Be Still My Heart: A Viral Video Shows Trader Joe’s Employees Calming a Crying Toddler
When Freakonomics delved into the not-so-mysterious reasons that people love Trader Joe’s so much, they came out with one answer above everything else: the employees.
We love the employees, in part because they’re happy and they love their jobs, the podcast noted. An Inside Trader Joe’s episode, the company’s own podcast, went a little deeper into how they cultivate that. But this week a video showed just how much the store and the shoppers benefit from having these happy, friendly, and enabled workers on the floor when a viral clip circulated of an employee calming a shopper’s crying toddler with a personalized song and dance routine.
“If there is a crying child call 1-800 Tori the cry stopper,” wrote Tori Alexander, a Trader Joe’s employee in Winter Park, Florida, in the caption of her Facebook video that has been viewed more than 63,000 times since it was posted on Monday. The video shows Trader Joe’s employees dancing around the toddler, who sits in the cart, mesmerized, as they sing “We love you Ju.” Baby Julian, she reports, stopped crying and “was shocked at our performance.”
The 15-second clip shows how much Trader Joe’s employees seem to be having fun — and how much customers, like Julian’s mom, who posted the video initially on Instagram Stories — appreciate having employees who can take a few minutes to stop and do a nice thing. Alexander, for her part, valued how quickly her coworkers jumped in and joined her in the dance party, noting in her caption that “Customer service is top priority,” and also “I love my job.”
Given that the Freakonimics report mentioned that one of the top things the company trains employees on is to Do what it takes to make customers feel appreciate and wanted,” it seems that Alexander simply following the employee handbook to a T.