On Friday, I wrote an article about how to steal from Whole Foods. I mainly wrote it to be playful – there were jokes in there… but I also wrote it because I just love talking about Whole Foods. Whole Foods is my religion [1] – I have eaten pretty much every single one of my meals there [2] since I got my first law school financial aid check [3]. I am always tweeting about Whole Foods.
As I said in the article, expensing Whole Foods was my first order of business when Genius was accepted into Y Combinator.
The first response to my article that threw me out of my chair was when Whole Foods responded to my article!
@mahbodmoghadam Well that's not very nice. Thanks for the heads up on your sneaky tricks. #noted
— Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods) November 14, 2014
I’ve had convos with the Whole Foods tweeter before, and, I gotta say, their tweeter sucks. If I was in control of the Whole Foods Twitter… oh man… I could double their business in a week [4].
But still – Whole Foods tweeting a reply to my Whole Foods article – I was honored [5].
When I wrote the article, I didn’t even think anyone would read it. I definitely didn’t think Whole Foods would read it… I guess that’s my main problem. The reason I get into so much trouble is I treat the internet as my personal diary, I never think anyone else will bother to read what I write [6].
First time I went to my Mothership Whole Foods after releasing the article was super weird…all the employees had read the article! They were all smirking and giving me funny looks. The security guard stood next to me at the hot bar whistling… it was pretty funny. I was ashamed, I didn’t even change the sticker on my apples, but the cashier still rang them up with the cheaper code! He gave me a wink, I felt like we were in Fight Club.
Then, there was a gaggle of plebeians who got pissed at me. A lot of trolls told me I’m going to hell… what hurt particularly was all the commenters who were like “I’m a Whole Foods employee! You are stealing from us!” – how has Whole Foods managed to brainwash these employees? If I worked at Whole Foods, I would do everything in my power to help the customers steal. It is bad enough we gotta live under Capitalism guys, no need to willingly transform it into Fascism…
Amidst all the fallout, there is one comment I’ve seen repeatedly which particularly rankles me: “IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD WHOLE FOODS, WHY NOT GO TO TRADER JOE’S??” Who was the inventor of this stupid Whole Foods / Trader Joe’s dichotomy? It is as erroneous as you can get! Trader Joe’s doesn’t have a salad bar or a hot bar – they have a handful of ready-made foods that totally suck.
Everyone thinks of Trader Joe’s as “cheap” – but if you compare their crappy produce to ethnic markets, it is actually still a rip-off. Meanwhile, the appropriate comparison to Whole Foods’ salad bar is restaurants, which are obviously way more expensive [7].
Also – maybe this should be another article – but allow me a mini-screed against Trader Joe’s: pretty much all Trader Joe’s packaged foods have unnecessary sugar and other disgusting ingredients. The “Trader Joe’s smell” [8] that hits you in the face when you enter TJ’s makes me want to throw up. [9]
The third group that got mad at me are the illustrious “Tech Illuminati” – there’s this dude “Jason” on Twitter – I guess he invested in Uber or something – he seems like a fat booger. He got the ball rolling:
https://twitter.com/Jason/status/533826606138019843
Now… I am all for challenging gender norms… but is it appropriate for a grown man to threaten to spank another grown man?
Luckily, there are some smart, non-Aspergers people in tech, too. Blogger Stephen Corwin contended tech people offended by my article are “goobers” [10].
Now, I don’t really give shit what “Jason” thinks [11]. But when the Whole Foods article caused the man whom I call “Daddy” to disown me, that’s when my heart really broke into a million pieces:
https://twitter.com/bhorowitz/status/534529750996221952
What really hurt me was that Ben used a dangling preposition in his diss of me. Dangling prepositions really rankle me. It is not a grammar issue, it is a style issue. When you let that preposition dangle… it makes your writing cumbrous and unclear [12].
Whole Foods Corporate. Whole Foods Westwood employees. The Tech Illuminati. They all read my article, and it feels really weird.
The good news is: they haven’t banned me from Whole Foods (yet). I don’t think Whole Foods Westwood will ever ban me – they love me! – if a ban happens, it is going to get handed down from the Corporate Mothership in Austin. The press will ask them for a statement, and they may wish to make an example of me…
And so, I end this article with a message to Corporate Whole Foods HQ: I love you guys! Please don’t ban me. Hire me to do social media for you! If you ban me, I am going to have to learn to cook… if you think about it, #stealfromwholefoods could be a sick viral media campaign, it could be like the Whole Foods version of “Jared From Target”… 
p.s. ONE MORE HUSTLE one of the commenters taught me [13]: the coffee bags are opaque and coffee is $5.99/lb, so you can put bulk bin shit in there if they don’t check [14].
