• I'm a dietitian and former Trader Joe's employee who frequently shopped at the retailer in 2024.
• I can't get enough of the store's Italian Bomba hot-pepper sauce.
• When it comes to seafood, I get the raw Argentinian red shrimp or farm-raised smoked-trout fillets.

Before I became a dietitian and intuitive-eating counselor, I worked at Trader Joe's. To this day, the retailer is one of my favorite places to find new food options that keep things varied and exciting in the kitchen.

As a dietitian, I encourage people to follow an intuitive-eating framework, which means I don't put clients on restrictive diets or meal plans.

Instead, I use the principles of intuitive eating — an evidenced-based approach that encourages clients to listen to their body's natural hunger and fullness cues — to help them decide what, when, and how much they should eat.

Throughout my own intuitive-eating journey, I've found some great snacks and ingredients at Trader Joe's. Here are some of my favorite things I grabbed there throughout 2024.

Trader Joe's farm-raised smoked-trout fillets are delicious in salads or on a cracker.

Eating protein-rich foods, like this smoked trout, is an excellent way to create an energizing, filling meal.

Trader Joe's smoked trout has become a staple in my home — it's a great shelf-stable item to have on hand when I want to add more sustenance to a meal.

This flavorful fish makes a great addition to a greens-and-feta salad, though the fillets are also delicious simply paired with a cracker.

I have the organic tea and lemonade when I want to make my meals more satisfying.

When I followed restrictive diets, I was afraid to have sugar-sweetened beverages because I felt guilty about drinking my calories.

Now, as an intuitive eater, I know that adding fun drinks to meals can be a great way to enhance satisfaction. When our meals are satisfying, we can move on without dwelling and decrease our chances of bingeing or overeating later.

This tea-and-lemonade beverage has the perfect level of sweetness. I love having it with a turkey sandwich, a hearty salad, or cheese and crackers.

I was recently introduced to the Italian Bomba hot-pepper sauce, and I love it.

A friend recently shared a recipe for spicy-vodka rigatoni, which called for Calabrian chiles. She recommended using Trader Joe's Italian Bomba sauce, a Calabrian-chile-based flavoring, and it has become an instant favorite.

It adds a flavorful punch to pasta dishes and soups, though it's also tasty when smeared on crusty bread or mixed with mayo.

Trader Joe's Silver Goat chèvre is perfectly creamy and crumbly.

I've tried many different kinds of goat cheese, but this one from Trader Joe's is my favorite.

It's the ideal mixture of creamy and crumbly, making it a perfect addition to fall salads or a roasted-root-veggie dish. It also adds richness to pasta dishes when I don't have milk or cream.

I recommend spreading this goat cheese on toast and pairing it with different toppings, like walnuts, honey, and sea salt, or caramelized mushrooms and onions.

I love adding the organic toasted-sesame dressing to my salads.

When a craving for salad strikes, I enjoy using Trader Joes toasted-sesame dressing.

Having a premade dressing lowers the workload of making a salad, which is another reason I love keeping this delicious dressing stocked in my fridge.

Trader Joe's broccoli-and-kale slaw is a convenient way for me to get my veggies.

Some days, I crave fresh flavors but don't have the bandwidth to cut up lettuce and veggies — which is why I appreciate this broccoli-and-kale slaw with dried cherries, slivered almonds, and sunflower seeds.

Even when I don't have the time or energy to start chopping ingredients, I can almost always find it in me to dump the contents into a bowl and toss them with the kit's premade, sweet slaw dressing.

Sometimes, I'll doctor the salad up with goat-cheese crumbles. I typically pair the salad with a frozen pizza to add a source of carbs and fat and create a more filling meal.

I use the raw Argentinian red shrimp to add protein to simple dishes.

In my opinion, the Argentinian red shrimp tastes so fresh, you'd never know that it comes frozen.

During the summer, I add this shrimp to a simple pasta dish with pesto, pine nuts, and tomatoes for a protein-rich meal with lots of staying power. In the colder months, I make a shrimp scampi with simple ingredients like lemon, broth, wine, and Parmesan cheese.

Like the smoked trout, this frozen shrimp is great for adding a protein boost to my meals.

Trader Joe's hot-and-sweet pepper jelly is the perfect flavor combination.

