Big Box Garden Center

Serving plants serving the Man serving people

I applied for a job in a garden center early last December, 2022. A local plant distributor provides holiday and seasonal plants to big box, and also has a contract to take care of the plants, the ones they provide but also those of other vendors. Most of the other vendors are enormous themselves, providing plants to big box nationally.

I am not in fact employed by big box, nor by local plant distributor. I make $16/hr as a contractor, I am paid by local distributor, but I am required to use big box apps to sign in and out, report progress etc. It is a general rule that an employee costs an employer about 2-3 times what the employer is paying in wages - social security, payroll taxes, workers comp, etc - big box and local distributor are saving a lot of money, paying me as a contractor. I’m not complaining overly much, as that means no one at big box can boss me around, and I have literally not seen an employee of local distributor since the week I started, five months ago (their idea of a great contractor is one they never have to see, talk to or think about.) I have a schedule I set which I only nominally maintain, as I come and go as I feel I am needed.

The job at first was only about 15-20hrs per week, which is actually high for the winter because it was the holiday season and I was taking care of poinsettias, along with the regular indoor plants. By January the hours were down to about 7-12 per week, as indoor plants do not need constant watering (most of them), and stayed that way until Easter: Easter lily’s and palm ferns. Lately I have been working 30+ hrs per week, without breaks, it being spring time and there are 20+ times the number of plants on the floor.

We have sold more than a thousand Boston Ferns and we could have sold more than twice that many.

Word is, plant sales were up 30% year over year, my first two months, and 60% in February. It turns out, people like to buy plants that look healthy and taken care of. That has never been the case here, apparently. Word is, the General Manager (GM) hates plants regardless how they are taken care of, she would get rid of them, and most of the garden center if she could, sell only lawn furniture and barbecue grills. She has never had a dedicated big box employee taking care of plants, winter or summer. When she deigns to water, she drowns the indoor plants, killing a lot of them. Often, when she sends someone to water, not knowing what they are doing, they tend to over-water everything equally. There are a couple of women employees who do care about the plants and do know how to water, though they are never allowed the three hours it takes to water everything in the summer, and neither could do it in anything like that amount of time anyway.

Last year local distributor hired a young woman for the summer, she maybe showed up twice a week, they were throwing away dead plants by the dumpster load, on the regular.

I am an excellent plant waterer, very efficient. There are other things out of my control. One vendor sent a rack of cactus and succulents during a week of -20F temperatures and 95% of the order showed up dead. Many of the indoor plants cannot handle temperatures below 55F, they have the thermostat set at 55F in the winter, which means on cold nights the temperature at floor level might be 45F. Once damaged by cold they never really recover - Hastatum, Alocasia, Zamioculcas, Aglaonema etc. The best I can do is keep the most fragile plants on the highest shelves, but that is not even enough for some of them. Doinea, Venus Fly Trap, will not live long in this climate under any circumstances; we recieve delivery of a hundred and more four times a year, and all of them are dead on the shelf within a month. This spring the largest of the plant distributors sent all of their early spring flowers - hyacinth, tulips, violas, daffodils etc - blooming, a month before they could go in the ground. Staff tell me that happens every year.

A lot of them had started to fade by the time we could even set them outside, and they are still on the floor, on the furthest tables out, in the back corner, looking shaggy and a general mess, though I told staff weeks ago people would buy them on clearance, when you can still see what color the flowers are. Instead those plants will eventually be tossed in a dumpster and written off. The big vegetable plant distributor hasn’t even shown up and it is past mid-May already. I put plants I started under lights in the ground more than a week ago. I can’t get a straight answer from staff as to why vegetable distributor hasn’t shown up, because management does not really care and evidently vegetable distributor is not checking in. Multiple customers ask me where the vegetables are, every hour I am working. Technically plant distributor gets paid when the plant is delivered, timing for them or big box does not otherwise matter, plants are just a draw, that’s all, nothing more.

Despite all that, assuming those sales numbers have held from last winter, and I have every reason to believe they have, I have made a lot of money for big box. Staff were really excited about Mother’s day numbers, $12,000 in sales at the two garden center registers, Sunday; $20,000 in plant sales Friday-Sunday. That is what I was told, I cannot verify, but there was indeed a lot of traffic those three days, and a lot of praise for how good the plants looked, from customers. That cannot be said of the two other big box garden centers within 1000ft from this one, where the plants do not look taken care of. At every morning meeting big box staff are told the numbers from the previous day and week for each dept, compared to the previous year; the garden center stood out. Everyone working in the garden center was feeling pretty good about that.

Then the GM came back from her “vacation”, Monday. She is the kind of manager who goes on “vacation”, reads progress reports and sometimes does a walk through just to remind everybody she is watching. I saw her sauntering through the non-plant garden center areas, two of her assistant managers in tow, late morning. I had been told the previous afternoon, Mother’s Day, that a group from corporate would be doing a walk through Monday around 9am. I assured staff, I will get up early and make sure everything is looking orderly. I was there at 6am, alone, organizing the plants, taking plants from delivery racks to the “resin” tables, sweeping the floor, watering. At 10:30, I had not seen any corporate people doing a walk through, only the GM.

I had been wondering, would anyone from corporate or management ever comment to me about increased garden center sales? More, I anticipated indifference. Then GM sauntered into the flowering plant section, carrying two indoor plants, followed closely by assistant managers.

“Have you watered anything yet?” she said by way of hello, as she walked across wet concrete.

“Everything that needs watering is watered.”

“The indoor plants are looking dry. Are you sure you have watered everything?”

“Those miniature roses you are holding started to die three days after they arrived no matter what I did, and that other plant like a lot of the indoor plants needs only a trickle of water every so often or it rots at the base.” That seemed to stop her, briefly, not actually knowing anything about plant care.

