It's tomorrow morning and as you awaken and begin your day, you are greeted with the lead story on the morning TV news show that Needs Care Organizations are being organized across America. The purpose is to control the high cost of meeting people's needs. Needs Care Organizations (or NCO s as we will call them) will make agreements with only those stores that will follow certain rules and who will give special prices to the NCO's thereby allowing the NCO s to control costs.
This sounds like a good idea to you, so you join the Needs Care Organization through your workplace. In a day or two your cupboard begins to look a little bare and you are hungry, so you decide to go to the grocery. You go to the grocery and when you get there the first thing they ask is if you have called the NCO to have your needs and shopping approved. You tell them you didn t know you had to call the NCO in advance and that you thought it was something that the grocery store would have taken care of doing. The grocery is nice enough to let you call and tell the NCO that you are out of food and are hungry and want to buy some food. They agree that it is important to eat and approve of you buying enough food for you to eat for six weeks, but only from the Canned Food and Ready to Eat (also known as faster focused feasting) sections of the grocery. You tell them that you have children and a husband and they are hungry too. The NCO tells you that will take another telephone call and they also will be limited as to what food they may have but that this is in their best interests.
Reluctantly you agree to shop only in the Canned Food and Ready to Eat areas. You are told to make an appointment with an NCO approved grocery (which is far from where you normally shop) so that you can come back and shop at a certain time when you can get right in yet are assurred that it will be within the next 24 hours. Also you will have a shopping attendant to help you with anything you need from the Canned Food and Ready to Eat sections. However, when the appointed time comes for you to go shopping one of your neighbors comes over and you forget to go. No mind. You call back the grocery and reschedule yet find that they are very upset with you because you did not come at the right time. The nerve of them!
By the time the appointment arrives you are very hungry and cannot wait to get to the grocery. You finally get to the grocery and find that they make you choose a cart and spend some time filling out information for the grocery store computer. You are told (again) that you only have permission to shop in the restricted section one time per week at a certain time and only can buy Canned and Ready to Eat foods. You are relieved to learn this does include bottled water and soft drinks. You hurry through the long form the grocery requires you to complete. The grocery has a form that guarantees you they will not tell your neighbors what you buy and that your shopping attendant will only help you with shopping according to the training and skills that they have. If you need skills other than shopping in the Canned Food and Ready to Eat section you will be referred to another attendant. It s the law you are told. You even agree to sign another form that allows the grocery to tell the NCO what food you are purchasing and why you decided to purchase that food. You find this a little upsetting but agree because they aren t going to tell your friends and they aren't going to let you shop until you do.
FINALLY, they let you into the grocery store Canned Food and Ready to Eat section and sure enough you have an attendant to help you. They are very courteous yet insist before beginning the shopping that you need to sit and talk with them for this particular shopping appointment so they can get more information to fill out some more required forms for the NCO. These are the actual lists of what you think you want to buy and why you want to buy it, but you still haven t seen any food yet. Curiously the attendant asks you what food you have been eating for the past few months and wants to know what foods others in your family eat and why. The attendant also asks if you have any Special Diet problems and tells you that if you do you will have to talk with a specialized Nutritionist who can determine if you really need a special diet. You are told that you may even have to see a Dietician who could put you in a class with others with special hunger problems and teach you better how to eat your canned foods.
Your shopping attendant asks you what kinds of Canned and Ready to Eat foods you think you wanted because they have found that shopping can be much quicker if you both agree on what foods you will be getting. The attendant knows what aisle the foods are in and just where they are on the shelf. They can also advise you on which brand name or generic may be best. You also learn that the NCO would prefer you limit yourself to generic foods. At last you and the shopping attendant agree on the foods you need. However, the time for your shopping is over and you will have to come back again in a week to shop. You complain to the attendant that they have not helped you at all and that you are very hungry and can only expect to get hungrier over the next week. Having some compassion, the attendant takes a few minutes more and gives you some cookies to tide you over. You are thankful for the cookies, but feel a bit guilty because you know that the shopping attendant had to personally pay for the cookies because the NCO had set a limit on what the grocery could be paid for each of your shopping trips.
