Meet Winfred.
The odds are you already have if you’ve recently shopped at the Farm Fresh supermarket on Great Neck Road in Virginia Beach.
I did. Several times, in fact, as Winfred was wheeling up and down the aisles, asking customers if they needed help finding anything, while restocking shelves with products discarded at the last minute at the cash registers.
He told me he has been with the company for about 10 years and likes working there. “They don’t discriminate,” he said, referring to his being tied to his wheelchair. And what makes that even perhaps even more impressive, he hinted, was that Farm Fresh is part of a big company called SuperValu. “They are publicly traded,” he said with pride. And they are.
The point here is a good one. You often don’t expect large companies to allow such smart and correct decisions to made at ground level. But clearly that’s the case here. Practically speaking, there is no reason why every supermarket or similar business doesn’t have a Winfred tooling around, asking customers if they need help. It is a job that a person bound to a wheelchair can do if he or she would like. It is super customer service. And if you get someone like Winfred, it puts a smile on many customers’ faces.
