Grassroots Organizing and Mundane Decisions

The other day I was walking along when I encountered two men outside a national book store chain handing out fliers. They didn’t look like the book selling type and I was right. They were protesting. They didn’t look like the youthful protesters we are accustomed to, having just had the G-20 in our city. They were men in their 50’s who looked like professors. I grabbed for a flier.


They were protesting the book store’s decision to hire a local contractor who paid “unfair wages” to employees and wasn’t a part of a local membership organization (trade organization). Interesting. I had never seen this before.

Their flier was well done. It laid out the concerns with several points of contention. It called us all to be concerned and told us why. It had someone we could call for more information and of course, an action item to not patronize the store.

No matter what you think of unions, and I think I’ve heard it all, this was a grassroots and clever way to disrupt people’s casual thinking about the retail experience. No longer should you simply shop somewhere because the product is good. You should feel good about how the product got there. This is a personal topic of choice for me and I’ll save it for a future blog.

Today’s point is that you have to be very careful about decisions you may find mundane. They may bite you later on. Choosing the lower cost almost always comes at a cost, whether now or down the road. Don’t allow anyone to bully your decision either. Just make sure you’ve weighed all of the options and are prepared for any related consequences.

Happy holiday shopping.