Irony ignores Foods' hard workers

Mary Schmich

July 11, 2008

Rose Venditto was on her daily pilgrimage to the Whole Foods salad bar Thursday when she met the blockade of three employees and a closed front door.

"Rose," said one of the employees with an apologetic look. "I know you want lunch."

She handed Venditto a consolation prize. A $5 coupon. A tote bag. And a flier that began:

"Dear Valued Customers,

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As you already know, the Health Department closed our store after finding that we did not fully comply with a few concerns they had, including evidence of mice."

But Venditto had missed the news. So had the constant stream of the hungry and confused.

Who would have thought that this Whole Foods on North Avenue, in one of Chicago's wealthiest neighborhoods, would be caught with mouse feces in the back room and a dead mouse in a glue trap?

"They pride themselves on being a step above, being organic," Venditto said. She laughed. "It is a little ironic."

Ironic suggests a gap between reality and appearance, or reality and expectation, and that's why the closing of this Whole Foods has made news.

If this were a different supermarket and a different part of town, it's less likely that TV cameras would have been pressing at the windows for a glimpse of the employees who had been working all night inside.

But this was drama, this was contrast. Mouse poop versus organic, local, free-range, wild-caught, grass-fed, certified, gourmet, natural, pure and pricey.

The incongruity delighted people who hate Whole Foods, a club that seems to object to the chain as a matter of cultural principle.

Some expressed themselves on the Tribune's Web site:

•"This is what happens when grocery stores are run by hippies who don't believe in pesticide."

•"Why can't mice have an organic experience too? I am shocked that an attorney has not filed a class suit because Whole Foods did not provide adequate bathroom facilities for the mice."

•"Sadly, if Whole Foods packaged [the droppings] nicely as a topping for toast points and charged $10.99 per ounce, the lemming snobs would probably buy it."

It's easy to make fun of Whole Foods, certainly this one on the shopping fringe of Lincoln Park, where cliches often do come true. As a shopper there, I have, in fact, seen Range Rovers and Audis bully each other for parking spots.

But the cliches don't do justice to the people who shop or work there. You can find customers' battered Ford Escorts next to the Lexus sport-utility vehicles. The people who cut the chicken, stack the peaches, punch the registers and sweep the floors come from all over the city and different parts of the world. They're interesting and friendly.

"I feel their embarrassment," Venditto said, glancing toward the employees at the door. "Because they do know people by name."

The mouse poop scandal will pass. If the freshly scrubbed trash cans out front are any indication, the store will be cleaner than ever when it reopens, probably Friday.

Venditto thought the store had done a good job of deflecting customer ire. She'll be back for salad soon, with her $5 coupon.

And the bad news for Whole Foods was good news for Khalid Muhammad and the other homeless men who hang out back by the Dumpsters. They retrieved a bounty Thursday.

"The guys who brought it out were very considerate," Muhammad said. "They didn't mind us getting what we want as long as we didn't make a mess."

The men clustered around a couple of shopping carts filled with bottled water, juice, tortilla chips and eggs.

"And the good thing about it is," he said, "it's organic."

He was not being ironic.

mschmich@tribune.com