Over on Portland Indymedia, someone has posted the most creepily polite “you’re banned” letter I’ve ever seen. It’s from New Seasons. And it’s a revelation all of us ought to behold.

Dear Kristen,

I want to thank you for coming to our Store Support offices to share the details of your difficult, genuinely painful experience at our Seven Corners store. It showed a high degree of trust in Claudia and myself – belief that we would truly hear you.

Indeed, trust is at the very core of this dilemma. Therefore, I feel confident in proposing a clean, simple resolution to a very confusing sequence of events. You deserve a fresh start devoid of uncertainty and mistrust.

I envision that fresh start including a neighborhood store which is not a part of New Seasons Market. I am concerned that returning to Seven Corners (or any of our other stores) would entail continued feelings of discomfort – the sense that you might have to prove your innocence, so to speak. To the contrary, it would be to your advantage to shop or enjoy a meal in an environment where there are no unpleasant distractions. This would allow you to redirect your abundant energies toward your art, interest in working with children, and overall happiness which is of prime importance.

In keeping with this call for a fresh start, we support Miguel’s decision to permanently preclude you from visiting our stores. And, since we are obligated by store policy to call authorities if this request is not honored, we must remind you of this consequence for returning to any of our locations.

I’m very grateful that you voiced your need for clarity so that we could work together toward a positive, concise resolution. Again, thank you for your trust.

Warmly,
Mary Alison Leatart
Customer Advocate
New Seasons Market

Happy America Boom Boom Weekend, y’all!

Denis C. Theriault is the Portland Mercury's News Editor. He writes stories about City Hall and the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on issues like homelessness, police oversight, insider politics, and...

26 replies on “New Seasons Perfects the Art of “It’s Me, Not You””

  1. What’s the story on this? No background makes it seem creepy and weird but I’d like to know what caused the letter to be sent…reading through the junk on Indymedia is annoying.
    As much as New Seasons and their holier-than-thou patrons annoy me, I’m sure there is something missing from the whole picture here.

  2. Warmly (we are having the restraining order drawn up at this very moment),
    Your Friendly New Seasons Customer Advocate.

  3. I don’t know. I think this is pretty nice. Considering I’m sure the “abundant energy” spoken of in the letter was most likely a shit-crazy rant about how Kristen is the center of the universe and deserves special treatment.

  4. Seems Kristen is some sort of whack-job animal-rights protester, based on what I was able to ascertain from the Indymedia link. I’d say she was treated with far more respect than was warranted.

  5. This is right in line with a bumper sticker I saw this morning… Keep Portland Passive Aggressive (If you don’t mind)

  7. When people complain about being passive-aggressive, I always wonder if they’d prefer AGGRESSIVE aggressive. Oh? No? Well please enjoy some far-more-socially-acceptable passive aggression, then. And I hope this person who does not understand boundaries learns to enjoy them.

  10. “even if i have to become completely homeless (i have no full-scale housing at this time as it is) – i would rather die than work for a company which profits from the exploitation and/or murder of animals. fact. check it. therefore – almost every restaurant and every grocery store, movie theatre if they sell hot dogs… even many coffee shops (if they sell anything with meat like a breakfast sandwich) is immediately disqualified in my mind as a place that i can work. even at daycare centers – i won’t serve meat to kids – someone else would have to do that and i’d still feel uncomfortable but at least i wouldn’t be directly contributing to it.”

    LOOOOL

  12. WTF turingcub. You do realize there is this entire universe of communication that exists between never-saying-what-you-want and punching-someone-in-the-fucking-face. It tends to go “hey dude, please remember to lock up when you’re done”. Or “please clean up from your dinner party last night”. And it’s usually filed under ASSERTIVE.

    Soooooo glad I don’t live in PDX anymore.

  14. I’m with turingcub… I think this whole myth that Portlanders are too passive aggressive is utter bullshit (btw, Sarah Lombardo, I agree with you that it’s probably best that you live somewhere else nowadays). To anybody for whom people behaving themselves in a civil manner and bringing up points of contention only when necessary is too much to bear, I say this: Go the fuck back to Philly and get your ass kicked next time you have a problem with somebody if that’s what’s you really want. We won’t miss you. Oh, and if anybody asks about Portland, just tell ’em it rains here all the time, would ya?

