I may be a basic suburban middle class middle aged married white cis het mom, but I AM NOT A SCAB.
Do I miss my beloved holiday drink menu? Of course I do (see above). But! Yesterday! Trolling Whole Foods with Minnie (mainly for bread cubes for my stuffing-- theirs are the best-- and a couple of subtle winter/fall transition candles (the 365-brand candles are also really truly the best and only TWELVE DOLLARS!) I FOUND THIS STUFF. Life changer, guys.
Yes, I get it. Amazon owns Whole Foods. Amazon is the worst. My tiny act of not crossing a picket line (my stores are not even actively on strike) is pretty much bullshit when that's where I spend my dollars. Does late stage capitalism/ neoliberalism on steroids make all boycotts bullshit? I think maybe. I guess I need to switch my allegiance to my local organic co-op, but real people who live and work in my real town also really work at Whole Foods and Starbucks. Bah. I am not as vapid as I come off on this blog sometimes, my dear friends. I've just sort of... already analyzed the situation and made a choice that might... be a shitty one sometimes because nihilism.
The coffee creamer, though, is A GOOD CHOICE.
My little consumer capitalist
I feel like all corporations are kind of screwing everyone over on some level, so we just have to do the best we can. We cannot, after all, create our own coffee creamers with our own backyard farms, can we? So we just have to do the best we can.
ReplyDeleteYou have never remotely come across as vapid. Do you watch The Good Place? Best explanation for why no one can get to heaven in late stage capitalism. No one in the developed world anyway. It's all so depressing, and then we can't even get a fucking peppermint white hot chocolate to cheer ourselves up.
ReplyDeleteI agree, we all do our best. And while I have been (mostly) avoiding Amazon and Whole Foods since maybe February, I still have an iPhone and am buying my daughter new earbuds for Christmas and I got Starbucks the other day. I ran some kind of lame justification through my head, which was that I had reloaded my gift card prior to the strike, so SBucks wasn’t getting any NEW money from me, but I was still supporting the employees of my local shop. Yeah, I twisted myself into a pretzel on that one.
ReplyDeleteI shop at Jewel for groceries and recently I’m thinking - wait Walmart is SO much cheaper but I hate Walmart. They are not good to their employees, right? But lower prices? Hmm.
ReplyDeleteI unironically asked ChatGPT to give me suggestions for living more anti-capitalist. I feel like a hypocrite all the time. But, I am trying to do more at local businesses and also figure out a way to do some things myself. But, this world doesn't make it easy! Thanks for posting this though. It really hit the feels for me!
ReplyDeleteI've been in a Starbucks maybe three times in my life, don't drink coffee, and my kid was involved with Jaz Brizak (they're still friends), so *my* complete avoidance of Starbucks comes easy.
ReplyDeleteBUT I would NOT judge ANYONE for their choices under late capitalism! I'm so glad you found a hack... I know secondhand how coffee can be crucial in setting the pace and tenor of the day.
Yay for the creamer! So funny you found it at the same time that I did. :) Let the holidays begin!
ReplyDeleteAlso: it's so hard to shop consciously these days. Technically, you can't shop anywhere. I gave up Amazon, but haven't quit Target yet. I do my best, and so do you.
Wait. What? Starbucks? What is happening? Arrrrrg.
ReplyDeleteI am a SUCKER for all the fancy drink accoutremonts right now. We've started a pretty impressive syrup collection and I bought into the flavored sugars. It's all downhill from here I think. I think we need to put our energy where we can. I'm still 90% not buying at Target, but then that means that a lot of stuff has to come from Walmart. But Walmart at least wears their evilness on their sleeve and is open about it? And while I'd love to only patronize small, local bookstores, books are really expensive if you're not getting the Amazon deals. So I buy a few at the local places and a few less on Amazon. We're all doing our best :)
ReplyDelete