This is my semi-monthly CostCo rant. I try desperately to stay home, but sometimes the job is too big for the traditional shopper in the family (no, not the dog, although we'd like her help bringing in the bags). When CostCo first appeared, it was like magic. I could get industrial quantities of candy and tires for my car. We had never seen anything like it on our side of the country/state/wherever. Obviously the only thing we were missing was Choice. You better like Bob's Brand or 1 gallon ketchup containers, because that's all they carry.
Unlike most times, I was ambivalent about going. I was semi-excited because they were the only place that carried my sweet potato chips. I was missing them terribly, since I took out the previous 2 bags in a 2 days. Our regular store has an entire aisle of chips: bbq, sour cream, mud, but not a single bag of sweet potato chips. The aisle runs the length of the store. Not a single bag. I think the company that makes them is Tero. I don't know if they're less likely to kill me than regular chips but I don't care - I love them. So off we went, into the polluted, cloudy gray yonder.
The most serious problem with CostCo is the people who shop there.
I don't care where you come from; humanity and good common behavior are important. Unfortunately, CostCo has the worst negative stereotypes, occupying a square mile, ever seen. Usually it starts in the parking lot, with cars whizzing by as you try to park, some more concerned with taking your spot than looking around to see if anybody is already trying to park there. Sometimes on the way to a spot, it is necessary to play Dodge the Pedestrians. Unfortunately, these people prefer Take Down the Pedestrians. There are signs and road markings all over the place, but they plow on, undeterred. Sometimes you have to park far away and take the non-existent shuttle to get to the store, even if you have a handicapped tag. Then you have to fight the pedestrians. and the carts they left in their parking spots, because they're too good to walk their carts back. Or in their former country, cart-returning was punishable by death (but women weren't allowed to do it - only men).
Hopefully you'd eventually make it to the store itself. The area formerly filled with carts has be refashioned into Plants. Heaven help the allergic. Because there were plants, Wife had to stop and look at them. It's almost automatic. After attempting to park and navigate the long trek to the actual store. I was already out of patience (some would say that happened before I got into the car at home). The flowers didn't help. We have a long and proud history of purchasing flowers, dirt, chemicals, and cement to do our (her) planting, that never gets done. So rather than picturing how the plants will look in the ground, we have to picture what the plants will look like on top of the ground, sitting in their original containers. In yet another Charlie Brown Moment (kick the ball, Charlie Brown), each year I am told we need a 50lb bag of dirt (you buy dirt?), and I sit it at its spot on the front lawn. And every year it sits there, soaking up the clouds, until the next year, when I am ordered to pick up another 50lb bag of dirt, because it is urgently needed (to fill in the spot left by the previous bag of dirt). I fell for this three times before giving up (you want it, you carry it). The last bag is still in its spot, decomposing. At least the plastic will never go away.
Like any average 5 year old, I kept asking where the sweet potato chips were. Wife knows where everything is, but is hampered by the fact that the employees like to play Hide the Merchandise, so it's never in the same place twice. Coke has been in 7 different aisles over the last year. Speaking of which, Coke is now more expensive than the other coke. I guess the other coke never had Supply Chain Issues. In fact, I got sticker shock, since I try not to shop much. I kept saying, "They want HOW much?" and Wife kept laughing. She laughs at me a lot; I suspect it has little to do with keeping track of prices. And the sweet potato chips are on the other side of the store, a mile away (of course they are). The paper plates are more expensive than china, napkins more expensive than body-size towels, and the laundry detergent is more expensive than my car. The other question that kept occurring to me is why we had 2 carts. I dared not ask. It was either because we haven't shopped in 6 months or she just likes to feel important. As we walked in, she pointed out the incredibly short lines at the registers. At least that part brought joy (it's the little things). Ok, the lines, and my sweet potato chips. I was a bit focused.
