People of Aldi

For those around the internet during the early 2010’s, one of its staples was the infamous blog People of Walmart. In this very mean-spirited space, one could peruse the debris of human society in its most raw, disturbing form. It’s one service was showing parts of Americana that is invisible to most. You see the egg-shaped blobs on scooters, their protruding stomachs dragging over the edges. Your mouth sits agape at multiple dudes wearing bras, obese women’s dresses that stop at the belly-button, yoga pants with very prominent camel-toes, freakish tattooed horror shows pacing the aisles, and profanity galore.

While your experience at Walmart might not be as bad as that site, rest assured you’re likely to bear witness to denizens who can’t follow an embarrassingly casual social dress code and dregs holding up the self-checkout aisle by being unable or unwilling to follow instructions, while weirdos walk around like they’re hyped up on every amphetamine on the market. Your ears will be stimulated with the music of loudmouths ranting on the phone in a dialect that barely passes for English. Walmart really has everything.

For those who look at their carts, there’s a common theme. You see loads of soda, stacks of pre-prepared freezer meals, and a multitude of snack foods. The produce aisle is skipped over, and they likely don’t even know where the spices are kept. Nothing that requires more effort than putting a package in the microwave or twisting off the top is considered. The complexity of turning on a stove and mixing a few ingredients is far too great a mental load to bear. There’s a minimalism to their thought process, following the simplest possible path to reward. They know how to walk in, fill their cart, and pay. And that’s all that’s expected of them.

For those whose lives are put together, whether professionals, blue-collar family men, gig-economy workers, and other swaths of productive citizens, the experience is jarring. While poverty is often to blame for the plight of these People of Walmart, something far more depressing at play. There is a large contingent of our brethren that simply don’t have the gumption to go through the basics of life and are so lazy they will buck norms in every way possible until forced to do otherwise, dragging everyone down with them.

Many might argue that some people are so low-IQ that’s the best we can hope for. While the discrepancies in I.Q. among Americans is woefully underreported in acceptable discourse, even this doesn’t pass the smell test. My mother knew a woman with about a 70 IQ who worked as a cashier and was able to take care of herself. There are down’s syndrome adults who can learn to cook. Now these people aren’t going to be rocket scientists, but are we seriously inferring basic cooking, hygiene, and social tact is beyond their abilities?

Being poor didn’t make them this way. I have many friends who are very low income and rely on food stamps, and all of them know how to cook a good meal, even if it’s a standard vegetarian dish. They have their coupons ready, have studied their doorbuster sales, and use every bit of their skill to get the best their money can buy. Low-income families who have their crap together have more contempt for these “People of Walmart” than your most strident eugenicist.

The reason you find these types in Walmart is simple. It’s cheap and the store has low expectations. These shoppers are also why many will pay a premium to shop somewhere they don’t have to deal with the riff-raff. The same thing might cost twenty percent more at the store a few miles down, but you won’t have to worry about avoiding a couple random guys who look ready for fisticuffs or deal with staff that smoke weed during breaks. You can see the familiar types from the office, the same types who live in the gated community you 3000 square foot house resides. It’s comfortable. It doesn’t bombard you with visual and audio pollution. The pricier store has friendly staff, a pristine floor, and well stocked shelves.

This doesn’t tell the whole story though. You’ll see a similar type in your Trader Joes and your Whole Foods, the types who will stock up on high end versions of the same slop, whether it’s pricey sparkling water or frozen dinners that cost more than filling a gas tank. Sure, they aren’t walking in their underwear, but the sweatpants and T-Shirt that’s struggling to keep in his gut isn’t much better. These are the rich sloths, those who found a cozy sinecure in corporate America and stopped trying, or maybe they hit the inheritance jackpot that ended all their ambitions. The pattern is the same. They use real money instead of SNAP, but are just as useless in producing anything of value.

