Just as there is such a thing as peer pressure, there’s also (more importantly) peer support.
Years ago in the pre-electronic device era, one of our marketing specialists at the grocery chain I worked for had just lost their Day-Timer. The specialist surmised they had inadvertently placed it upon the roof of their car the previous day, somewhere in the rush of things, and drove away. Lost for good.
For the post-boomers and uninitiated out there, a Day-Timer was a common personal planner; an organizer booklet that held a businessperson’s everything: calendar, contact list, appointment book — irreplaceable information. A person back then would rather lose their car keys or wallet than lose their Day-Timer.
This wasn’t just an inconvenience. It was a real blow. The specialists in our cubicle all gathered around to lend support, hang our heads and grieve. We could all relate to what this loss meant. Today, it is akin to having all your electronic devices wiped clean with no cloud backup.
The loss was real, but so was the support.
On another occasion, I had just started working as a produce buyer for a large chain. There were six of us in a square-shaped pod, each desk facing away from one another. We couldn’t see each other easily, but we could hear one another clearly. This was by design, so that when one of us overheard another struggling to, say, find bell peppers or locate an available truck, another buyer might have one or two sources to shout out and lend a hand.
I remember that just a few days on the job, I had an issue with a trucker not being able to load somewhere on time. I was frustrated, as the delay was going to cause my truck to be a day late into our warehouse and I’d likely have hundreds of outs for upcoming store orders. It was tense, and without a nearby produce wholesaler to help cover these outs, I was out of options and out of luck.
Hearing my dilemma, one of my fellow buyers said aloud, reassuringly, “Hey, Armand. Thanks for taking the pressure off, anyway.”
It was gallows humor at its best. I got it right away. You’re in the hot seat, on the radar. A better-you-than-us, good-natured jab. We had to laugh to keep from crying.
I soon learned that this phrase was used often in our buying pod. Things go sideways in a produce buying office all the time: late or delayed product pickups, prorated orders, quality issues, adverse weather, frozen reefers, rejected loads. At one point or another, bad news happens even to the best of us in the produce game.
The words still resonate with me: “Thanks for taking the pressure off.”
But it’s more than that. It was our internal way of saying, “Ugh! That’s awful. We feel for you. That stinks.” Sometimes, it was an opening for one of us to help the affected buyer in other ways. If it was a dilemma that would tie them up for hours, one of us might jump in to cover, to write some purchase orders so no one buyer fell too far behind. Or one of us might say, “Just focus on that (the problem); I’ll let the boss know, and we’ll cover for you in the upcoming meeting.”
We’d also try to put things into perspective and say, “Hey, it’s OK. It’s produce, for crying out loud. Stuff happens. We’re not selling body parts here, after all.”
Sometimes, the support would be more personal in the difficult moment from a sympathetic co-buyer. “I’m getting out, need to run an errand. I’ll bring back some burgers for us.”
The camaraderie, the reassurance — be it in a retail produce crew, buying desk or elsewhere — is usually very strong in a produce team, even if it manifests itself in our somewhat warped, gallows-humor form: Thanks for taking the pressure off.
Works every time.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for two decades.