When I ask new clients which foods they enjoy, many of them have been dieting for so long that they no longer know what flavors they authentically enjoy.

In my intuitive-eating experience, I discovered I love the combination of sweet and salty flavors. In particular, I adore Trader Joe's sweet, spicy pepper jam with savory cheese and crackers.

It's also delicious spread on a grilled-cheese sandwich for that same flavor contrast.

Click to keep reading Trader Joe's diaries like this one.

• An employee stabbed a Michigan company's president during a staff meeting, the police said.
• A suspect, whom fellow employees describe as quiet, left the scene but was subsequently arrested.
• Authorities are looking into whether the attack was inspired by the UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing.

Authorities say they're looking into whether a stabbing during a company meeting in Michigan might have had a "copycat" motive inspired by the recent killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York.

The Fruitport Township Police Department said in a news release that the president of the manufacturing company Anderson Express Inc. was stabbed at about 9:20 a.m. on Tuesday at the company's address in Muskegon, about 35 miles northwest of Grand Rapids.

The police said a preliminary investigation found that a 32-year-old male employee stabbed Erik Denslow, the company president, in the side with a knife.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Denslow was said to be out of surgery and in serious but stable condition.

Anderson Express did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The police said the suspect fled the scene in his vehicle before being stopped and taken into custody about 15 minutes later. They identified him as Nathan Joseph Mahoney.

Speaking with local media, the police said Mahoney had worked at the company for only about two weeks. The news release said fellow employees described him as having a "quiet demeanor."

Muskegon County Sheriff's Office records show Mahoney is being held on a more than $500,000 bond. He was arraigned Wednesday and charged with assault with intent to commit murder. Amy P. Campanelli, who is listed as Mahoney's attorney in charging documents, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Denslow has been president of Anderson Express for a little under two years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Authorities are searching for a motive, including whether the attack was inspired by the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, who was fatally shot earlier this month, leading to a widely publicized manhunt and the subsequent arrest of a suspect.

"We haven't ruled out copycat motive in regards to this," Fruitport Township's deputy police chief, Greg Poulson, told the local outlet News 8 on Wednesday.

He added: "We're going through all his social accounts, all his electronic media, and trying to determine a motive for this act."

Poulson also told News 8 that threatening CEOs and high-profile businesspeople "seems to be a popular thing in this day and age."

Correction: December 20, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the location of Muskegon, Michigan. It's northwest, not northeast, of Grand Rapids.

As AI rapidly transforms workplaces, employees are on edge.

Roughly two years after ChatGPT's release sparked widespread interest in generative AI, it's becoming clear that most workers' jobs will fundamentally change — and some may disappear. An analysis by the International Monetary Fund published in January forecast that artificial intelligence would affect nearly 40% of jobs.

But the impact of AI on employment is complex and far-reaching. Some roles may become obsolete; others may be augmented or even created by AI. Workers are simultaneously experiencing anxiety, doubt, and excitement. What new skills will I need to develop? How can I stay relevant? And importantly, is my organization prepared for this AI-driven future?

Whether employees can trust their organization's leaders to navigate these opportunities is a pivotal question, said Brian Solis, the head of global innovation at ServiceNow, a cloud-based automation platform, and author of the book "Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future." He said that while many executives recognize AI's promise in increasing efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, they often fail to grasp the technology's profound potential.

"Leaders talk about the new normal or the next normal, but then they natively snap back to business as usual," Solis said. "It's the leaders who explore and ask: 'What if? Who will unlock entirely new ways of working?'"

Workers themselves have a responsibility to learn and grow, he added. They need to experiment with new technologies both in and outside work and challenge themselves to push beyond their comfort zones. "You need to literally rewire your brain," he said. "If you're waiting for someone to tell you what to do, you're on the wrong side of innovation."

'Workers need to be proactive'

Despite the breathless headlines about AI changing everything about the way we work, the reality is more mundane.

In a quarterly Gallup survey of American workers conducted in May, seven in 10 respondents said they never used AI in their jobs, and only one in 10 said they used it regularly. The survey used a random sample of 21,543 working adults. Among those who said they did use AI, the most common applications included generating ideas, consolidating information, and automating basic tasks.

Still, investment in AI continues to surge. A report from IDC predicted that global spending would reach $632 billion by 2028, more than double what it is now, covering AI apps, infrastructure, and related services.

