Eff Whole Foods

Does that look like "cheese and jalapeno to you?

One of the joys of having a blog is having someplace to vent. For instance I could craft an entire post about the buggery of Blogger's new interface. It blows, sucks balls, whatever euphemism you want to use, it's horrible.

But this isn't about the truly retched nature of Blogger's new interface, it about my completely losing faith in Whole Foods.

Now I'm not one of those people who swears by Whole Foods. In fact I don't really swear by any grocery store, I go where the ice cream and junk food is. I shop at Whole Foods for two reasons; when I feel like I want to be trendy and because it's convenient.

This week, however, Whole Foods did something that completely caused me to lose my faith in them as an organization. Before I get to that allow me to backtrack a bit.

Two months ago I popped into Whole Foods and what did I spy? Only my favorite food in the world; tamales. Being from Tucson, Mexican food is my soul food. And living in the Charm City, tamales are hard to come by.

Unfortunately the tamales at Whole Foods that day were pork (I don't dig on swine.)

Strike One!

I was mildly disappointed. But imagine my surprise when I came in the next day and again there were tamales, only this time they were cheese and jalapeño. I would have settled for chicken, but cheese and jalapeño are probably my favorite kind of tamale.

I buy them, take them home and put them in the fridge. Then I wait a couple days until I've got time to savor them. I pop a couple in the microwave and devour one so fast, I don't have time to process that it's actually a pork tamale.

Why are my apostrophes all jacked up?

I'll spare you the details of the number that tamale did on my digestive system. But it wasn't pretty.

Strike Two! (At least the pricing and the mislabeling is consistent.)

forward to last Saturday. I got to Whole Foods, see they have cheese and jalapeño tamales. I specifically ask the guy behind the counter if they're cheese and jalapeño, because I remember the last time. He assures me that they are. I buy half a dozen.

And then something weird happens; feeling under the weather, I leave the tamales on my counter for 18 hours. Once I discover the error I immediately freeze them. And today I try my luck only to discover that yet again, I've got a tamale that's not cheese and jalapeño.

Nothing cheese and jalapeno about this.

I'm frustrated. I'm angry that twice I've been bamboozled by Whole Foods. I'm irritated that I fell for it a second time. It's like when someone cheats on you and you stick with them and it happens again. I knew the deal, I knew the labelers at Whole Foods were trustworthy, yet I put my trust in them.

I don't know where we go from here. I'm sure every time I go to Whole Foods and see tamales, I'll look and see if they're labeled "cheese and jalapeño." If they are I'll probably get my hopes up. But I'll probably never get the courage to pull the trigger on that purchase again.

So, seriously; eff Whole Foods.