During the next week you get hungrier so that by the time you arrive for your shopping appointment you are famished. The attendant takes you right into the store to begin shopping but nothing seems to satisfy you or looks like something you want. The attendant suggests that you are so starved that you need a completely different type of food and one that is in a very restricted Special Foods and Diets Grocery across town. The NCO must be called to get authorization to let you shop there. You, about to pass out from weakness, ask the attendant to call the NCO and to get permission to let you go shop there immediately.
The shopping attendant calls the NCO and is connected to a Diet Management Specialist (later you learn this person had been a food packaging technologist). The Diet Management Specialist (DMS) begins asking the attendant many questions about your hunger and shopping habits. The attendant appears to be advocating for you but you notice they are meeting with resistance. Obviously the DMS doesn t want you to go to the restricted grocery store and even questions whether you are as hungry as the attendant says and is not certain the attendant would recognize true hunger if they saw it. You are asked to get on the phone by the DMS and to convince the DMS of your true feelings of hunger, (i.e. your stomach is growling, you feel weak and feign would lie down, etc.). By now the attendant is upset and so are you. Finally the DMS agrees to let you have access to the store but you can only use the drive-thru and must get everything you need in two minutes.
You will be allowed to go back to the restricted store for two minutes each day for a week but can only get what is allowed on the drive-thru menu. The attendant, almost sadly, tells you this is as much as will be allowed by the NCO and you should go ahead and use the drive-thru until you have used up your visits and then come back to the approved grocery.
The shopping attendant agrees to call ahead to the restricted store and tells them you will be coming. You are given a time for your drive-thru so you will not have to wait in line.
Eventually you get some food from the drive-thru and you start to feel a little better and not so hungry. You go back to the shopping attendant and for an hour each week they help you shop. After about six weeks you find you have most of the food you agreed that you would get at the first appointment. By now you are beginning to like your shopping attendant and feel they really understand hunger and know a great deal about shopping for food. In fact this has been a most gratifying shopping experience though you would like to ask the attendant s advice on shopping for items other than food but the remind you they only help with grocery shopping because of their agreement with the NCO.
The attendant tells you during the sixth and last visit that you now have three choices.
1. You can continue to shop for food each week but will have to pay for it in spite of paying into an NCO fund each week.
2. You can go hungry.
3. The attendant can call and ask for more shopping appointments for you but it has consequences for the shopping attendant.
A. If the attendant is not pleasant or disagrees with the DMS about how hungry you are or what foods you need, they could lose their job.
B. If the attendant was not able to assist you after six shopping trips, perhaps they did not understand shopping as well as they thought, you might have to get a new attendant.
C. If the attendant did not know where everything was in the store or took too long in one aisle or previously had tried to ask for more shopping trips for other NCO members or had a record of asking for visits to the restricted shopping store too many times, they could lose their job.
You decide to make your food last as long as possible and bid the shopping attendant adieu but tell them if you get hungry again you might be back and would like to have them as your shopping attendant. The attendant says that would be fine, but cautions the NCO will decide who is best for them to see and that they may not get to see the same attendant again. And finally the attendant kindly asks if you would mind filling out a consumer satisfaction survey, which you do.
You go home, a little less full, just in time to meet the mailman with a notice from your NCO that your weekly payment rate is going up and that they have just purchased all the farms in the state which will make getting food more manageable. They are also considering purchasing clothing stores, fabric companies, and cotton farms, so that they may further meet your clothing needs.
Aren't you lucky to be a member of such a benevolent enterprise?
You are a grocery store owner who has worked many years to build up a business and a full service line of foods and food services. You have your store audited and inspected by the state and federal government to be certain that you meet certain standards. You have a license to have a grocery store. All of your shopping attendants are also licensed and are experts (but with specialties in different aspects of shopping, e.g. canned and ready to eat foods, breads, meats, poultry, etc.). You belong to all the state and national grocery associations, have special grocery insurance, read the most popular and up to date grocery journals, help train aspirants to become grocery store owners, go to meetings with other grocery store owners and learn more about how to run grocery stores.
