Trader Joe's Delivers Again

I've been avoiding the new Trader Joe's on the Upper West Side for months. Although I'd have loved to shop there, I'd heard that the lines were unbelievably long and was, frankly, not in the mood to deal with it. Rumor has it that one can expect to wait in line for around 45 minutes at the TJ's nearest NYU. There are only 3 of them in Manhattan, and demand is apparently pretty high. This evening, however, I found myself emerging from the subway right outside it with a few minutes to spare and "Buy tomatoes" on my to-do list. I braced myself and headed in.

The whole store is underground. Once inside, your only option is to go down via escalator or elevator. There are two subterranean levels. Of course I realized I absolutely had to have several other things once inside, like spinach and packaged baby beets, so I put about 6 items in my basket before bracing myself for the line.


I've seen lines like this before, but I associate them with theme parks or bread lines during the Depression. There were at least (I swear I am not exaggerating) 35 people ahead of me in the line I chose, and there was a line of equal length parallel to mine. The lines were so long that there were two employees whose sole job, so far as I could see, was to stand at the end of the line holding large, colorful signs with downward arrows which said "End of Line." I set my face to pissed-off and queued up.

To my amazement, the line moved very rapidly. I got to what I thought was the front after no more than five minutes, but it turned out to be just a curve. This meant that there were about 10 more people in the original line than I'd estimated at the outset, but it also gave me a view of the checkout counters and I understood the reason for my quick progress: There were TWENTY-NINE checkout counters available. An employee stood between the two lines and directed customers to the next open counter, and she sent people off at the rate of about one every five seconds or so. Start to finish, I was in the line for less than ten minutes. Amazing.

The guy that rang me up was, hands down, the friendliest cashier I've encountered since moving to New York; most of them won't even make eye contact and act as though your need for supplies is an unforgivable imposition. The bag of spinach, salad dressing, and goat cheese I picked up each cost at least a dollar less than I'm used to paying for them in the city, so I handed over far less of my wallet's contents than I generally do. And the images of harried New Yorkers, all in dark colored clothes with red faces, heavy scarves, and big boots for the 32-degree high temperature we had today, set against a backdrop of oversize technicolor tropical flowers that are TJ's trademark decor was pretty amusing. One of the families I tutor for lives about a block away from Trader Joe's, and I will most definitely be back. I forgot to pick up some Two-Buck Chuck.