“Too big. Too dirty. Too ugly.”
Looks like it’s John Mackey week here at our blog. The New Yorker’s blog The Book Bench did a shout out to the article on Mackey I mentioned the other day which covers something both Robert and I both blogged about back when it happened in 2007. That’s when Mackey got busted by the SEC for making disparaging comments about Wild Oats in anonymous message board posts before Whole Foods bought the company.
Having just checked our archives, I see that we were only able to bring you snippets of what Mackey said at that time. However, thanks to a link from The Book Bench, I found long excerpts of Mackey’s original posts at Harper’s (subs. only) and guess what? Our favorite company comes up a lot. Here are excerpts:
“I don’t see Wal-Mart as a threat to Whole Foods. Rather I believe that Wal-Mart will ultimately increase Whole Foods’ sales. Most Whole Foods core customers don’t like Wal-Mart. Why not? Too big. Too dirty. Too ugly. Bad service. Lack of knowledge about the products. An underpaid workforce resulting in a high ratio of unenthusiastic and poorly trained part-time employees.”
“No doubt Whole Foods has more gay people working and shopping there than Wal-Mart does because of its greater tolerance and appreciation for alternative lifestyles (and therefore probably more with AIDS). On the other hand, Wal-Mart probably has a lot more people working and shopping there who are obese, smoke, are alcoholics, have cancer, heart disease and diabetes.”
Since I like to think I’m a more diplomatic person than Mackey obviously is, I’ll end with a quote about him that I saw today in Fast Company:
Sorting through Mackey’s ideals, actions, and thoughts is a hefty task, but one thing’s for sure: The man’s got some entertaining things to say.