But competition is increasing. The biggest department store in town has recently opened a grocery store and is not using attendents with the training, education, experience, or licensing as you are. But they wanted to offer a full range of Needs Services so have started a grocery store. Since they do not specialize just in groceries as you do they do not worry about associations, journals, or any of the things that you thought set you apart as a quality grocery store. They even use shopping attendants in training who have no credentials whatsoever. And they can offer groceries less expensively than you. The state doesn t seem to care about what groceries they sell or how they sell them and doesn t hold them to the same standard as you.
You hear about the Needs Care Organizations and feel you must investigate joining them since the big department store is already siphoning away many of your customers. And it is quickly becoming painfully apparent that most grocery shoppers are joining NCO's. It is not enough to belong to just one NCO, you must get in as many as you possibly can because there are many different grocery shoppers and they have joined many different NCO's.
You are now about to face a dreadful fact. The NCO's make their own rules and do not have to pay attention to the standards, laws, and practices of traditional grocery stores. They do not sell groceries but they can control who buys groceries at your store. They can control what you get paid for your groceries. You have suddenly lost your customers, your ability to charge a fair price for your groceries, and in some cases you have lost your identity as a licensed grocery store owner.
Shopping attendants are also in trouble. If you are a store owner who also acts as a shopping attendant, woe unto you. There are too many shopping attendants. The NCO's believe people should not eat so many meals because it is just too expensive. If they can cut down on the number of meals then they can make more money. If they can determine who can sell groceries and how much they can charge they can make more money. If they do not have to provide the services themselves but act as brokers, they can make the grocer and shopping attendants responsible for everything (including hunger). However, if the shopper is ever able to convince the courts that the NCO's would not let the shopping attendants help them get food, then woe to the NCO's.
So the Grocer and the shopping attendants joined the NCO's and fell under the following rules.
1. The shopping attendants should be highly trained and experienced but if they have too much experience or too much training then the NCO doesn t want them.
2 Shopping attendants cannot be paid if they allow a consumer to shop who has not called the NCO.
3. Shopping attendants cannot be paid for missed shopping appointments.
4. Shopping attendants must fill out many forms and must be monitored in their shopping practices by the NCO's.
5. NCO's only have to pay their grocery bill every 90 to 180 days and they can withhold payment for whatever reason they want.
6. All paper work must be done on the shopping attendant s own time and cannot be charged to the NCO.
7. The shopping attendant shall be available to the grocery shopper whenever the grocery shopper gets hungry, but the attendant cannot necessarily be paid for their time.
8. The shopper shall not be allowed to die of starvation, however, the NCO is not required to provide food and it is the attendant's responsibility (not the NCO s) to see to it that the shopper does not starve.
9. The grocer and attendant shall accept whatever amount the NCO wishes to pay for food.
10. The attendant shall not argue with the DMS.
11. Almost anyone can provide food.
12. The shopping attendant shall provide the fewest number of shopping trips as possible to keep the shopper fed.
13. The grocer and attendant shall never say anything bad about the NCO.
14. It is understood that all DMS's know more about groceries and all aspects of food and hunger than any shopping attendant.
15. The attendants must use special billing procedures that require purchase of special software and equipment in some cases.
16. The attendants must go to special meetings the NCO's hold.
17. The NCO's will not guarantee that they will send grocery shoppers to your store but if they do, they have a right to expect you will bill them (the NCO) less if they send many (more than a dozen) grocery shoppers in a year.
18. If a new technique of grocery shopping emerges like when Emergency Munchies Diet Rationing first was discovered, the attendant should attempt to get that training.
The NCO's flourished for a time, but eventually the Department stores joined together and offered all needs services so that NCO's were no longer vertically competitive. The Department stores employed minimally trained shopping attendants to meet other person's needs. The well trained shopping attendants, like the NCO's had had their day and disappeared. Oh to be sure, some worked for Department stores, but they even needed others to help them shop.