Costco

Yesterday I went to Costco. I am still recovering.

I don’t think it is possible for me to capture the abject horror of walking around in a Costco.  Talk about your unwashed masses.   Picture a bumper car game set in the Mad Max universe. Utter chaos created by people whose sole focus is saving money.  It sickens me.  As you know, I am not a fan of frugality under the best of circumstances, but this is insane.  Not one of these “people” have ever flown first class or bought hand painted shoes at Nordstrom.  Not one. And the human trafficking is appalling.  Every other cart is filled with children, which you can apparently pick out in aisles 24 and 25. They are near the bottom, not stacked up high, so they are easier to put in the shopping carts.  

All I wanted to do was to pick up a prescription.  My new concierge doctor, which non-frugally costs me $1200 a year on top of my insurance, wanted me to switch to the Costco pharmacy after Rite-Aid lost my prescriptions 6 times in a row. Weaving my way through the bumper car death scene, I managed to get to the pharmacy in the back of the store uninjured, only to stand in line with the poor for 30 minutes before I could even speak with someone to learn that they did not have my prescription.  As I stood there watching this horrific scene of mass consumption take place around me I initially thought this was capitalism at its worst, but after a while it occurred to me this was much more akin to a scene from the Soviet Union in the 1950’s where people were crammed into harshly lit one stop stores and forced to fight for badly made clothes and processed food. 

Right then Mark texted me from the other side of the store, a photo of giant bottle after giant bottle of Veuve Clicquot for only $40.  I texted back, “Nyet comrade Марк. We have to get out of here and into a Metropolitan Market immediately.”

He texted back, “Dah comrade Cloveheadzki!”

Back into the bumper cars filled with children, we almost made it to the front door but ran into the TV section. We stopped cold.  There is was, glowing.  A TV.  A TV with a curving screen.  I could hear it calling me.  “Just think about what Buffy would look like on me.  Think about it.” Somewhere in the back on my mind the rational part of my brain was screaming, “Nyet comrade Cloveheadzki, Nyet. You don’t have any rooms without TVs in them already. This place is evil, it is wrong, Buffy would tell you to run.”

It worked.  We ran.  We ran so far away.  All the way to the Metropolitan Market in West Seattle where we bought duck breasts, chanterelle mushrooms, and a full price bottle of Veuve. 

Later, at home, thinking about the day’s horrors, I tried to weigh the moral issues around shopping at Costco where they sell children vs. shopping at the other evil empire, Amazon. I cannot make that decision for you, but my choice would be here.

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