THE FRESH MARKET HOG
BY
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS
I like to walk up to the Fresh Market in Sunset Harbour in South Beach once a week to buy a scone and some yogurt for lunch, which I prefer to enjoy in the little park on Biscayne nearby because the new sewer installed during the monumental road-raising to mitigate global-warming flooding often stinks badly around Fresh Market’s outdoor dining area, which is partly inhabited by people rendered homeless by rising rents from the economic boom.
The pricing at Fresh Market is not quite as outrageous as at Whole Foods, which residents have taken to calling “Hole” Foods because “it is a money hole.” Not only are there dogfights between so-called comfort dogs at Whole Foods, much to the confusion of seeing-eye dogs and the blind, but fights also break out between customers generally denominated as “hangry” people. Its outside eating area is larger than Fresh Market’s yet has its fair share of unemployed habitués, including the occasional beautiful model seeking support.
Amazon has purchased Whole Foods, promising price reductions, but they have been few and far between. Unemployed people have complained about a recent hiring fair staged by Amazon Whole Foods; they say it was a fraud, a publicity stunt. I have sighted a few new employees, but I also see many members of the old cult of unfriendly, lowly paid employees around. I was told they have a 360-degree review scheme whereby newbies are rated by oldies, and that tends to cultivate arrogance among the oldies.
Fresh Market employees, on the other hand, seem to turn over faster and are cordial, except for a rather curt and brusque general manager. Of course most of the employees are lowly paid, and those who do remain for long complain about the vacation and sick pay. They all seem to enjoy going overboard to help customers, so that is a positive unless you are in line at the register.
I ventured to Fresh Market again on New Year’s Eve, had a little sampler cup of a wide variety of coffee, grabbed a $1 scone, and headed for the Greek yogurt, which I knew was on sale for $1 a cup.
A young man who was stocking the area said hello and shook my hand although I did not know him. My sympathies are with unions as well as management given my own background, and the devil in me likes to kid around.
“Would you like to join the union?” I asked.
“Not right now,” he said, eyeing me.
“The pay here is way too low, you know, and the minimum wage put forward by that hog of a mayor we had is miniscule compared to what he and his kind plunders labor for.”
The young man looked a bit confused, probably because I am an older guy and was dressed like a businessman. He said nothing.
“He has many millions, is an owner of the big shopping center around the corner, and has lots of other stuff. He is a faux democrat, a close friend of the Clintons, or so they think. He wants to be governor of the Florida now, and is posing as a John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Luther King knockoff in his television campaign.”
To that the young fellow also remained silent although his eyes lit up at the mention of MLK.
“These people are space hogs,” I kept on goading him. “It is all about space, and they want to milk it for every cent. Take this scone, here. They have downsized it recently. It is much smaller, about 30% smaller now. The packages keep getting smaller and smaller, and lower priced items removed and replaced with higher margin items. It is happening all over town. Publix over on Sixth shuffled the stock around to different aisles to confuse people, and got rid of things like Pepsodent toothpaste, which was going well at a dollar a tube, so people would have to pay three times or more that for a tube of toothpaste.
“You are right about the prices. They are going up. Smart people are noticing what is happening with prices and the stocking policy change.”
“It is about the space. Money extorted from wage slaves is flowing into the luxury areas. Developers are filling up every square inch with expensive quarters. Landlords are raising rents. They are pushing working class people out as the politicians give lip service to affordable housing and sell out to the developers. One commissioner said, in private, of course, that there should be no more low cost housing. Another agreed, and said the high prices ‘keeps the riffraff out.’ One cannot tell, just by looking, of the difference between humans and hogs nowadays. Everyone seems to have a pig heart transplant. The hogs at the top are getting fatter and fatter. President Trump is their hog-in-chief.”
That name got a rise out of him.
“President Trump is not good,” he said with a frown.
“He will help the Republicans take away social welfare programs.”
“They cannot do that.”
“Don’t bet on it. There is going to be a reckoning, there always is, and the hogs will be slaughtered one day, and the cycle will begin again unless we unionize.”
