could finish ringing it — perhaps two minutes from the time I took the water from the shelf — I was told by a supervisor that John Marsh, the store leader, needed to see me.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

I turned off my light, put up my sign (Next Lane, Please). After finishing the last couple of orders, I went to find Marsh. He asked me if I had paid for the water I had just taken a sip of. I said no, I had gotten into a weird situation with the hopper and was going to have the cashier at my back do it after I finished the last order but had been called over here first. I pulled sixty cents from my pocket and showed him. “I have the money right here,” I explained. He told me to leave the store immediately and that he would call me tomorrow.

That John Marsh would accuse me of stealing when I went to see him never entered my mind. It totally surprised me. Honestly, that a man I did not even know would look on me as a thief humiliated me.

I tried to explain that I was not a malicious person, that I had no intention to steal the water, that it hadn’t occurred to me that what I was doing was wrong. I was just a stressed-out, thirsty worker trying to “make it happen” on one of the busiest days of the year. I was just a guy who valued his job and wouldn’t jeopardize it over a bottle of water. Stealing was the furthest thing from my mind.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

This was all very naive of me I now understand, as policies have no room for intentions.

He refused to discuss it with me and told me not to worry with counting down my money — just leave. As I was now apparently unfit to handle a cash drawer, I paid for the water. Using a rubber band, I wrapped the receipt around the nearly full bottle, gave it to my supervisor, and left.

I was sick to my stomach and tight in the throat. I felt embarrassed and disgraced.

The most bizarre aspect of this experience was that I had never spoken a word to John Marsh — hardly ever saw him walking the floor in my nearly six months of employment — before he accused me of theft and told me to leave the premises immediately. Oppositely, I’d noticed that the CEO himself, John Mackey, would go through the line of a cashier-in-training, even if he had to wait. This put a face to leadership. It made an indelible impression on me as a new employee. Before I was fired, I’d had more verbal interaction with the CEO of Whole Foods than the manager of the store where I worked.

John Marsh didn’t get back to me the next day. When I called, they told me I’d been scratched off the schedule and not to come in. It took me five days of phone calls and two trips up to the store for Marsh to finally call me to tell me my official employment status, sent down by regional: I’d been separated from Whole Foods without the possibility of rehire.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d been fired from a multi-billion dollar international corporation without the possibility of being rehired ever again, in any capacity, at any store, for the rest of my life, for taking one sip off a 50-cent (35 cents after the team-member discount) bottle of water before I purchased it. I couldn’t believe Whole Foods would treat me as a means rather than an end.

But why — didn’t I just say “multi-billion dollar international corporation”?

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk Courtyard outside the Whole Foods Market flagship store 

Appealing the decision

I wasn’t ready to give up the ideals I’d cultivated. Whole Foods, after all, has an extensive and well-documented appeals process. If anyone would give me a fair hearing, I thought, it’d be Whole Foods, the fifth best employer in the nation.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

I set to work reading through the company literature. What I found encouraged me: “All team members should strive to be as fair and understanding as possible; however we realize that there will be conflicts between Team Members at times that may seem to be insurmountable”; but “[w]e firmly believe that by using these procedures, we can mutually arrive at workable solutions and understandings in the event such a problem should arise. We believe in the principles of win-win solutions and compromise, and we want to provide every means possible for our team members to be successful.”

The appeals process works as follows:

• Within 14 days of termination or demotion, the team member may write an objection and request a fair hearing. A supposedly disinterested group of people will review the objection and either uphold or overturn the original decision within seven working days.
• If either party doesn’t agree with that decision, they may appeal again, in writing, within five working days. Headquarters then has seven working days to set a date for a fair hearing (a kind of corporate court) and a deadline by which all documentation must be submitted.

Sounds simple, right?

So I wrote my first letter of objection. I began by acknowledging that my record was not flawless; I’d been written up once for being late (“excessive absenteeism”), and once for forgetting to give a person their cash back (a “cash handling violation”). But I added that any infractions incurred during my early employment had been addressed and resolved so that I might better serve the company.

Of course, I’d been written up and fired for taking that sip of water (major infraction: team member purchases policy violation). I likewise acknowledged that I understood I had violated a policy (no consumption before payment), and that while such a violation may be punishable up to termination, I felt termination was heavy-handed and disproportionate to my particular offense.

My whole argument was this: I had no intention to steal, stole nothing, and yet I was being punished as if I were a thief. I can think of no accusation that trespasses more upon a person’s character than that of theft, much less petty theft.

I raised additional points: How much time, money and manpower did it take to train me? How much additional stress did my fellow employees endure on that busy night, owing to my absence? How much distress has this caused me? How much would the committee of people have to be paid to review my case? All this over a sip of water?

I asked if the actions taken in this situation resulted in a win-win solution or a lose-lose solution. Clearly everyone was losing. I pointed out that perhaps if Marsh had pulled me aside and asked me if I had paid for the water, allowed me to explain myself and pay for the water, and then punished me in some way other than firing me, Whole Foods would not have lost any labor or money, and I could have kept my job in some diminished capacity, having learned a lesson.

The letter I wrote pleased me. Surely they cannot ignore reason, I thought. I delivered my letter strong in the belief that I would be listened to and my case critically considered.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

But I was wrong again.

The letter I received seven days later from Mark Ehrnstein — the regional supervisor who had never laid eyes on me or talked to me personally — failed to address any of my arguments. He recounted my infractions and partially reiterated my position to me (that I felt the punishment too severe) then explained that I had violated a policy, John Marsh witnessed it, and I had admitted to it. Ehrnstein said I should have used the free water at the water station at the front of the store or in the break room. Then he documented all the places where I could read the policy that I’d violated and told me that, “It is clear Whole Foods Market policies were followed in the decision made to terminate your employment. Your separation from the company is upheld. Thus, the Fair Hearing Request that you submitted on January 10, 2007, has been denied.”