  15. The opposite of “passive aggressive” isn’t “aggressive aggressive”. The opposite of passive aggressive is speaking your mind on how you feel and communicating clearly and directly.

    Passive aggressive behavior is a personality disorder, it is just barely behaving in a civil manner. When people grow up in an environment where they weren’t taught how to express their anger and frustrations openly, they become passive aggressive. It affects many people everywhere, but it is hardly a myth that it affects many people in this town.

  18. i guess this is a learning process (o:

    the last links work – yay – but i think these are the official youtube links (o:

    my boycott new seasons youtube promos:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe… /
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxmZluhQV0 /
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe…

    filmed live @ pioneer square, july 31, 2011

    @ video 1: you get about 30 seconds for improvising the whole thing – and there are directions involved – it’s hard to talk so fast – and even harder to listen to me talking so fast. this is what i think i said (o:

    new seasons market – markets themselves as “the friendliest store in town” – new seasons market is not friendly! new seasons censors art; they refuse to boycott/divest/sanction israeli apartheid (free palestine!); new seasons owns a factory farm where unhappy cows are drowning in their own excrement*, new seasons had me falsely arrested while violating my free speech rights; i say boycott new seasons! resist! (o: [* shit]

    anarchy and peace! kristin

  20. gee why not – in addition to being the girl who is actively seeking to annoy new seasons because they are jerks – i am also an artist and a filmmaker…my feature film STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT is going to be showing on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011 @ EAT.ART.THEATER./MILEPOST 5 @ 7:30PM – it is FREE and ALL AGES – everybody is invited. peace!

    for more information: http://www.myspace.com/events/View/1181005… (public page)

    http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Star-Ligh… (public page)

  21. today – all by myself – in front of a crowd of strangers – i stood center stage left – right behind/to the side of – new seasons owner/mayoral candidate eileen brady – during her ENTIRE campaign kickoff speech in downtown portland – holding up my “boycott new seasons/no trespassing” sign. it took guts.

    i made some pages for my boycott:

    http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7D1…

    http://www.facebook.com/pages/kristins-boy…

  22. http://kristinangelique.blogspot.com/2011/…

    i fell in love with my friend.

    his girlfriend staged a scene at his workplace – to call his bluff.

    i guess he felt backed against a wall

    sadly, he threw me under the bus.

    his work handled things grievously; i was scapegoated.

    as their long-time customer they’d hella taken my $$$.

    they had me falsely arrested while protesting their already shitty behavior.

    i now know of many other unethical practices they are guilty of.

    boycott new seasons market! resist!

    * * * this is my story. this is my love song. * * *

  23. He felt backed against a wall, by you. You pushed him, & you lost. You were trying to destroy their relationship, as you have attested to. And THIS is what you do? You protest a store, one of the better, most conscious stores around, because you went after a guy who was 20 years younger than you, with a girlfriend that he loved, NOT YOU!, & you have to make a big scene about it? i am a vegetarian, a celibate, & a single, teenage Mother, of a now teenage sun. You give everything that i stand for a dirty, crazy name. NONE of these issues have anything to do with your lovelife. Please, learn to separate them. For you are not furthering animals or humans being treated as living, sentient beings by acting out, publicly like a lonely, lovelorn, heartbroken woman….Who wants to attack everyone & everything around her!

  25. #24 “unregistered comment”: OMG! “she” (aka millie at portland.indymedia.org and actually jennifer natoli, tim’s girlfriend) >>

    i am just seeing this today because i only recently realized one could read unregistered comments by allowing their display.

    GIVE IT UP! you aren’t fooling anyone, but then again you keep strengthening my points and observations; so maybe i should thank you.

    first of all a word to those who don’t know why i see right through you: who else would post so immediately in reply to my comment (nobody else had posted here since july!) – who else would be scavenging this page? i did see – long ago – your last taunt at the portland indy media site – WHICH IS WHAT MOST LED ME TO WRITING THE AFOREMENTIONED BLOG – which i allude to here (i had JUST published it on sep. 13).

    …THE BLOG CAME FROM MY REACTION TO BEING DISPARAGED, MOCKED, SLANDERED, TAUNTED…

    MY PROTEST BEGAN BECAUSE OF NEW SEASONS MANAGEMENT ARBITRARILY TRESPASSING ME FOR AN INCIDENT WHICH I WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR, BUT WHICH YOU WERE.

