Meijer Culture Analysis

Donning a baking apron and entering Meijer as a new employee required a level of resocialization on my part. As a part of my first job experience, I had to remove some of the behavior patterns of before I was out of high school (such as not censoring my words) and transform into a highly focused, efficient, and cheery cog in this rather functionalistic society (page 86). However, not only did I have to use impression management to make myself appear the ideal employee for my employer and customers (page 95), I had to adapt to their “Three Stuffs” and my new role as well. Taking on the status (position) in the company as a worker also required me to take on the specialized role as a bakery clerk. The “ideal” role, as in every role given by …show more content…
As a bakery clerk, I was expected to wear a bright red button-up shirt, black or tan pants, shoe covers, and a bright blue apron and hat baring the Meijer logo. Wearing this not only reinforced the feeling of deindividuation, it also formed subcultures (or parts of a society that have distinctive values rituals etc.) based on the company 's hierarchal level of organization (page 69). Red shirts performed the more “low-leveled” skills such as working bakery, placing products onto the sales floor, and cashiering. Blue shirts consist of upper management positions that told the red shirts what tasks to perform. Finally, those in Meijer wearing white shirts and ties were the upper management, which controlled both those with blue and red shirts. Interestingly enough, although these uniforms were established to ease employees into conforming to their assigned roles, it lead to social tensions within the red shirt (“lower class”) and blue shirt (“middle-upper class”) levels. While the managers attempted to assert their dominance through humiliating acts such as public shaming and punishment, a small group of red shirts formed a counterculture ( a group that is against certain aspects of a society) that opposed the store and openly defamed it (page 70). They refused to properly wear their uniforms by sagging their pants, smoke weed in the parking lot publicly, and refused to work on tasks assigned by upper management. Showing that the material culture or the store (in this case the uniforms), deeply affected the non-material culture (the beliefs, methods of communication, etc.) of the environment (page 74). This is interesting to note, as although Meijer attempted towards the stable,