Park Slope Food Coop
Who doesn't love child labor? When I was growing up in the strip malls of Florida there was an amusement park (?) called Wannado City, in an actual mall, that formed a small city where children could role play (cosplay) as adults and pretend to do jobs. I unfortunately never experienced it first hand, but maybe I can claim I wasn't subjected to child labor?
In middle school in different configurations over the years the school I went to had a micro society. In addition to learning the regular curriculum the school would take time to break off and do a variety of things to emulate a real world society. This would culminate in a market where you could with fake money buy goods that other people had created. The details are so hazy, and they may sound like a fever dream. However, I do remember having to do trash clean up when I was in 6th grade as part of the society. I also have a memory of a classmate decorating hats to look like Mario and Luigi hats, and that having a lot of traction in the markets. I was also part of a group that reviewed music. Not sure if we sold our reviews or if that went anywhere.
In the present day I am "over employed" at the Park Slope Food Coop. A common refrain is that if you haven't worked a service industry job then you can't have empathy for those who are in the service industry (or something like that). The Food Coop has a work requirement so this has been my foray into working in the service industry. Wannado City and the micro society aren't formative experiences that led me to coop it's more so that the coop is so close to me, and having an exclusive members only group seemed so alluring that I had to join.
The full time employees at the coop are angels because any given shift can be something out of undercover boss, in the sense that any individual may have never done the shift before, or the work requirement is so infrequent (currently every 6 weeks) that by the time people are back at a shift they don't remember all the details.
In the first three weeks I was a member of the coop my enthusiasm ran high and I did a shift a week! The first shift was a 7:00am lifting shift where I helped sort cases of kombucha, eggs, milk, mushrooms, kimchi, and meats. It's cool seeing the behind the scenes of a grocery store, and definitely gave me a new found appreciation for all the details and logistics that go into something that I take for granted.
The Park Slope Food Coop has a magnetism about it, because in the first shift I met a man who lives in Harlem, but still comes all the way out to Brooklyn, and has been a member for 11 years. In the next shift I met a man who lives in the Bronx and has been in the coop for longer than 11 years. To me these experiences are more perplexing than anything else. Even though the coop doesn't run at a profit the prices can still be high (produce list for reference). Unexpectedly I came away with a huge appreciation for stores like Trader Joe's after taking part in the food coop. Ultimately, my framing around the coop was wrong in that I was expecting it to be a more affordable grocery store when it's more fitting to think about it as a more affordable daily farmers market.
I definitely didn't expect that my takeaway from a cooperative would be praise for the efficiency of capitalism! Regardless the coop is my closest grocery store, and it's a unique amazing experience that I am happy to be a part of, and look forward to continuing to experience!