Member Worker Profile:
Sarah Stevens

by Deborah Trupin

Sarah Stevens can sometimes be glimpsed among the crowds of Sunday Honest Weight shoppers, carrying boxes of just-bagged raisins to their places in the bulk aisle. But she can be found in the back room almost every Sunday afternoon, where she does the main part of her weekly worker job — bagging, weighing, labeling and stocking raisins, wheat germ and lecithin. Sarah has worked as a weekly worker, at first in the Grocery department, then in her current Bulk department slot since she joined Honest Weight just over six years ago. Sarah says she likes her weekly worker job, as she is able to do most of the work without competing for scarce aisle space with shoppers. Having bought many bags of raisins that she has packed, I think she also enjoys seeing how nearly perfect she can make the bags and how well she can arrange them in their bins in the store! Full disclosure: I have some insights into Sarah’s work style, as we work together at New York State Parks’ Peebles Island Resource Center, where I am the textile conservator and Sarah is the associate textile conservator.*

Sarah lives in Albany and is active with the American Motorcycle Association and its Roamers Motorcycle Club. Sarah entertained her colleagues one summer with weekly tales of her rides to presidential homes, birth places and towns with presidential names, all as part of that year’s Roamers challenge. Sarah is also researching her genealogy and has made research trips to New York City, Greene County and London (UK).

Sarah says that Coop Scoop editor Judy Trupin and I introduced her to Honest Weight when she stayed with us while apartment hunting, before moving to Albany. She says she joined because she liked the food. As a vegetarian, she particularly liked not having to confront meat as she shopped. She became a weekly worker both for the discount and as a way to get to know people in the community. When asked her favorite thing about Honest Weight, she mentioned the Bulk department’s chocolate-covered almonds first. On a more serious note, she says she appreciates the amount of locally grown and made food. She buys almost all of her food at Honest Weight.

Looking towards the future of the Co-op, Sarah says, “We need more space, we need more space!” But she balanced that by commenting that she would not want to lose the nice community feeling the store has now.

I didn’t know in the summer of 2000, when I hired Sarah as a textile conservator, that I was also recruiting a new Honest Weight weekly worker! But I think both her colleagues at work and at Honest Weight would agree with me that it was a good hire.

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