Meanwhile, the rude bad stereotype foreigners were diving in front of me like I was invisible, cutting in front of my cart, and leaving their carts in the aisle in a way as to block the entire aisle. You have to admire their skill - the aisles are wide enough to drive a truck down. Sometimes 2. Regardless of what language you speak (English included), I am not interested in hearing you speak it, at top volume, at your phone. The microphones in phones are quite sensitive - you don't have to shout (you idiot). Many government studies, paid for with ridiculous amount of tax dollars, prove that you can actually shop faster if you're not hollering at your phone (or following that hot lady up and down the aisles). Many other government studies are about cow farts. Hopefully this study has no bearing on your shopping at all. I did smell large amounts of body odor, but other studies place this as less vomit-inducing than cow farts, although both are likely to crap up the aisles of the store.
I hate to say this, but their decent bakery produces... boring.. chocolate chip cookies, even if you can buy them next to the tire jacks and contraceptives. Their cakes are excellent, even if some of them don't have any chocolate. You can buy 100lb bags of dog food, but they don't go well with a 25lb dog. Strangely, the biggest choice of items in the entire store is dog toys. You can purchase 1 kind of emergency electrical generator, but there are 27 sets of dog toys. Normally this would be great, but my dog disembowels toys, one eyeball at a time. They removed the phone kiosks, but the tv's were the size of a city block. The didn't have the glasses frames I wanted, but there were a lot of $3,576 fridges and really bad battery-powered 'bathtub cleaners.' Wife said we'd take a short look at the clothes. Even after all this time married, I forget what a 'short look' is. After reading War and Peace on my phone, I only had to wait 17 minutes more for her to finish looking. One of the many strange aspects of her shopping is the seemingly mad desire to pick up items for family and friends. Let's put aside my seemingly mad desire not to clothe her family and friends, and wonder if this is the only CostCo in a 500 mile range. Certainly they all have CostCo near them, and can afford to buy their own clothes. Except the parents, whose area just got electricity, even though cell phones still don't work there. I think the satellites refuse to cover the area, and who could blame them. The parents literally have to walk up the block for their phones to get any signal. But sometimes they have snow removal, so it all evens out (even if the electricity goes out if there's rain in the forecast). So now and then we bring something from Civilization for them. Last time it was cardboard boxes, which are pure Unobtainium out there. I wouldn't begrudge the parents anything - they had to raise us horrid bastards so we owe them big time.
I was getting more excited as we neared the sweet potato chips. Mind you, they were not with the other potato chips, because Management thought that made too much sense. We did find the same brand, which included the chips, but also included tomato chips and parsnip chips. The UN recognizes parsnips as torture and sanctions any country trying to fob them off on its citizens. Not to mention cauliflower crust pizza. Sheer insanity. They have great generic pizza, but found out I like it and immediately replaced it with foo-foo generic pizza and 17 cheese pizza, with optional sauce.
Finally we reached the deodorant and sweet potato chip aisle, which I perused while leaping up and down. True to form, there were NO sweet potato chips. The entire reason for my presence was simply negated. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS. GET ME A *$#^ING MANAGER IMMEDIATELY. WHY ARE THERE PARSNIP CHIPS BUT NO SWEET POTATO CHIPS? GODDAMMIT, I AM GOING TO ACT JUST AS RUDE AS EVERYONE ELSE IN THIS STORE AND DEMAND WHAT I WANT, GOING OFF LIKE THE 4TH OF JULY IF IT'S NO LONGER STOCKED. YOU got me addicted, now you're required to keep me supplied. I'm calling the chip company and telling them that they'll need to ship cases of the chips directly to my house, since there are no stores stocking them. It's their fault, not mine. Although there are hundreds of items in our carts, I only requested ONE. I was in the middle of a very painful detox, which might've made things worse. Mrs. lefty kept walking away, so no one would think she was with me. Even the cashiers said they loved them, but parsnips had to GO.
Dejected and still screaming, we made it to checkout. The lines that were blissfully short now wound around the square mile of the store. The screaming, which had faded to minor outbursts, reignited. The only short line was for self-checkout. They don't work with a single item, no less hundreds. The staff were nice and very fast, so we got out quickly (after we waited a week to get there).
Then I saw the total.
Reading this blog, you know I'm never speechless, but there I was, just sputtering and blubbering. The total made our car and house payments look benign. I looked at Wife, with hives and various sexually transmitted diseases popping up all over my skin. Wife was quite calm, as if this was always the total when she shopped. *I* was the unreasonable one (go ahead, get married... all this could be yours).
Still no sweet potato chips.
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