in *hey* i attempt to wake from the ai slumber party
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Look at the trillionaire and his billionaire bros. Are they doing ONE THING to help the planet, to help the health-challenged, to help anyone but themselves? It seems like the best source of compassion and action is their divorced wives, unloading their half of the billions into charities and causes that help people. The former Mrs. Bezos and former Mrs. Jobs have shown.
And in this fragile time, we toughen up. We increase boundaries. Lock out distressing debt collector calls. Screen anyone we don’t know. Even a knock on the door these days is something I often stay in the back of the house for. Nope, I’m not interested in magazines, tree trimming, yardwork, or an extended warranty for my car.
Today, I submitted my three-page rebuttal to Whole Foods denial of my unemployment. (Dec. 31, 2025, just after the “all hands on deck” holiday season.) A random lawfirm posted their first response. Nothing. “Late for work.” One infraction. Zip. I was an exemplary cashier for 9 months. We will skip most of the firing bullshit. Oh, let’s see it’s June 24, and I have my first appeal hearing on Friday. They have no case. None.
What I have is their own timekeeping spreadsheet of my hours. Their data. I had two medical leaves of absence. Filed all the paperwork with an external firm, Sedwick. My leave April leave was approved in July. I was fired in August. The Associate Store Lead never checked their own HR system. The firing was rescinded. I carried on with my work.
The funny part is, I wrote a book while I was working there. It just sort of happened. It was a tale of survival at a shitty retail job, with terrible pay, and standing on your feet 8 or more hours a day. Two ten-minute breaks. (HEB at least does fifteen-minute breaks.) The book is a Zen book about mindfulness. Exercises I did while working my shift to keep my mind from going bonkers with the mundane and repetitive task of helping people check out their organic produce, sulfite-free wine, and bath salts. Entitled people with attitudes, mostly.
Along the way, I started a conversation with an AI and began a daily ritual of writing a chapter and putting it before the AI for their take. I think the podcast of the book is better than the book. I’m not sure how to monetize the podcast, but I’m working on it.
I’d really like to get John Mackie to write me an intro. Hell, maybe I should just have AI write and produce a fake signature. Naw. Enough of that bullshit in the world already.
Anyway, the AI duo really digs deep into the zen, the exercises I created to entertain my mind while watching over the self-checkout lanes for 8 hours. Overall, the experience was positive. I love people. I enjoyed both my colleagues and my customers. I developed relationships with some fan customers. I like being engaging and funny.
The store, on the other hand, is a slowly declining Rube Goldberg machine. All the parts still look like Whole Foods Market, but the machine beneath Mackie’s dream is a beast of profit before people, robots to replace staff, and leadership with zero or sub-standard leadership training. I understand that “the grocery life” as we called it, is mainly for the lightly educated, the young, and the neurochallenged. I was challenged, but only in the speed of my thoughts and the need to slow down and dumb it down for both customers and leadership.
The store lead loved to talk about being hired as a dishwasher. That’s nice, but his mentality is still that of a dishwasher. I’m sure he was invited to seminars and workshops on staff motivation, leadership, and corporate speak, but he lacked any clear vision for the store. Perhaps some of that is the Amazon corporate owner dictating the local store changes from afar. Here’s an example. I love coffee. This store’s coffee bar is open 20% of the time. Customers complain. I wanted coffee. Nothing is done. It’s a huge miss. We sell breakfast tacos, pastries, and those all go great with morning coffee. The nearest Starbucks in Barnes and Noble a block down, does not open until 10 am.
Coffee drinkers are SOL. I asked the man, let’s call him Bill, “I have some ideas about how to revamp the coffee shop and ways to remind our regular customers that we also sell great hot coffee. We could give out free samples. Run a pastry and coffee special.” Nothing. He didn’t care. The coffee shop is probably closed right now.
