The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Wildberries

  • Wildberries employees speak on store-wide profiling

    Wildberries employees speak on store-wide profiling

    By Dezmond Remington and Jasmin Shirazian

    Colorful and bright, full of fresh produce, natural foods and community bulletins, Wildberries looks like the perfect hippie store. A store where people of all kinds can purchase their $10 a pound granola and oat milk free from judgement. They have juice and salad bars, a cafe and even a sunroom. It’s the platonic ideal of suburban crunchiness. It doesn’t look like the kind of place where customers are regularly judged on their appearance. You wouldn’t think it’s the sort of place where employees are instructed to watch certain customers and follow them around the store. It is. 

    Former employee Samuel Alatorre worked at Wildberries from Oct. 2020 to March of 2021. In his time there, he said he saw many instances of management profiling customers. Often, when someone they thought looked suspicious came into the store, a manager on the PA would use a code word and an aisle number to tell employees who to keep a specific eye on. 

    “It’s usually someone who has a backpack, if somebody looks like they’re houseless, and also usually racial profiling—I’ve seen that as well,” Alatorre said. “It’s never been outright said ‘that person looks suspicious because they’re black,’ but OTW [one to watch] aisle four if it’s someone of color.”

    One instance in particular stood out to Alatorre when a man that looked homeless tried to shop at Wildberries. He was stopped outside the store and got into an argument with a manager. When he was finally allowed inside, he was followed by several people everywhere he went. Even after paying for his items, he was still being followed until he left the store. 

    “That kind of incident right there, where you continue to follow him even after you’ve seen he hasn’t taken anything, is where it just kind of seems like it’s more of a power trip thing than anything else,” Alatorre said. “It’s more of a hate against the homeless community than anything else.”

    Alatorre said Wildberries management often felt like they were untouchable, taking any opportunity they could to exercise their authority. Head manager Aaron Gottschalk was especially prone, whom Alatorre said he saw on multiple occasions physically confront people suspected of shoplifting. 

    “He in particular sees an opportunity to be that person in a position of power and he wants to exercise it by any means,” Alatorre said. 

    Alatorre doesn’t think that using force or profiling people to prevent shoplifting is justifiable as there are other ways to stop shoplifting, such as hiring loss-prevention security. 

    “I don’t think shoplifting is right,” Alatorre said. “But I also don’t think that using force in the way he does is right either.”

    Not every Wildberries employee agrees with Alatorre. One current employee (who requested to remain anonymous) who has worked there since late August thinks the profiling is understandable. 

    “Some people know about certain customers and tell them to leave, and some customers just have this sketchy kind of energy about them and some of my managers who have been working there for 15 to 20 years seem to have a pretty good sense of who doesn’t have good intentions there and who does,” he said. “And while there is some profiling going on, I don’t think it is racial and I don’t think it’s based off of how they look.”

    However, the employee did later contradict himself, saying those people with the “sketchy energy” often looked like they were homeless or even just didn’t look like they had good intentions. 

    “I guess [justifiable] profiling would be pointing out people who they know have already stolen or following your gut instinct based on how you see a person acting,” he said. “A lot of my managers can tell the difference between a person who’s coming in there to shop and a person who’s coming in there to steal just based off of their gut instincts, and how they’ve dealt with those people before and watch them come in and watch them leave.”

    He also disagrees with other characterizations of Gottschalk as somewhat violent and vindictive. He said that Gottschalk was generally a good person, if at times a little awkward, and all-around an outstanding member of the community. Any violence is just his years of experience coming into action. 

    “I can sympathize with what he was probably feeling when he [pinned a 16-year-old girl to the ground several months ago],” the employee said. “I don’t think Aaron woke up that day and said, ‘hey, who am I going to target’ or ‘who am I going to pin to the floor,’ that’s not the type of guy he seems to be to me.”

    According to former employee Tatum Keller, shoplifting skirmishes were fairly common in their experience there. They also saw people who looked to be homeless being followed around the store, especially people of color and younger people.

    “It was probably every single day, if not every other day, someone was chased out whether they had something or not,” Keller said. “…It happened before I worked there, it happened during the time I worked there and it’s going to continue to happen still.”

  • Wildberries shoplifting incident triggers protest and backlash

    Wildberries shoplifting incident triggers protest and backlash

    by Dezmond Remington and Jasmin Shirazian

    Allegations of assault, worker mistreatment, and profiling have been leveled at Wildberries Marketplace in Arcata in response to a video showing an altercation between a customer and store manager Aaron Gottschalk.

    The video, posted on the r/Humboldt subreddit by an anonymous user, was originally shot on Sept. 30. It shows Gottschalk grabbing a young girl’s wrists and pulling her into shopping carts and eventually onto the ground by her backpack straps.

    A protest on Jan. 21 at Wildberries was attended by several dozen people, and former and current Wildberries employees spoke out against perceived mistreatment and profiling by Gottshalk (who declined a request for an interview).

    Tatum Keller, a former Wildberries employee, said managers including Gottschalk profiled customers they considered to be a high theft risk, asking employees to pay special attention to certain customers. 

