winning at costco

I know what you’re thinking. Costco is a store. A big store. You don’t win at a store. You go there. You buy things. You go home. There’s no winning. No losing. That’s where you’re wrong.

It doesn’t have to be Costco—that’s just what we have here in Nashville. You might have Sam’s (we have that too, but I don’t) or BJ’s Wholesale. Warehouses full of huge quantities of... well... just about everything.

If you’ve been to one of these places, you know the odds are not in your favor. The impulses are strong and difficult to fight. Take my last visit, for instance.

I showed up just a little after the place opened. It was a Sunday morning and I live in Tennessee. The bible belt. So, surely, everyone was in church and I’d have the place to myself. But, apparently, Costco is church for a shit ton of Tennesseans. The parking lot was jammed. So much so that I considered scrapping my plan. But damnit, I wanted tuna. And these heathens were not going to keep me from it.

To my surprise, I found a parking place fairly quickly and entered the pressure cooker. People were everywhere. Pushing their gigantic Costco carts into and in front of other shoppers. Daring them to object. And all I wanted was some tuna. I didn’t even need a cart, but I took one. Because that’s what you do when you’re at Costco.

I found the tuna pretty quickly and everything inside me said, “Go to the checkout. Get out of this unholy place!” But I didn’t. Why? Because it’s Costco. There’s a lot of cool stuff here you might need. If you can fight off the hoards of other shoppers to get it.

The truth is, I haven’t been to Costco in a long time. I forget that I live alone now and I don’t need 30 rolls of toilet paper. I don’t need two dozen bagels. I don’t need a genetically engineered rotisserie chicken. And I don’t need four pounds of almonds. I don’t need four pounds of anything. But sometimes there are things you just can’t resist. So you buy them. You bring them home and then... sometimes... you’re disappointed.

Take, for instance, the “world’s best dill pickles.” I love a good dill pickle, so why wouldn’t I want the world’s best? Right. I would want them. And $6.99 seemed like a small price to pay when I could go literally anywhere in the world and find only inferior pickles. So I bought them. And you know what? They were good. Very good. But they were not the best I’ve ever had. That honor goes to Roberta MacDonald – mother of one of my oldest friends. Second place—a close second—goes to my friend, colleague, and fellow tequila aficionado, Vanessa Williams. Not that Vanessa Williams. Nope, not that one either. My friend Vanessa makes a rock solid dill pickle. Her pickles put the Costco pickles to shame.

So I won’t be falling for the “world’s best” advertising again, Will Ferrell be damned. But there are other things that suck you in. Costco’s produce is one of those things.

Costco has amazing produce. I don’t know why they keep the area so cold, though. I swear, I walk in there with my giant cart expecting to see Walt Disney sitting there with a smug look on his face like he knows something I don’t. He’s there, right next to the industrial sized container of blueberries. You bypass Walt, but can you resist the blueberries? I think not. And it’s so damned cold, you grab a bunch of other things and get out of there before your frozen brain can tell you you don’t need them. At least that’s what happens to me. You get to have your own Costco story.

So, there I am. Frozen and disoriented in the back of a giant warehouse of groceries. I’m as far from the checkout as I’m going to be. What do I do? Of course... I put more shit in my cart, even as I stagger toward the front of the store. Those little multicolor tomatoes get me every time.

I also veer a little left to check out what kind of golf balls they’re featuring. Why? Two reasons. First, I lose a lot of golf balls, so the Costco quantity model comes in handy. And second, that side of the store is mostly housewares, which pose a relatively low threat of winding up in my cart. Single guys with adult children don’t need a 60-pack of AA batteries. Ever.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, it’s been a while since I ventured into Costco. So, imagine my surprise when I got to the front and saw they have self-checkout lines. I smiled when a tall man waved me over to the open machine. Confusion set in when he began scanning my stuff. At the self-checkout. I barely had time to thank him before I was done. But was I done?

The screen flashed $58.89. That can’t be right, right? No one gets out of Costco for under $100. My heart started beating a little faster. I felt like the other shoppers were looking at me, wondering how I pulled off such a feat. I soaked in their admiration at the same time I scanned the area, half-expecting a very polite Costcoian to approach and say, “I’m sorry sir. You’re going to have to go back and buy more stuff.”

But he never came and reality started to set in. I was winning. Winning at Costco. All that was left was to get out the door. Just one more small hurdle—the receipt-checker with her eager highlighter.

My receipt-checker was very experienced at life but clearly new to her job. Most of the time, they just match the number of items with the number on your receipt and send you on your way. But not my lady. I’ll call her Gladys. Gladys examined every last thing in my cart like she was studying for The Price is Right. She shot me a knowing glance as she handed me my receipt, as if to say, “Well played, my friend. But you know you owe us $41.11.”

Thanks Gladys. But why didn’t you warn me about those pickles?