    MY PROTEST CONTINUED WHEN THE RESPONSE TO THAT FIRST INJUSTICE BY UPPER MANAGEMENT WAS TO TRESPASS ME FROM ALL STORES: “because i might feel the need to prove my innocence”!

    MY PROTEST WILL NEVER END BECAUSE NSM SET ME UP, FRAMED ME AND HAD ME FALSELY ARRESTED FOR “CRIMINAL TRESPASSING” (AFTER YOUR BOYFRIEND DECLINED TO BACK UP THE OTHER CHARGES) WHEN ALL I HAD BEEN DOING WAS LEGALLY AND PEACEFULLY PROTESTING – AGAINST NEW SEASON MARKET’S FRAUDULENCY AND HYPOCRISY – FROM A PUBLIC SIDEWALK.

    as for trying to “destroy” your relationship: i never did any such thing, most of what i state about my feelings for tim in my blog is because now, after the fact of all that came before, what do i have to lose by doing that and i promised to be totally truthful from the beginning all the way to the end.

    …most of my feelings were only reported directly to tim, after you staged that scene, when we continued to correspond by e-mail through mid july!

    before all of that: yes i was honest and had told tim that i loved him (i still do) but that i was totally appreciative of our friendship and being only friends was enough for me and i never once asked or pushed for more. and i had also known for sometime (since early winter at the latest) of his impending plans to move to canada to attend grad school…

    it was tim who embraced me on february 2, this led to my feeling convinced that he shared some of the stronger feelings i felt for him but i never questioned his commitment to his relationship with his girlfriend (you)… i never asked him to explain that embrace i just cherished it – it was the night before your trip to africa – the night he returned and you saw us talking and began your investigation by inquiring about me to his co-workers unsurprisingly coincided with later that same night NSM management taking him aside after his shift and asking him about the nature of his relationship with me…

    …and fearing the worst – he apparently both downplayed it and tried to blame our “always conversing” on my social handicap but he also said that he felt a certain responsibility and he would handle it with me, and then he wrote me immediately and at first he told me a different version of the exact details (i learned the greater truth when he confessed more things to me in late may) so as not to let on that he had not spared me so much, but also to try and keep our friendship on the down-low, yet to not actually end it…

    tim never once asked to end our friendship and even declined my offer to not come around so much folowing his management’s talking to him!

    our friendship continued all the way up until may 19 when you confronted me, in the dining area where i was seated, writing in my notebook and minding my own business (because you’d seen us talking earlier and you wanted to get rid of me once and for all)… etc and so on.

    even following that incident, after tim got off work and we were talking on the corner of clinton street (before miguel walked by and interrupted us and refused to let us talk in total privacy) tim told me: “i am sorry it had to end this way.”

    tim had many chances to get rid of me if it was what he had wanted, i would have done that for him, and as i have stated: i often offered to walk away from our friendship if its what was best for him and he always said it was all going to be ok and he wanted to still be friends…

    i had let it go – the incident, the trespassing, your slanderous remarks – for tim’s sake but following the next altercation with you on june 10, on tri-met followed by my meeting at NSM corporate offices on june 23 – i decided not to let you get away with your deliberate harm nor NSM to get away with their attempt to suppress me…

    nothing in my “protest” mentioned tim nor was in reaction to tim – i have always understood that he felt he had to choose between being honest with everyone else and keeping his job – i also knew you both were about to move to canada and so i’d probably never see tim anyhow (but he knows to this day how much i cherish our friendship and that i will always be his friend) – but i just couldn’t allow myself to take it up the ass for you and new seasons…

    …and since tim refused to budge and tell you all the truth – more than a month later: i made a decision to do the truly right thing – and to stick up for myself and to NSM bullying of me…

    it is your impostering posts that dragged all the details of my completely innocent friendship with tim into a public forum.

    PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF THAT: YOU STARTED THIS! NOT ME!

    I AM DEFENDING MYSELF AGAINST ALL THESE FALSE ACCUSATIONS AND IN DOING SO I PUT MY PERSONAL LIFE AND ARTISTIC INTEGRITY ON THE LINE (by using my true identity and registering my comments etc). I CHOSE TO DO THAT BUT IT WAS NOT BY MY OWN PROMPTING.

    yada yada yada…

    http://kristinangelique.blogspot.com/2012/…

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