Confessions of a Costco Shopper

I know I shouldn't like it. But I go anyway.

Photo by Grant Beirute on Unsplash

There is no reason in this world for me to like Costco. It represents so many things that I can’t stand. I do not like the Big Boxing of America. I do not like crowds. I loathe the way chains have homogenized the world, creating a strip-mall hellscape at the expense of so many real and authentic Main Streets. If I need a refrigerator or an oven, I am not going to The Home Depot, the Land of Orange Aprons, or Lowe’s. I am going to the local appliance shop that is doing its best to compete with the corporate behemoths. When it’s time for a new 20-pound bag of nutritious cat food, I am going to see Laura at Bark & Meow in Tarrytown, and not the Petco that is five miles away that looks exactly like the Petco that is 500 miles away.

Patrick Henry never said, “Give me my local pizza shop or give me death,” but if he had, I would’ve backed him up.

Patrick Henry (not a Costco member)

So, no, it makes zero sense that I have a soft spot for Costco, the quintessential Big-Box joint. But I do. I feel like a total hypocrite admitting this, as if I’ve checked my principles at the door in pursuit of a two and a half pound can of excellent Virginia peanuts for only $7.69. And maybe I am doing just that. (As long as we are doing confessions, here’s another: I am a dogged bargain-hunter. I get fired up when I find a Levi’s denim shirt at Goodwill for $3, and have been known to drive to multiple stores to get a jar of Hellman’s mayo for $3.99 instead of $6. 99. But let’s save the bargains for another post.)

The truth is that I used to hate going to Costco. My first experience was on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Whoever built the parking lot wasn’t familiar with the concept of drainage. There weren’t just ponds of water in the parking lot; there were lakes. Good luck finding a space within two hundred yards from the entrance.  Horns were honking and tempers were flaring, Costco members trolling for the holy grail – a parking spot – which, from my perspective, seemed to go to the Member with the biggest car and/or the worst manners. Once inside – again, this was my first visit – the sheer size of the place was completely overwhelming. I had no clue how to find anything. I felt like typing ‘Milk’ into my GPS and see if that would work. I asked a guy who worked there how I could find napkins, which, oddly enough, were not in the paper towel aisle, probably because stacks of Bounty and Kirkland Signature Paper Towels were piled about 25 feet high and there wasn’t room for anything else. The guy was behind the wheel of a forklift. He didn’t look up.

“Three oh nine,” he said.

I was confused. I didn’t ask him what time it was. Now he looked up and saw my perplexed face.

“Aisle 309 – that’s where the napkins are,” he said, a bit irritated.

“Thank you,” I said.

The most mind-blowing part of my visit was the checkout lines. They stretched half the length of the store. Most of the shopping carts, which at Costco are about the size of a Cooper Mini, were overflowing with goods, placed in there by families who seemed to be shopping for the next two months. It occurred to me that maybe it was because Members didn’t want to be subjected to all this more than once every eight weeks.

I headed out of the store without making a single purchase, but also without bruises, which was a plus.

The day my feelings about Costco changed was about six months later. Is it possible to have a spiritual awakening about a warehouse store? I have no clue, but that’s what it felt like.

It happened because of my ears.

That’s right. My ears.

You see, I made my return to Costco to get hearing aids. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have had hearing loss for my whole life, a result of chronic ear infections as a toddler. I got older, and my hearing got worse. (Shocker.) I ignored it for as long as I could, hoping the problem was wax buildup. It was not. I was, quite honestly, a stubborn ass whenever my wife would, gently and non-judgmentally, ask me if I’d considered getting my hearing checked. Finally, I got tired enough of saying, “Can you repeat that?” and “What did you say?” that I went to an audiologist, who reported that I had moderate-to-severe hearing loss. I began exploring my options for hearing aids. Never did I imagine that Costco would be one of them. Going to Costco for hearing aids felt akin to going to Dollar General to buy pearls. Why would you even consider it? But then I talked to a scientist friend who I knew had hearing aids – he’s a very tech-savvy guy – and he told me he got his at Costco and he’s delighted with them. So I made an appointment with my local Costco hearing-aid technician, had another hearing test (I did even worse on that one) and then watched as the technician sat at a computer and programmed the settings so that when my hearing aids were manufactured they would be specifically calibrated to address my deficit.

Two weeks later, I got a call from the technician, saying my hearing aids had arrived. I was reconnected with the world of sound faster than you can say “buy in bulk,” and my feelings about Costco did a 180.

I discovered that if you go at 10 a.m. on a weekday, and not on a rainy Saturday, you can find plenty of parking and don’t need to wear a suit of armor. I began to marvel at the whole scope of the operation. How is it possible to get new eyeglasses, hearing aids and all-season radials at the same store? How many workers, and forklifts, does it take to unload five hundred or 1,000 air conditioners from their pallets and set them up in the seasonal section, next to a like number of fans? How can they sell rotisserie chickens for $4.99 and a two-pound block of superb Irish cheddar cheese for $13?

Or a flat screen TV for under $300?

Then I discovered the wonder of all the food and beverage sampling stations at the end of many aisles. You can’t get a free lunch in Costco, but it’s close. A few weeks ago while the technician was cleaning my hearing aids (for no charge), I was a bit hungry and did some exploring. I wound up having crispy wontons, a mini egg sandwich, hummus on crackers and Perrier. After I picked up my hearing aids, I circled back for another wonton, alive to the sounds around me, happy to be in a store I should hate.