#superstore meta

Once Amy becomes manager in the second half of season 4 (and gains a salary many times greater than her employees), she subtly starts siding more and more with the side of management (I use the term management throughout but I don't mean store managers - I mean corporate) over the side of the people she's worked alongside with for fifteen years. When the employees of store 1217 want to start a union, Amy is against it, despite having pushed for workers' rights regularly over the course of the first three and a half seasons. Her intentions are initially presented as good, with the audience knowing what Amy knows and the rest of the employees (minus Dina and Jonah) don't: corporate is looking to shut down a store in each district and union efforts would make corporate's choice easy. Amy claims throughout the episode that she is only trying to stop the union efforts to prevent the store from closing and save everyone's job, even pushing Jonah to kill morale for the union at the initial exploratory meeting (and while Jonah does go through with it, it should be noted that he is heavily uncomfortable with the idea throughout the episode).

A lesser show probably would've left things at that and let Amy continue to stay the "good" boss. But Superstore doesn't. Instead, after Jonah has successfully killed morale and therefore the union prospects, she asks Jonah for the names of the employees who were most gung ho for the union, even positioning her pen as if she's going to write them down. It's jarring both for the audience and for Jonah, who turns against Amy in that moment. He goes back to Sandra (the de facto leader of the season 4 efforts) and becomes the first employee to sign his union card. Long before Amy's commitment issues even come on the radar, this to me is the first crack in the glass of Jonah and Amy's relationship.

After corporate sets up an ICE Raid that ends with Mateo being detained, Amy becomes pro union once again, heavily involved with union efforts from behind the scenes. However, when tech company Zephra buys out Cloud 9 (a move which completely squanders any chance of a union gaining recognition), she once again trusts corporate, even going as far as trying to minimize questions about workers' rights at the store's virtual meeting with new CEO Kira Moon. It's almost as if having a woman of color CEO instead of a white man makes Zephra a "good" corporation in Amy's mind, one she's willing to give the benefit of doubt (of course, there are no good corporations). (Also, I'm not the right person to write this, but there is definitely more meta to be written on how women of color in the show perpetuate the systems they are in instead of changing them, and I assume the show's messaging there was that you can't change a system from within. As a fellow Latina, District Manager Maya sees potential in & supports Amy in a way Jeff and Laurie never would've, but she is also very anti-union and does nothing to help the exploitation of the people below her overall.)

At the end of season 5, Amy ends up getting offered an executive position at Zephra headquarters out in California, as a Cloud 9 liaison. She's only offered the job because she is Latina and corporate is trying to surface level diversify their C-suite, but she takes the job anyway. Now, I will just say that Amy taking the job with Zephra is extremely valid. She's absolutely right in what she tells Jonah: she is a single mom with no family connections or degree and this job is her only real chance at a better life. It's not right that that's the case, but Amy didn't invent capitalism. But by taking that job, she does position herself against everyone at Store 1217 in an even more solid manner than when she was simply their manager.

We all know what happens next, Amy leaves for California, Jonah rightfully breaking up with her after she balks at the idea of getting married again (I know the common narrative is that Amy was the one who ended things but that's not actually how things play out - it is Jonah's choice no to move to California, Jonah's choice not to do long distance after Amy basically begs him to - both very understandable choices because as he points out "what else could [Amy] need to know" before making a long term commitment considering they've been dating for years, live together, and are raising Parker together).

Amy comes back at the end of season 6 after a call from Cheyenne asking about a rumor of Zephra closing all the Cloud 9 stores. Amy does some digging, learning that Cloud 9 will be mainly moving to online shopping, only 5% of stores staying open. She comes back to St. Louis to try to help 1217 become a part of that 5%, a noble but ultimately failed effort. Initially, 1217 gets some good news, the store won't be closing entirely, Zephra will be keeping it around to turn into a fulfillment center. But when Amy asks about jobs, it becomes clear that almost everyone will be let go. Except Amy's job will be fine, of course, the Zephra exec assures her. Amy looks back at the 1217 employees, the people she worked alongside with for seventeen years, her "family" as she calls them. "No, it won't. Cause I quit."

Amy so easily could've stayed and kept her job. It probably would've made the most sense from a logical point of view. She was making an executive's salary, a nearly impossible thing to come by without a college degree. She had uprooted her children's lives for that salary, left her hometown for that salary, broke Jonah's heart for that salary. But in that moment, looking back at the faces that kept her going for seventeen years, the people she practically went through hell with, the people who were there for her in a way a salary never would be, ...that salary isn't worth it anymore. It's not worth it to make all that money while her "family" is out of work. It's not worth losing her soul over that salary.

To me, Amy choosing to quit her Zephra job in solidarity with her fellow Cloud 9 "family" is just as much an important part of her character arc and redemption as her apologizing and offering to wait for Jonah. The ending wouldn't have been nearly as good if Amy and Jonah had gotten back together, but she continued to work for the corporation that put all of her friends out of a job.

The show never takes a rosy view of retail; they do a good job of keeping the show fun while constantly reminding you how much the job actually sucks. But the show does hammer home that when you are working in a job as soul-sucking as retail, a job where management will never care about you over their bottom line, all the workers have is each other and their solidarity.

Superstore's main message is that retail is a shitty job but the people who do it are still human beings who deserve things like respect and living wages and health insurance.