They’re the same type, the ones who know the minimum expected effort and fail even that. They exist in every income level, though the poor are the most visible. It’s not as much an indication of class as an indication of spirit. The ones who are slaves to sloth and simple appetites versus those who healthily engage with the world. To know what sort of spirit someone has, a good place to start is their shopping cart. Of course there are geniuses who were famous slobs, savants who had no idea how to take care of themselves while transforming the world. Most don’t fit into those archetypes. Most are simply lazy.

When RFK jr. declared his fatwa against sugary drinks being paid for with food stamps, it was met more with confusion than anything. It’s one of the multitude of headlines you’ve read in the last six months that made you ask, “how was this ever a thing?” Most of the anger you get over the SNAP programs isn’t that poor people are getting food, but that they are buying food no responsible person in their situation would get. Whether it is prime cuts of meat, sugary snacks, or expensive pre-packaged meals, there’s the justified anger that beggars are eating better than the working class. If the SNAP program was limited to beans, rice, some frozen vegetables, and a little bit of chicken for a treat, no one would raise an eyebrow. It’s reasonable to not want people to starve. The moral hazard in rewarding complacency is different.

On the other side are the serious foodies. These are the ones where making a meal isn’t so much a simple necessity as a way of life. They’re the ones who will scour farmer’s markets for the best baked goods, sign up for co-ops to get locally grown crops, and source their meat from grass-fed pastures. For some the motivation is making fantastic meals, the culinary arts becoming a discipline similar to woodworking or athletics. It’s a fundamental drive to improve, to make those tiny changes that turn a good meal into something unforgettable. There are also those who have an ecological bent, wanting to support sustainable farming and foster a local economy. Then there are the health fanatics who want to optimize every calorie for peak performance.

All worthwhile causes, but not for everyone Their devotion to the craft would leave most average Joes exhausted. The average person likes spaghetti, but making noodles and sauces from scratch over the course of the day is tiring, and middle ground is better that allows core competence in life tasks and reasonable nutrition. In every country but the most oppressive, these striver types are not punished. Unless you are in the midst of a communist revolution and such refined sensibilities are seen as bourgeoise decadence, you’ll be fine.

Every society needs a minimum set of standards to operate, though. There are both cultural and legal norms that need the buy-in of the entire citizenry to work. The minute a portion decide to dismiss these standards, social decay follows. You can see this in many local Walmarts as they become dilapidated over the years. The clientele they deal with makes the staff cynical and lazy, which in turn impacts the quality of the store until you have a mass of glossy eyed zombies who work and shop there without a modicum of pride or self-respect. It also doesn’t help Walmart creates the conditions for this to happen.

One would think that you would find this lower type of human everywhere. After all, if they exist in every income level and area, every store will have a percentage of them. Whether it’s Costco, Kroger, Meijer, or Walmart (yes, I am a mid-westerner), there’s no escape. However, in my explorations of the multitude of grocery stores in the area, one store stands alone in its capability to both be inexpensive and find the most impressive types from all walks of life. A store that prides itself on not advertising, in giving the basics without bells and whistles, and punches way above its weight in convenience and quality, and whose unique business model attracts both the poor who want decent quality food and the rich who appreciate simplicity.

If Socialism worked in the United States, its stores would look like Aldi.

Upon entering the parking lot, you’ll see the simple rectangular design and clean but unimposing presence, so unimpressive one is likely to drive right past without noticing it. Oh, and I hope you brought a quarter to grab one of the locked carts. If you’re lucky perhaps a stranger who just finished will give hers for you to use. Once you get in, you’ll notice the narrow aisles and strictly utilitarian setup where most the staples you expect are available, but instead of your regular store with a seemingly infinite number of options, you might have two if you’re lucky. This resistance to stocking every brand under the sun allows the store to stock the same amount of basics as one twice its size. It will handle most of your American and Mexican fare, but don’t come in with ideas to stock up for an exotic dinner with guests. If you are expecting to flag down staff if you can’t find something, good luck. Maybe a cashier can help you. While the lack of options is annoying, the quality of the unprocessed items is reasonable, if not exemplary. While there are limited ready-made meals and other easy dishes, the quality of these is lackluster at best.

