Part-time cashier. Salary: $9.50 per hour 

In high school, you had a choice: sell overpriced, inhumanly small tank tops at Abercrombie & Fitch; or sell overpriced blanched almond butter at Whole Foods. You went with Whole Foods. No health insurance, but who needs health insurance when you're sixteen? You just need enough moolah to buy concert tickets.

Part-time cashier, full-time student. Salary: $10.25 per hour 

College, baby. You're interested in sustainable food and agriculture development, but scraping by with a 2.65 GPA in a business management program is better for your organic-grocery-management prospects. As usual, practicality beats out the dream of fighting for environmental sustainability.

Full-time Whole Foods employee. Salary: $11.75 per hour 

You're back at Whole Foods. This time as a full-time employee, so you have health insurance and a sweet twenty percent discount. But you're also doing exactly the same thing you were doing six years ago: stocking shelves with organic black bean dip and refilling the barley feed bags. Is this a step up? It's hard to tell.

Sales Team Leader. Salary: $16 per hour 

Finally—you leveraged your bachelor's degree in business management into an actual management position. So now you're officially at the organic grocery in a long-term sort of way. You get to go to "team leader" meetings and design Powerpoint presentations for the staff. They've never seen such groovy-looking Powerpoints. Thank you, Flash animation.

General Team Leader. Salary: $20 per hour and more 

Your idea for highly alliterative, community-building events ("Yogis for Yogurt" and "Barbecue Barbershop" were both huge successes) has made your store the most highly trafficked grocery store in the entire state of Illinois. Take that, Walmart. As a reward for your efforts, you have a private meeting with the CEOs next week to discuss—gulp—a promotion to Executive VP.