I have very mixed feelings about this one.

I cannot get over how the plot makes 0 sense, most of these thing would not have been able to happen in a field lab setting. Working in laboratory quality systems myself, the faults were glaring. I make a few posts about this in the forum but long story short there was no health and safety or proper laboratory procedures followed here. Lab staff are supposed to be trained in the areas that they work in, and they shouldn't be doing anything other than that. There should've been protocol they all followed.

It's a huge shame because I loved the rest of the book. The character interactions, the weird fetish and selfishness belonging the main character, the disease itself. That's why I'm still giving it 2.5 stars, because it was well written even though the plot made no goddamm sense. It was queer and odd and unique. The horror was cool. I just, ah. Can't let it go.

Important to bear in mind here is that Joe the author actually has not owned Trader Joe's the company since 1979, has not worked at the company since 1988, and has been deceased since 2020. So this book has very little to do with any current events related to TJ's and instead reads more like a memoir, which it basically is; the fact that Joe worked as a management consultant for many years before he died certainly colors some sections as more advice-oriented, but they vibe with the overall memoir feel since they are almost always presented as "here's how I did it."

Ok, with that said, I really enjoyed this one! As I mentioned when I started reading, I was ready for it to be full of preachy rich old white guy bullshit, but instead I was very pleasantly surprised to discover the story of a smart, quirky, and all-around decent dude who had a "Chief Skunk" sign on his office door instead of "CEO," refers to store workers as his "front-line troops," and went in to work the register himself when stores were open on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. I suspect a hint of neurodivergence as well, and just generally found his observations and opinions on the events of his life and business decisions very interesting, specifically because they are not your typical shareholder-oriented, squeeze-the-life-out-of-everything-else kind of opinions. Also a lot of insights into business in the 60s-80s that are absolutely fascinating just on like a historical time capsule level. He definitely has some questionable opinions about government regulations, unions, etc, but instead of coming across as skeezy it was more like, these are the various puzzles that Joe came across in the course of doing business, and how he solved them; he will be the first to admit he didn't always get it right and I can appreciate that things are not always as straightforward as they may seem.

Would definitely recommend to anyone interested in business, retail, memoir, or Trader Joes specifically lol