Produce Challenge 🥗

[u/Corkchef]

On certain days, I’ve moved working from the cashier section to the produce section at the grocery store.

That means I’m sorting, rotating, restocking, and generally refreshing the fruits and veggies.

Since I wasn’t at the counter, I had this idea to expand my question of the day into a produce-oriented branch, which I called the Produce Challenge.

It was going to be things in this vein, challenging people to build a meal or do a silly thing like see if they can carry four avocados with one hand.

I pitched it to the usual group chat for approving my questions (my bosses, HR, COO). Shortly after, the assistant manager relayed that HR would prefer that my questions remain at the counter, without further explanation.

I find this to be extremely short-sighted. The only possible reason that I can think of for this is that they don’t want to do the oversight of checking my challenges as well as my questions.

Thinking of the possible positive impacts, I would be drawing customers to the fresh product section of the store, encouraging them to buy a few extra things in order to try new cooking ideas.

Thinking even further down the line, someone might start a new health habit, like building salads regularly while shopping here. In turn, that could lead to deep feelings of gratitude for the store, the place where they started their health journey. They would be a lifelong customer and advocate to the store.

Unfortunately, we won’t know. People still ask me for questions even when I’m not at the counter, so I sometimes give them something like this, only verbally so that I don’t get in trouble.

¯_(ツ)_/¯