I have a confession to make. I’m a super big dork. Almost everyday when I walk into work, I have some sort of theme song running through my head. Lately it's been the Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog. In real life, I walk into the store quietly and unassuming, slight nods to everyone until I get to the Specialty department. But in my head it's a completely different scene. I don't walk in, I glide in with theme song blasting, and I do it in slow-mo like the opening scene of Mean Streets. I slow-mo point to customers, and they slow-mo smile back. Slow-mo high fives for my fellow team members, a slow-mo knucks explosion with Eddie one of my bosses, and then I get to my department. My whole team stops what they are doing, incredibly elated to see me, they throw me up on their shoulders and cheer. Sadly, I have no choice but to enter reality at this point, and unfortunately there is no slow-mo involved.
The thing about selling Specialty products such as cheese and wine is that some of the people you talk to have very deep, tight pools of knowledge about certain products, and they tend to treat this knowledge as absolute. You can't mess with that kind of passion. These interactions, as long as I've already had my coffee, are always positive learning experiences for me. It's beautiful to see how much pride people take in the knowledge they have about let's say Taleggio, or Sancerre. Sans cafe' however, the experience can be challenging as it leaves me susceptible to the barrage of slightly haughty under the breathe mutterings intended to point out my ignorance. I always tell my team to be aware all the time, there is no use punching the clock and turning off your brain, treat every moment as an enjoyable learning experience. A Happening rather, an experience may imply too much that there is an event that you are bystanding. On the contrary, a happening takes for you to engage and be a part of making it happen. You could look at it two ways, you can spend your day peddling small hunks of curdled milk to a nameless faceless mob, countless heartless transactions until its closing time; or you can be the catalyst that continues to give that cheese or wine life in your transactions. If someone makes you feel stupid, push further, ask more from him or her. If half of what they are saying is not BS then you have learned something, and therefore you have contributed. Think of the word transaction, a mechanized trading of something, right? But think again, what does it mean to trans act? Perhaps it can mean “to act beyond”. So the moral is drink your Ritual coffee, it swallows easier than a bitter pill.
Yeah, it can be challenging though. At any given time we have over two hundred cheeses, but we never seem to have what the person standing in front of us wants. "How could you not have Ahumado de Aliva? Jeez!" Can I offer you something similar? There’s all kinds of rhetoric that’s gone on for hundreds of years between retailers and their customer. “How can I be of service?” “Certainly, is there anything else I can do for you?” “Oh, it was no trouble at all.” I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t say stuff like this a thousand times over. People are wired to know how to act with this sort of language. It’s a formality. The synapse trails created in our brains through countless grocery store transactions equip us to move through these transactions smoothly, and practically with our eyes closed. But that’s like sleepwalking, or like being a zombie. I don’t want you to have that experience, let’s make a happening happen. Often, after I’ve had my Ritual, I ask myself “What happens if I look this person deep in the eyes and say xyz?” For example, just the other day a young woman was perusing the cheese case, she had just gotten her hair cut and it was obvious that the new style was something that she was not yet comfortable with. I had a hunch that she probably had it long for several years, maybe forever and this new short cut was exciting although it’d left her feeling vulnerable. Have you ever noticed that when you get a new shirt or something that you really like, you get paid complements by complete strangers about your shirt? But as that shirt ages the compliments diminish. It’s not the shirt; it’s how you wear it. You stand straighter, you feel more confident, and more attractive, and as it gets older you get used to seeing you in it and it makes you feel blah, and you project blah. Don’t believe me? Spend a week wearing your clothes like it’s the first day you’ve ever worn them. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, the girl with the new haircut. Just at the moment when it was my duty to say something like “Can I help you?” I decided instead to trans act. I said in a familiar way, as if she were a friend of mine, “Oh, you cut your hair.” She looked up at me and then looked behind her to make sure no one else was there that I might have been talking to. “It looks nice,” I continued, leaving her momentarily bewildered as her synapse trail had gone off course. And now while not on autopilot she had no choice but to engage with me, and I could start to really tell her about the cheese.
It's tough sometimes. Often I talk with people who say they have researched (googled) certain products and they seem to disregard my comments if they don't coincide with what they've read. I don’t by any means think of myself as an expert, or even think that I’m often right, but drinking wine and eating cheese doesn’t have anything to do with being right or wrong. It has everything to do with pleasure. I just try to share with you what pleases me. The old adage pertains to cheese and wine too, because you read it, doesn't make it true. You can eat chicken with red wine, and you can chill that red wine too if you want to. In fact, the next time you are in SRF WFM to pick up a rotisserie chicken, come to my department, I will show you a Pinot from Alsace and tell you to put it in your fridge for twenty minutes, and you will have a new vibrant wonderful dinner happening. I have made some pretty awesome food pairings by taking two things that I love and pairing them together. Case in point, Humboldt Fog with Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel. Yum. Chances are you won’t find that online. Mostly they’ll tell you to pair Humboldt with a fruity yet acidic white like a Sauvignon Blanc, or unoaked Chardonnay.
Anyway, be adventurous, come to our cheese department and ask us to try our smelliest cheese. Then go climb a mountain, or swim to Alcatraz and back, and wash it all down with a Gruner Veltliner. That is what life is about, not googling before every step you take.
Okay, now that I'm fully purged of rant, I'll just say that at the end of the day, I still have The Stooges ruminating in my head. I glide out of work satisfied to have talked the value of artisan food and wine with you all day. Thank you for making it happen. It was truly my pleasure. –El Capitan
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