    “It was always usually motherfuckers who were in hoodies or looked homeless… or just not white,” Keller said. “It was never a fucking white man. Anyone under the visible age of 30… any person of color they’d be like, ‘hey, watch out for this person.’”

    In a statement from Phil Ricord, the owner and president of Wildberries, Ricord said shoplifting was a serious problem at Wildberries and other stores in the area. Ricord said that Wildberries decided not to press charges, but was still placing the blame on the girl. 

    “Unfortunately, shoplifting and its prevention at times leads to unintended consequences,” Ricord said. “Had the individual involved responded to numerous verbal demands to stop no further action would have been necessary. Instead, they decided to ignore those demands and continue their exit from the store and were forcibly restrained until law enforcement arrived.”

    Ricord also said that due to the incident, store shoplifting policies have been revised to eliminate physical confrontations between the accused and the staff. 

    However, Keller was not optimistic. 

    “It was probably every single day, if not every other day, someone was chased out whether they had something or not,” said Keller. “Definitely not surprising. It happened before I worked there, it happened during the time I worked there and it’s going to continue to happen still.”

    Despite the purported changes in store policy, Ricord was also not too optimistic about how shoplifting would be handled in the future at Wildberries. 

    “Shoplifting has unpredictable and unfortunate consequences,” Ricord said in an email. “The incident, taken in its entirety is proof of that.”

  • Spring nourishes new growth

    Spring nourishes new growth

    Spring time is here. The days are longer, the weather has warmed up and the sun is shinning. Everything is growing.

    At Flora Organica farm and nursery the greenhouses are getting full. Fields are being weeded and prepared for planting.

    “This is the beginning of the busy season,” Andy Zierer

    Andy and his wife Lisa Zierer own and manage Flora Organica in McKinleyville. Flora Organica starts for your garden are sold at Wildberries, the North Coast Co-op and Ace Hardware in Arcata.

    “Greenhouses are needed on the coast if you are going to grow peppers, tomatoes and basil,” Andy Zierer said.

    The plants in the greenhouse are going to be transplanted into the fields. Peppers that will be planted in the greenhouse now will be ready in June.

    The Zierer’s believe the economical and nutritional benefits of growing your own food are extremely rewarding. Andy Zierer’s goal is to grow healthy plants that taste good.

    “It’s beyond economical. The taste and the food has much more nutrition than stored food,” Zierer said.

    While owner and manager Lisa Zierer has many people to direct and jobs to do, she still has time to say hello and check in to see if anyone needs anything.

    The Zierer’s have employed Humboldt State students over the years. Zierer has noticed there have been more rangeland resource science soil majors working for him than students in any other field.

    “I have two soil science majors working here now,” Andy Zierer said. “The soil science majors are into learning how things work.”

    Jack Horvitz works at Flora Organica and is a soil science major at HSU.

    “I have a big passion for food and agriculture. It is pretty fundamental to our society,” Horvitz said.

    Horvitz explains the policy decisions in agriculture vary widely according to location, apologizing the benefits and struggles of smaller agriculture farms.

    “If we want to have change, we better have more buy-in,” Horvitz said. “Farms in the midwest are thousands of acres. Flora Organica is just four acres. Living in Arcata is nice, but it is living in a bubble inside of a bubble.”

    Horvitz would like to see communities getting together and having potlucks at community gardens. Horvitz calls it, “getting the full cycle.”

    “Getting your hands in the soil and then sitting down and sharing a meal with everyone at the end of the day, with music,” Horvitz said.

    Haley Schmidt is a HSU alumna who really likes her job at Flora Organica.

    “These are great people to work for and I really enjoy the farm,” Schmidt said. “They have a great product and they really care about what they do.”

    Jarrod Lumley is an anthropology major at HSU who works at Flora Organica. On Saturday nights on the Arcata Plaza, Lumley likes to serve food he and his friends make with leftovers from the farmers market earlier that day.

    “There is a lot of upping going on [at Flora Organica],” Lumley said.

    Upping is moving the seedling from the seed house and planting it in a four-inch container. Then the four-inch container goes into a bigger greenhouse. From there, some are planted on the farm and some go to the farmers market to be sold as starters.

    “Springtime at Flora Organica is a time of cleaning,” Lumley said. “This involves making space for more and more plants through deconstruction, reconstruction and organizing the available space.”

    Farmer Eno Riley planting onions at the I and I farm. Photo by Tyrone McDonald.

    Flora Organica is bustling with activity, trying to keep up with spring and their customers at the farmers market.

    Another local farm, I and I farm in McKinleyville, is a regular booth at the farmers market, owned and managed by Eno and Lauren Riley. Planning, according to Eno Riley, is essential when building a garden.

    “There are snails and slugs and birds and pests and bad things you don’t want to have happen,” Eno Riley said.

    I and I farm hires students to pick strawberries as a short-term summer job. Students interested are encouraged to ask Eno or Lauren Riley at their stand during the farmers market.

    Riley explained a garden layering technique called lasgnage that is possible for anyone to create and maintain.

    “You can layer right over your grass on your lawn,” Riley said. “Lay down cardboard, then dirt, and then wood and some more soil, cardboard and soil and you are ready to plant a garden anywhere.”