At the Annual Meeting, Sabine Rhyne, our General Manager, used this phrase to characterize why shoppers chose the Co-op: “The reasons we, or at least I, head to the Co-op have to do with more than what is offered on the shelves.” In some respects the Co-op difference is intangible, elusive. In addition to purchasing food, you might see someone you’ve been meaning to call, hear live music in the café, and/or alleviate the feeling of ennui we can experience in our disconnected society. I know that I shop the Co-op for a myriad of reasons—it’s about the food, but it’s not just about the food.
Unconscious Bias
Self-Improvement, 2020 Edition
Despite it being January, it’s hard to know where to start, when we are looking at new beginnings throughout our lives. First and foremost, I want to express the thinking I’ve been doing since the week of the Annual Meeting, including the community conversation in which many of us took part. The most overarching emotion to convey is gratitude. Gratitude to the aggrieved parties who took the forum offered to shareholders to bring up concerns to the organization and to quite openly expose their hurt and dismay at the various transgressions we have made, the microaggressions we have perpetrated on people of color. Although our Co-op is an open and forward-thinking organization, we reflect the society we occupy, with all of its faults and challenges. So many of us have incorporated unconscious bias in our lives since we were small, since our great-greats were small, that we are terribly blind to the effects of our words and actions.