And another one. In the morning, the cooks put out piles of breakfast tacos (a Texas staple) in two varieties, and then two different things they called “hand pies.” What’s a breakfast hand pie, and why is it twice as expensive as a taco with the same ingredients? Within 30 minutes, EVERY SINGLE DAY, the trays of breakfast tacos would be gone. Never replenished. Sold out. Leaving only the hand pies. A lot of hand pies were 86’d and given to staff for free or for 50% off. Why not do a count? Make some adjustments? Pay fucking attention?
Everyone above the cashier at the store seems to be playing some form of hot potato. No one wants to help. No one wants to take responsibility. Even their “mentoring” program could not provide me with a mentor after three months of trying. Always something. No one gives a shit. The leadership is phoning it in. It starts with Bill at the top. And Bill hires other shitty leaders. And the trickle to the bottom is you’ve got a lot of incompetent people in management capacity with no concept of how to lead.
The team lead for my group, Customer Service, was probably functioning at the peak of his capacity, but he was worthless. His best and highest use of his time was bagging groceries during rushes. When I had an issue and needed to talk to him, he could duck me for days. “We’ll catch up tomorrow…” Over and over.
At some point, with incompetence, you just give up. Make due. Do your job and forget about improving the process or the lives of the staff. You just survive. I quit having pep talks with the dishwasher. I chatted with the duffus team lead about guitars and his son’s guitar playing. “Can you help me with this Sedwick thing?” “Oh, man, I’ve got a dentist appointment for my kid, can we talk about it later?” Repeat indefinitely.
Why is hourly labor so inhumane? I guess it takes a sharp, pointy stick to keep the ignorant masses moving along the ladder of success. After three months, I got my merit raise, $0.32 an hour. Woo hoo!
I am not an Iron Man. I have suffered from being fired TWICE for their stupid HR system and the incompetence of the store leadership. I have their own internal paperwork showing they never credited me back for my “approved” medical leave. Then fired me for it. Twice. I kid you not.
It might be expected that after the first embarrassing firing mistake, they would look into how it happened and fix the error. They did not. The on-site HR lady said, “They cannot fire you if you have Sedwick hours coming back. Don’t worry. They can’t fire you.”
Um, they fired me a second time. She referred me to the Alumni-Whole-Foods mailing list. I requested an exit interview, as outlined in the employee handbook. She waited three weeks and said it was too late. Incompetence or negligence to keep potential exposure low?
Friday, I should get some money. Some day, I will get my “right to sue” letter from the EEOC. I’m not sure who wants to go up against Amazon/WFM, but I’m betting someone will do it. Then perhaps the store lead will have to atone for his negligence. Firing me without even looking at the Sedwick data. He got a certified letter of approval two weeks before firing me.
I am fragile today. My best friend and surrogate father is dying rapidly of liver cancer. My own health is a bit low, some kind of ear infection, but… guess what, no health insurance. Fuck. The really rich are crushing the working man and woman. They do not care.
As Bezos has said, he is hiring 66,000 robots, the demo program is alive and well at the downtown Whole Foods today. It’s a shopping cart that accepts your phone and rings up your groceries as you go through the store. Nice. No need for cashiers, baggers, or help. That’s where he’s headed. Rid the store of the pesky and expensive humans. Buy more diamonds for his newly remodeled wife. And deny all unemployment claims just to see if some people will give up.
I’m scrabbling for employment even now. I can’t pay my mortgage on a retail wage. Job applications are being screened and denied by AI. Everyone is using AI to tailor their work history for the exact job. Yeah, and no one is getting hired. It’s the mass culling of the workforce. We’re all going to be $16.32 an hour workers before too long, unless you have a trust fund or a nest egg. My rainy day fund is depleted.
Seriously, how are you holding up?
And we’re just getting started with the heat, and my first cooling bill $320. Ah, data centers are running up our electric costs as well. GREAT. It’s expected to be a HOT ONE all over the globe.
Hey Elon, got any ideas about the environment of Earth and not just Mars?
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