I expected to dislike Trader Joe’s.
Wait, that’s too soft. I wanted to dislike Trader Joe’s – which is a really harsh mindset.
What can I say? I’m old and borderline crotchety.
By the time we here at the Times Free Press had published dozens of stories over the years saying that Trader Joe’s parent company might, conceivably, someday, fingers-crossed, if-we-were-extremely-lucky, decide to build a store in Chattanooga, I was in the camp of skeptics thinking, “Come on, now, what’s the big deal? It’s just a grocery store.”
The whole Trader Joe’s phenomenon had started to sound a bit cultish to me.