I just read that Frederik Meijer, the chair of the Meijer retail chain that stretches across a cluster of five Midwestern states, has died at age 91.
When I was 16, I got a job working as a bagger at my local Meijer store. I moved to cashiering at 18 and stuck with Meijer into my early twenties. A big piece of my current work ethic is a product of those Meijer years. Here’s what I learned:
1. Capitalism disproportionately hurts ethnic minorities. I worked at Meijer while I was in high school and college, never planning to stick around after that. Many of my coworkers had the same plan; and then there were the lifers: People who had worked at Meijer for years or decades and had no plans to leave. When I lived and studied in Grand Rapids, MI, most of the lifers were African-American or Latino. Meijer employees were also made up of a set of short-timers: Underskilled workers who would spend a few weeks or a few months working at Meijer before moving on to another short-term job. The short-timers were also largely African American or Latino. The employees who were killing time until they finished school: Almost exclusively white.
2. There’s always another way to say “no.” At least when I worked there, new Meijer employees went through a several-day training period. During mine, a low-level manager said something I haven’t forgotten: If the answer to a customer’s request is ‘no,’ find a way to answer that sounds more like “no, but….” The example she gave: “I can’t do that for you, but let me see if I can find someone who can.”
3. If someone asks “where do you keep the…” give them your best guess, then rush away in case you’re wrong. This way you’re at least sending them in the right general direction, and they’ll probably find an employee over there who knows more than you do. And if you’re totally wrong, at least you’re off the hook.
4. Showing up late gets you in trouble; conversely, no consequences means no reason to get there on time. At Meijer, employees who clocked in more than a few minutes late got “in trouble” for lateness–eventually, you would get “written up” and if you were late with a high enough frequency you might ultimately get fired. Boy, getting fired sure was the worst case scenario back then. So I learned that if there’s someone paying attention to the time clock, you need to get there on time; and if there’s nobody paying attention, there’s no reason for punctuality. I’m still trying to unlearn this lesson.
locations of Meijer, Inc., retail stores
5. Getting fired is the worst case scenario. Well, at least I thought it was back then. Really, the only true power an employer has over employees is to discontinue employment. If you need a job, or even if you don’t, most people will do whatever it takes to avoid getting fired. But then your employment is discontinued and all the power you believed your employer had over you…it disappears.
6. Unions are pretty good. Meijer employees are unionized, which really basically meant that I was making more money at my minimum-wage job than my friends were making at thei
rs. At the end of my time with Meijer in the late ’90s, I was earning around $7.85 an hour, which felt like a fortune at the time.
7. Huh. Meijer is anti-gay. Actually, I just learned this today, while looking for information on Meijer’s unionization. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s Buyer’s Guide for LGBTQ-friendly shopping, Meijer is a consistent offender for its refusal to offer benefits for partners of same-sex employees, for a complete lack of protections against harassment and discrimination of LGBTQ employees, and for a lack of diversity training to support LGBTQ employees. Meijer’s most recent rating of 20/100 is actually its best showing ever, since it started out with a rating of zero and hovered at around 8 for many years.
