The Co-op Q&A with Matt Clemons
By Patrick Pauley
Member-owner Matt Clemons is currently pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy from Stony Brook University, and also teaches hybrid classes in the subject at Hofstra University. When he isn’t working on his dissertation, Matt likes to occupy his time with basketball: he was a former youth competitive player and admits that the NBA resuming play has been “mildly disastrous” for his productivity.
Q: How long have you been a member of the Co-op, and what motivated you to join?
A: I've been a member of the Co-op for a little over a year and an assistant manager since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the risk of sounding too grandiose, I'd say my original decision to join was on principles that come to me by way of religious convictions. I'm Catholic, and besides the sort of strong-arm clericalism that I think people might be likely to associate with the Church, there is a lot of rich thought that bears on communal organization and social practice. That profit should be subordinate to the well-being and flourishing of persons, for instance, has implications for how businesses should be structured and function that line up with cooperative values.
Q: Can you describe your work at the Co-op? Have your roles and responsibilities changed in the last couple of months with the COVID-19 outbreak and the protests?
A: The most significant change to my role at the Co-op came along with the pandemic. The board decided to hire two additional assistant managers to help Willa (our general manager) out with the new store policies and the increase in shopping traffic. Since then, I've worked around four days a week. My work is mostly operations related. I do a lot of task delegation. I try to make sure things run smoothly in and across shifts and I fill in any gaps in the schedule that pop up. Along with those more day-to-day tasks, I am also working with Willa, Emily (the Operations committee chair), and others to improve some of the procedures and organizational elements of the store. One of the smaller but annoying problems that I am happy to have somewhat solved is making sure that barcoded items scan for cashiers. We're also working on trying to create new video resources for training so that members feel more prepared when they come to work their first shift.
Q: What do you enjoy about your Co-op work?
A: I enjoy that it's hands-on and often involves a lot of physical labor. It's a nice change from the academic work, which I can usually only do for a few hours a day before I'm useless. Especially in the first few months of being an assistant manager, I was actually more productive in writing and reading when I was balancing it with being at the Co-op. I also really like being able to interact with so many people. I was fortunate enough not to have to experience some of the isolation of quarantine because I was here so often.
Q: What are your goals in the coming year at the Co-op?
A: Not to harp too much on this point, but there have been a lot of awesome people working to improve the store from an operational standpoint. Things have already become more organized and efficient. I'm excited to see where that goes, and a lot of my own particular co-op related goals are bound up with that. As a more general reflection, I'd really like to see the co-op model become a more realistic, even conventional alternative to the business models that are now so status-quo as to seem inevitable. For that to happen, I think the Co-op can't seem too idealistic or too much a product of the ivory tower to the average member of the middle/working class. Even with the best of intentions, I think it's easy for a co-op to attract only a certain kind of person and, because of that, to become an insulated community that really only reproduces communal expectations and has a hard time appealing to people with whom that doesn't resonate or isn't familiar. Concretely, for Greene Hill, I think that means, among other things, creating and strengthening ties to the existing community, but I'm a little over my paygrade with this one. I know that the Outreach Committee has been newly reinstated and is now active, which is great!
Q: What’s your favorite thing to shop for at the Co-op?
A: I can't decide if it's a perk or drawback, but since I'm here so often, I see a lot of the new things as they come in and end up leaving with them at the end of my shift. There was a meatless jerky from Louisville (which is also where I'm from) that came in just once and was delicious. I think I bought like three bags of it. I also have to confess that, at one point, I was buying a pint of ice cream after each of my shifts (I'll leave you to do the math of how much per week that is).
Q: Has the Co-op changed the way you interact with food? If so, how?
A: Not in any major way, but there are some small things that I've learned that influence what I buy. I am more cautious about items like chocolate, avocados, etc. I also have a better idea of what produce is in season. There are also things that become more explicit to me that I just didn't think about as much before — how food supply chains work, for instance.
Q: What’s your favorite hidden — or not so hidden — gem about the Co-op?
A: I really loved that Louisville Jerky. I'm also pretty enthusiastic about the Good Health Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels.
Q: Anything you’d like to see more of at the Co-op, whether it’s a product or practice?
A: More Louisville Jerky.