Companies are investing in AI to avoid falling behind, said Mansour Javidan, an expert in digital transformation and the executive director of the Najafi Global Mindset Institute at Arizona State's Thunderbird School of Global Management. "There's a lot of hype driven by board expectations, and that's led to a herd mentality to move quickly," he said. "No CEO is going to look bad by investing in AI right now."

Workers, meanwhile, are caught between uncertainty and anticipation. "There's a disconnect," Javidan said. "At the highest levels of the organization, there's a lot of excitement about AI. But among lower- and midlevel employees, there's a good deal of anxiety and ambiguity because there's no clear path."

But "workers mustn't rely on senior executives and hope things will turn out rosy," he said.

Javidan advises employees to seize development opportunities within their organizations and seek out online courses. Many top universities, including MIT and Stanford, provide free classes and workshops to help people build their skills. Grassroots and community-based learning groups, such as Women Defining AI, can be valuable resources.

"Workers need to be proactive and educate themselves," he said.

AI as a strategic collaborator

Beyond formal training and coursework, getting comfortable with AI requires a fundamental mindset shift, experts say.

"We were born with skills like curiosity, wonder, and imagination, but we often unlearned these in schools," Solis said. "The aim with AI should not be to generate expected answers or reinforce existing thinking but to challenge our conventions."

Solis said he uses AI as a tool for perspective taking, asking it to generate responses from the personas of the Apple founder Steve Jobs and Walt Disney. This approach helps him identify blind spots, explore alternative viewpoints, and seek inspiration. "They're my personal coaches," he said.

Molly Sands, the head of the teamwork lab at the software company Atlassian, which studies teamwork in the age of AI and distributed work, recommends viewing AI as a creative partner, not just a task-completion machine. "The people who are saving the most time and seeing the biggest benefits are those who see AI as a strategic collaborator," she said.

This involves engaging with AI through dynamic, iterative conversations — much like working with a team of experts, she said. A new study by researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management backed this up, finding that human-AI teams showed the most promise in creative tasks like generating content and imagery and translating software code.

"A lot of people use it for one or two use cases, but the growth we're going to see in the next year or two is the people who think about it more ubiquitously," Sands said. "Agents will be a key driver of this."

Her team at Atlassian, for example, has developed a custom agent designed to help employees write more clearly. Essentially, she said, workers "word-vomit" into the agent with information about their audience, context, and key details. The agent then offers up a tailored draft in the worker's voice.

"Our workdays are consumed by writing emails, creating slide decks, and other routine tasks," Sands said. "If AI can take on some of this load — freeing us up for creative thinking and solving meaty problems — the better off we'll be."

The value of soft skills

Learning how to work with AI is imperative for most workers, but it's important to recognize that human skills remain essential.

After all, said Hakan Ozcelik, a professor of management at California State University, Sacramento, the value of human workers lies in their cognitive, behavioral, and emotional abilities. "There are all sorts of skills that AI doesn't have yet, and maybe never will," he said.

"Humans are inherently social beings, constantly interacting with customers, colleagues, competitors, and their physical environment," Ozcelik said. "These interpersonal skills are invaluable assets for any organization."

While AI can process information and perform repetitive functions with speed and accuracy, it lacks the soft skills necessary for effective communication and strategic decision-making. A report by Cornerstone, a skills-development platform, said that while generative-AI-related job postings had risen 411% since 2023, the demand for soft skills such as leadership, communication, and emotional intelligence outpaced digital skills by 2.4 times in North America and 2.9 times in Europe.

This is why Ozcelik advises employees to embark on what he calls "a process of professional soul-searching." Closely analyze your daily activities to determine your unique contributions and core competencies that cannot be outsourced, he said: "Dissect your work and look at what you offer your organization in a given day or a week."

Also, identify areas where AI could offer assistance. For example, teachers may realize that while AI can handle grading for grammar and syntax, they should focus on evaluating students' ideas and nurturing creativity. Similarly, healthcare professionals can leverage AI for administrative tasks or data analysis while dedicating more quality time to patients.

In an AI-driven world, the need for human skills will not change; instead, these skills will become even more vital as workers learn to collaborate effectively with technology, Ozcelik said.

"It's about what you contribute and the value you bring," he said.