Once you fill your cart and roam to the checkout, you can either self-pay or take advantage of the lightning quick skills of the cashier in scanning your items. Be sure to buy some bags if you forgot yours. Oh, but the cashier won’t bag them for you, go to the counter and do that yourself. Then you put the bags in the car and likely flag down an approaching customer to offer your cart, and the cycle continues.

The best way to describe the Aldi shopping experience is Spartan. The expectations of both customers and employees are simple but unwavering. It’s designed for efficiency, a no-frills shopping endeavor that once you get the hang of, will allow you to get your staples in a quarter of the time of similar stores. Just like Costco and Sam’s Club have a membership fee to keep out undesirables (though they never admit this), the little inconveniences, whether it’s the cart return, bringing your own bagging, or the lack of quick foods, was all by design to keep the clientele as a certain type even if they say it’s to keep costs down. You might think these minor requirements wouldn’t be an impediment to those who want food cheaper than even Walmart, but it does the trick.

To be clear, I wish everyone felt comfortable shopping wherever they liked. The low bar of stores like Aldi is attainable by everyone. It only demands a reasonable floor of competence. Following dress codes, cultural pleasantries, and common rituals keep society running. There’s a reason many people turn red in anger when a shopping cart is not returned. It’s not just the cart, but the dismissal of one’s small duties to others that slowly eat away at the social fabric. There’s a reason multiple empty carts arrayed in the parking lot feels ugly and infuriating, and the small price to pay for order, a quarter, is worth every cent.

There also comes a time when leaving someone to their laziness and vices, changing the social fabric to either create enclaves to avoid them, usually with money, is cruel. People make the necessities of living so easy that they can just drift through their existence with minimal bother. Would those “People of Walmart” blanch if they were turned away for not following a reasonable dress code? Would many consider it a burden if the pre-processed garbage was removed, both in the fancy places and the low-tier ones? Would they get upset if they were asked to stop talking on speakerphone? Probably, but it’s for their own good.

Demanding standards takes work, and in this world such demands will bring a corporation in with all sorts of legal troubles when the wrong people are targeted. Because of these pitfalls, venues use the only tool at their disposal to delineate customers, money. The logic is equality, yet we’re not doing many any favors by toleration. My making their lives so easily, we’re removed their dignity. This isn’t a demand to be a five-star chef, nor is it a requirement to know every nuance of the spice rack. What’s asked of is showing the effort to take care of oneself, to resist the instant gratification of MSG laden food in favor of turning on the oven once in a while. It’s following a dress code that shows respect both for others and yourself.

I’ll admit I was a terrible culprit of slovenliness in my earlier years and rarely went out in anything more than a T-Shirt and athletic pants. Today with my (hopefully) increased maturity, I’ve seen how I sold not just myself short, but disrespected those around me. No one wants to deal with a slob, and you’re daft if you think people don’t notice. Being a disagreeable type, I’d be upset if going to the store meant I had to change into a collared shirt then, but that sort of tough love was just what I needed, and many others need too.

The question becomes “how can one create such expectations in a cultural and legal world that sees these standards as discriminatory?” And to be clear, it is discriminatory, and that’s a good thing. The vast majority of those “People of Walmart” could have easily avoided making fools of themselves. Whether they are ignorant or just don’t care, both can be fixed. The minute you demand reasonable inconveniences of individuals for the good of society, they will follow suit. When the path of least resistance is now more stringent, most will adapt. For now, it will have to be in “soft pressure” ways like Aldi employs or simply being a good example by your own habits, but a healthy nation needs boundaries of behavior, by legal means if necessary. Like everything else, it starts with us.

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