Despite being totally dumbstruck and so, so weary of the process of outlining arguments destined to fall on deaf ears, I wrote my second letter of objection.

I explained first that the water station at the front of the store was not functional during the holidays, that the coolers in the break room were empty (as always), and that I grabbed a bottle because we were required to have a lid on all liquids at the register. I described myself as I had been on that day: absentminded and hapless, overworked and thirsty. I explained that I made a mistake and found myself in a situation I had not anticipated — that a great gulf separates my mistake from malicious wrongdoing. Who can deny that? You are punishing the least culpable most severely, I argued.

I pointed out that there are people who steal from Whole Foods — they steal money and leave the store with products they haven’t paid for, they go to the food bar and fill their plate, eat and go back and fill it again and then pay. If I’d done those things, I would understand firing me. But not for taking a sip of water from a bottle I was about to pay for — a bottle of water that never left the premises.

I conluded my final appeal with the following:

While I understand that policies were upheld, I must point out that policies are good general guidelines, but each situation is specific and unique as are the individuals that find themselves tangled in such situations. Authority figures, leaders as you call them, must not retard their own reasoning by referring dogmatically to policies — that’s not leading, that’s a shortcut to thinking. Policies are being enforced to their fullest extent at any cost, even when the enforcement of such policies to their fullest extent harms every party involved.

When a situation arises that results in the humiliation of a bright, capable individual not only is Whole Foods diminished by that worker’s absence, but the individual leaves the experience bewildered and disheartened, feeling that corporations are corporations through and through and not to be trusted, that people in positions of authority place policies before people in order to buttress reactionary uses of power because reason cannot. This engenders fear inside the work place and distrust from without. As far as I understand it, this is not what Whole Foods is about. Perhaps I am mistaken.

A week later, I received a letter from Whole Foods explaining that a fair hearing had been set. A “Peer Review Board” consisting of five Team Member Awareness Group members from the Southwest Region would deliberate via conference call over the facts of my case and that Mark Ehrnstein would lead the group. But Ehrnstein had already upheld my termination! What happened to a disinterested group of people hearing my case?

Another week passed, and another letter arrived: “On February 8, 2007 a panel of five Peers convened via conference call to review the documentation provided by you and Whole Foods Market regarding the circumstances leading to you separation.” Peers — people I’d never seen, people in positions of authority over me, and whose names I was never supplied with — concluded unanimously to uphold the decision to terminate my employment.

“Chad,” the letter concluded, “We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”

Wow. It must be pretty easy living your life by policies and firing people you’ve never met, seen, or talked to. (Did the conference call even take place?) But I wasn’t too shocked by the outcome — or by the fact that they never addressed any of my arguments in their replies. I’d pretty much resigned myself to the fact that this wasn’t about right or wrong, or reason, or being fair and understanding. This was about the bottom line, and I was expendable.

photo / Todd Ross Nienkerk 

Whole Foods’ anti-union stance

Fact is, I should have seen all this coming when, during training, they explained to us that Whole Foods workers are highly discouraged from unionizing. Whole Foods reasons that unions create an unnecessary barrier between authority and workers — that unions create an us-versus-them rather than a we’re-all-in-this-together attitude; Whole Foods would rather the workers communicate directly with authority than have a union middleman do the job. After all, they have a trustworthy conflict resolution procedure and an appeals process in place, right?

My trainers said the only stores that had ever really pushed for unionization were poorly managed in the first place. At the time I accepted poor local management as the reason for worker’s discontent. But once I started my appeals process, I realized how screwed I was. This wasn’t a we’re-all-in-this-together situation. This was a little-bitty-me-versus-Lamar-Whole-Foods-Market situation.

(The Whole Foods in Madison, Wisconsin, is the most notable example of a store attempting to unionize. The two individuals who organized the union movement, Debbie Rasmussen and Julie Thayer, were fired for offences similar to mine.)

The policy violation for which I was fired, “consumption prior to payment,” is a pervasive practice. The policy is not enforced uniformly and is wholly disregarded by many supervisors. Many team members don’t believe they are doing anything wrong. Then it’s used against workers when convenient for management. Like in order to slim down costs at the end of the holiday season, for example. Or quell a potential unionization.

I don’t know how many people have engaged in the appeals process. Few, I presume. Certainly even fewer have seen the process all the way through to the end. Most people probably drop it because it’s hard to get in touch with anyone about what’s going on, and they don’t have the time to write lengthy appeals while searching for a new job to pay the bills. Whole Foods exploits this.

Whole Foods doesn’t count on former team members taking their grievances public. They know that if they simply ignore you, you’ll give up and go away. And if you insist on being heard, you’re up against a tight-knit group of regional supervisors who may or may not be following the proper procedures.

Lobsters or people?

The public perceives Whole Foods as a company that takes exceptional care of their workers — a glorious, shining exception to the corporate rule of worker marginalization. After all, this is a company that won’t sell live lobsters because they’re taken home and boiled alive. A company so overly sensitive must surely treat its workers with tremendous respect, right?

Wrong. Whole Foods’ reputation allows even more leeway to marginalize their workers. But, like most corporations, you won’t hear their tiny voices over the thunderous applause of stock-holders and customers.

If one of the best employers in the nation treats their workers this way, what about the others?

Whatever happened to conscious capitalism?