“Alright, well, we can’t have dead plants on the floor. Are you emptying racks?”

“All day today and yesterday.” I might have said, I am the only one emptying racks, which I have been doing regularly for two weeks, even on my supposed days off. And I am the only one watering.

“You watered the racks outside? What about the trees and shrubs?”

“I watered the racks outside, I did not water the trees and shrubs because there is no water on that side of the building and I don’t want to drag a hose through the store, but I checked everything there and it’s fine.”

“There’s no water over there?” as she looked at one of the assistant managers, who looked like he was not enjoying this interrogation at all. He had recently praised me, telling me I really know how to clear a plant rack, but he had not come to my defense.

“There is a work order, you should have an email in your inbox about it,” he said, sheepishly.

“Oh.” Then, without looking at me, she turned away and said as she walked away, “touch up the plants inside before you leave. Thanks.”

I would have much preferred indifference. I wanted to say, imagined saying, after she left, say something nice to me. Here, let me help you, sales are up and we had a great Mother’s Day weekend, keep up the great work. And, I am scheduled from 5-8am today, I didn’t get here until 6 but I am still here at 10:45. But I am a professional and do not want to embarrass her in front of her staff, or I would be out of a job, though technically she can’t fire me. Staff talk about her like she is bi-polar, but she is only 35, she is managing hundreds of employees and has a store revenue I am guessing in the $50+ million range. I might be bipolar if I had to do her job, I usually reply. But I would not rule with fear and intimidation; she has not said one kind or dignified thing to me since I got here, in fact she has been towards me, in the words of one staff member, rude. Managers may not need to be liked, but they do need to be respected. If you insinuate that someone is lying about how much has been watered or not, if you assume people are trying to cheat you, then many of them will do just that. I won’t, I care about these plants, this is about my reputation and ethics. But it is nice to be treated with dignity and respect, as opposed to being treated like a liar.

I should not take it personally. She hates the plant dept, not me necessarily. She is just treating me like she treats everybody here, I’m no special case. At the same time, this is why I sometimes call myself an anarchist, because I am so very skeptical about government and corporations. People like this GM are ubiquitous in public and private institutions of every kind, in fact they predominate, as they must be ruthless, without empathy, what with forty years of downward pressure on working class wages and benefits, institutions need managers who are capable of the inhuman. The largest cost for these institutions is employment, they are all automating as fast as they are able, they would automate it all if they could, people do not matter not even really the customer, it is all about moving product as much as you can fast as you can, at ever lower cost - which downward pressure on employment is just about the only raw GDP “growth” there has been for 40 years, but then I am not an economist highly paid to tell you the opposite, to gaslight you.

But this is about more than economics. It is people like this GM, across the spectrum of institutions public and private, who enforced draconian, authoritarian covid dictates with enthusiatic prejudice. She is of this army of enforcers, the professional managerial class, emotionally stunted, without empathy, happy to flaunt a Constitution they know nothing about, just doing their job breaking the work force, making a mockery of labor laws, turning the citizenry into low-paid precarious associates, adjuncts and contractors.

I just wanted to get paid taking care of plants. I am perfectly fine if I am treated with indifference by management, leave me alone and let me do what I am good at, making a lot of money for you. Hold me accountable if I am not doing my job, but don’t interrogate me once a month assuming I am trying to cheat you, just to intimidate and belittle me.

In fact I could probably save big box hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, coordinating delivery of plants to the north country, but I don’t want that job, I am never going to get that job, that job does not really exist and never will. These plants are just a draw, they are meant to bring people in to buy other stuff. For a company with $572 billion in revenue, there is no talk about plant sales. Plants are a write-off before they are even in the store. In that sense they are like a lot of the employees, sacrificed to the gods of commerce, it doesn’t matter their quality of life, if they don’t sell they just end up in a proverbial dumpster.

It is ironic then, the only place that would employ me to take care of plants year round is big box store. I have complained about big box many times before, before Amazon they defined employee treatment for the industry for decades. I haven’t named them, but I haven’t really hidden the identity either. This was never meant to be a career. That said, I would like to stay, until I decide to go, which I am assuming whatever the treatment of me, I am not going to get fired for keeping plant sales higher than previous years or other outlets, being professional, being friendly and talkative with customers. Whatever the GM thinks, the regular staff like and appreciate me, “you are the best plant person we have ever had,” said one.

I feel an obligation to these plants, I like to think they appreciate me taking care of them. I don’t know to what degree they have “consciousness,” but I am fairly certain they would prefer to be taken care of, to be put in the ground somewhere rather than wither from indifference to be put in a dumpster. I like to think plants don’t want to be treated as a mere commodity, any more than people do. Without plants, there are no people, but without people plants would be fine. Who really is subordinate to whom?

In some sense, this is the best job I ever had. But then, if I were to essentially run the plant side of this big box garden center next spring and summer, that would require a fat raise, but that almost entirely depends not on my performance, but the recommendation of the GM, even though I would be asking the raise from plant distributor. That is a bit dispiriting, feeling like there will be no raise commensurate to my performance, more in line with the actual responsibilities of this job. Which is the story for most working people in America. Which is why we never hear talk about what people (or plants) really need, just a lot of talk about equity, which is really about everybody getting the same (shitty) treatment, pitting the races against each other on the way to being written off and tossed in history’s dumpster, apparently, there’s no shortage of immigrants to replace those who aren’t replaced by machines.

Which is why a personal sense of morality and ethics outside of any one elses treatment of me, is so very important. Which is why I think of it like, taking care of people by way of taking care of plants. It isn’t the Man I serve at big box garden center, it’s plants and people.