Despite several signs explicitly requiring all shoppers to wear enough middle-class outdoor gear for a hike up Little Si, witnesses waiting in line outside to enter the store say a Trader Joe’s bouncer had to turn away a man for not wearing enough North Face tonight.
“Look, don’t come without at least a North Face windbreaker and act like you don’t know what’s gonna happen when you get here,” said Trader Joe’s bouncer Seth Pilsen, who halted the man before he came in. “I don’t care if you’ve been in line for more than an hour in the freezing cold to get into this holiday grocery wonderland of pfeffernusse, dark chocolate shortbread stars and frozen hors d’oeuvres. I don’t care if you’ve got a sexy chest tattoo of Mount Rainier herself. If you don’t look like you’re about to take the family out to Rattlesnake Ledge, you gotta get out of here.”
Pilsen said his job screening who is bougie enough to enter the hallowed store of remarkably affordable and tasty gourmet delights hasn’t been easy, especially when some wannabe shoppers are too bougie even for Trader Joe’s taste.
“Last week a guy wearing an Arc’teryx jacket and his Patagucci girlfriend tried to just waltz in here unnoticed and, you know, not on my watch,” Pilsen said. “They’re just casually walking around in the most expensive gear designed to keep you alive in a white-out on Mount Baker at a grocery store. Not over here, buddies. You go to PCC and Metropolitan Market with that shit.”
When asked if he ever accepted bribes from people who waited in line all night but didn’t fit the store’s dress code, Pilsen grabbed a giant Santa bag filled with pfeffernusse cookies and ran into the night.
