What Ever Happened To Whole Foods? Amazon, That’s What

Whole Foods, we have to talk.

How I used to love wandering your aisles in more innocent times, experiencing the delight of finding some artisan-made, hand crafted, locally curated, and always extremely expensive ingredient or foodstuff I had never before seen.

And then what joy it was to check out with your staff of sleeve-tatted grunge rock-looking team members, all of whom looked like they had been imported from the balcony of a Nirvana concert, circa 1996.

But something changed, Whole Foods, and we both have to stop pretending we don’t know what it is.

Amazon.

Amazon bought you, and nothing’s been the same.

Your aisles, once filled with leisurely, upwardly mobile types like myself, ready to be delighted by grass-fed arugula or locally sourced imported goji berries, are now crammed with frenzied Millennials, racing against time to fill their carts with orders from people who ordered online.

What’s worse, you deliberately understaff your stores, so your checkout lines can snake all the way to the back of the produce section.

Why? Because you don’t even want actual shoppers shopping in the stores.

You want to turn all the stores into Amazon-type fulfillment centers, complete with no air conditioning on hot days and ambulances waiting outside to take the fallen to the unemployment office (whoops, I meant to type “the hospital”).

Worse still, your team members now take their breaks in the bathrooms, which means actual customers wait as long as ten minutes if they need to relieve themselves.

I thought about complaining to the Chief Lumberjack, the guy with the biggest sleeve tattoos, who looks like he’s in charge, but then I remembered that everyone on the staff has sleeve tattoos and no one’s in charge.

Whole Foods, is this how it’s going to be?

Do you really want me in the store at all, or is the overcrowding, the understaffing, and the perennially locked bathroom doors an indication that you’re trying to force me to shop online as well?

I always treated your higher prices as a badge of honor.

I would tell myself the canard that I was paying for health, quality, and even longevity for my family and myself by shopping at Whole Paycheck, er, Whole Foods.

But now, even your vaunted produce looks wilted by 11 a.m., as if you had stopped sourcing it locally, or whatever you used to do, and now you buy it at the same place the other crummy local supermarkets buy their greens.

I went to get my wife flowers, and they all looked like they’d been liberated from a funeral home.

Look, Whole Foods, if that’s the way you want it, so be it.

I don’t care about free two-hour delivery, because when I come to you, I’m hungry, and I want something to eat right now.

I don’t want $35 worth of groceries in two hours.

All I want is some lunch.

But Whole Foods, I just can’t take it anymore.

You’re not who you were.

I have to confess — I’ve been having an affair with an Italian greengrocer.

The prices are lower and the lines are miniscule.

When there a lot of customers, you won’t believe what they do.

They open up another register.

Crazy, huh?

But at least every time I go there, I don’t have to relive the experience of knowing how it was, for the two of us, before Amazon muscled in.

And if I need the men’s room, I can just go.

Whole Foods, we had a good thing.

But all good things must come to an end.

We can be still be friends, sort of, and I’ll stop by once in a while, usually when my wife sends me, but don’t call it love.

I’m just coming in because I have to.

So long, Whole Foods.

I hope you’re happy with your Millennial shopping spree people, your wilted lettuce, and your perennially locked bathrooms.

Oh. And thanks for all the arugula.