He was not ready for the revolution I was alluding to as the devil’s advocate. He said he commuted to work from North Miami, which is one of the most violent neighborhoods in Miami. He graduated from high school and nursing college, and was looking forward to a professional career, he said, and he really liked to work.
“Work keeps wage slaves busy and distracted so they will not revolt against their masters, and, before they know it, their life is over. In the meantime the hogs are wallowing in luxury.”
“Well, work does not mean that to me,” he said in a polite tone. He obviously believes there is virtue in working for the Man at minimum wage and commuting three hours a day from an impoverished neighborhood pending its gentrification.
He said that Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, had said something interesting about slavery. Douglass knew that the struggle against the enslavement of Africans was about freeing all men and women from oppression, not just Africans.
“Not many people know that name,” I said. “Even fewer remember George Fitzhugh. He said Negroes were enslaved to civilize them, because, without slavery they were a nuisance to Anglo-Saxons, who were the only people fit to be free. As far as he was concerned, free trade was evil because it made people selfish. If Necessity did not force blacks to work for whites, society would be barbaric.”
The young stocker just went on stocking at that. I was incredulous. What has happened to our youth that it could be so passive upon the declaration of such racist trash? Maybe it was just his customer service training at Fresh Market, I speculated. He was just being nice.
Another young man happened to be offering samples of yogurt next to us. He was listening intently to our exchange. He was also young, thin and light brown like the stocker.
“Would you like to try some yogurt? It has lots of protein and less sugar.”
“I am having this Greek yogurt. It is on sale.”
“Greek yogurt is high in protein.”
“What about sugar?”
We checked the labels carefully. The Greek yogurt I was about to purchase had far more protein and less sugar than the brand he was offering.
“Maybe you should throw those samples away and let people sample this Greek yogurt on the shelf right next to you because it is better.”
“I don’t care about that. I am paid to give out these samples.”
Such is the nature of our political-economy, I thought, and then made one last attempt to politically engage these nice young men.
“You know, Barrack Obama was the best white president we ever had, and Clinton was the best black one.”
“I wish Obama was still president,” said the stocker.
“Obama was good,” said the sampler.
“Trump, Trump, Trump!” bellowed a man as loudly as a Harley-Davidson hog, suddenly rushing down the aisle toward us. Ruddy white, short of stature, a yard wide, stout around the shoulders, maybe two-hundred fifty pounds and around forty-years old he was at that.
“Obama,” pronounced, must have been his cue to charge.
“Obama bad! Trump Good! Obama bad! Trump good!”
The two young men backed away, amazed. Where did this guy come from?
“What about Clinton?” I said.
“Jail Crooked Hillary! Trump, Trump, Trump!”
“At least Obama is a gentleman’s gentleman,” I said.
“Trump, Trump, Trump!” he repeated, coming straight at me, with head down, as if he were going to gore me in the thigh.
The youngsters demurred, but I was tempted by my short temper to grab a can from the shelf and knock this beast out. I happen to be descended from the Clan Campbell of the Wild Boar. My clan took that ferocious wild boar as totem because our heroic ancestor slew the huge feral hog that led three hundred hogs including his dozen favorite sows on a rampage, destroying the environment, even killing some humans and eating their babies. Descendants of that awful whitish hog can still be found in Scotland, but they are fully domesticated and abhor the wild behavior of their ancestral hog.
Fortunately for the both of us, the hoggish man skirted around me and vanished down the aisle before I could grab a can, hopefully of spinach because age has weakened me considerably.
“Wow, what was that?” said one of the astonished youths.
“That was a wild boar, probably a multimillionaire who has a yacht down here, a wife and kids, and several girlfriends.”
“Gee, what would his daughter think of him?”
“Do not worry about that. She is most likely a KKK girl.”
“What?”
“Ice-T’s Ku Klux Klan girl.”
“Ice-T? He is old, a long time ago.”
With that I gave up and bade them good luck. These nice kids nowadays are so out of touch with the revolution. No problem. The animals should never give up hope. The pendulum shall swing back, and we shall have a better compromise with more room after the Reckoning. I hope to see the compromise, but I hope not to see the burnt offering.
xYy
Miami Beach January 2018
Ron