AUGUST 25, 2024 – The other day I found myself aboard a spacecraft entering the parking lot of a Costco store in East Lyme, CT. It could just as well have been a Costco store back home in Minnesota: the lot was jammed with cars, except their license plates bore the motto, “The Constitution State” instead of the appeal to tourists: “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” With the recent selection of our governor as the Democratic candidate for vice president, I felt a tinge of pride pulling up with the latter license until I remembered—it was a rental car with New Jersey (the “Garden State”) plates.
One of our sons and his wife are members and ardent patrons of Costco and gave my wife (and me) a membership for her birthday last month. While visiting here in Connecticut we were dispatched to a local Costco to buy two packages of short ribs for an after-party-party with a sub-group of friends who’d been invited to our grandson’s first birthday extravaganza. (after the premiere birthday and baptism party in Portugal two weeks ago. Whew!)
I’d been to a Costco exactly twice before in my life; only once if no credit is assigned to the time a month ago when I entered a Costco parking lot but then promptly exited when I saw lines at the gas pumps reminiscent of the queues during the 1973 Oil Embargo during the Yom Kippur War. Before the other day, my only other time inside a Costco store occurred a decade ago under the “sponsorship” of someone in our family—either our son or one of my sisters; I don’t remember.
Two days ago, once we’d parked, I expected that with iron discipline I’d follow my wife into the cosmic-scale store and without straying off course, continue behind her to the meat galaxy. There I’d let her search for a solar system called “ribs,” and locate “short ribs.” Since our son had already acquired two packages at the Costco in Middletown on his way home from work the day before, we were equipped with high resolution images of the target planet: “Chuck Roast – Short Ribs – 16 oz. – $46.50.”
As is the case with expeditions into the unknown, however, things don’t always go according to plan. See NASA’s latest snafu with the Boeing Starliner. It wasn’t as though our shopping cart had developed an errant wheel and wouldn’t provide worry-free transport to a checkout lane. In such an exigency we could jettison the cart and carry our payload by hand. Where we—or rather I—(first) got off track was on my side trek to the bakery section. But I’m getting ahead of myself in describing the full course of our voyage into the inner space of a Costco cosmos.
Upon approaching the store proper—the alternative universe to any that I normally inhabit—I noticed other shoppers coming and going. They wore expressions of determination that seemed more intense than the mission-driven countenances of Walmart and Super Target customers I have observed. Also notable was the excessive size of the carts pushed by the Costco shoppers heading back to their spaceships for the journey home. The salient feature of cart contents was redundancy. Not one box of tissues but one whole lot of them, doubtless lifted from a full pallet, not narrow shelving; not a single large box of Cheerios but a package of two “family size” cartons, each of a size that our granddaughter, for example, could repurpose into a large-scale art project; not a pack of five pairs of athletic socks but a packet containing enough for teams of a whole urban school district.
As a newbie to conspiracy theories, I seized on the cart volumes to develop a theory of my own: Costco was an arm of the Democratic Party and designed to hide inflation at the consumer level by embedding it in sheer volume. One ordinary box of Cheerios for $10.00 would remind a consumer-voter that despite encouraging official statistics to the contrary, the price of groceries remains unacceptably high. But two over-sized cartons of Cheerios requiring a forklift to load into an industrial-gauge cart for $40.00? “Ah hah!” I imagined the average Costco customer’s response. “I’ve whipped inflation now [a throwback to (Republican) President Ford’s “W.I.N.” campaign to tame inflation, which hit an annualized high of 12.3%]. I’ve fooled the system, including all those tax-and-spend Democrats in government.”
Upon seeing the over-sized (of course) American flag on prominent display inside the Costco cosmos, I knew my conspiracy theory had legs: this symbol of über-patriotism commandeered by Republicans was a false flag to trick consumers into thinking Costco was “red” not “blue”—and shoring up the ploy that at 40 bucks for the big pack of Cheerios, the “red” team was doing its part to fight inflation.
In any event, immediately after crossing the threshold, a “red” shirt employee extended his cheerful greeting, and more important, checked us for our membership. Our financially-savvy son had already informed us that the Costco business model is built on membership fees, not margins. As my wife flashed her membership card, I felt renewed skepticism about volume discounts.
I dutifully followed my wife. I knew enough to be wary of the marketing equivalent of dangerous GCR (“galactic cosmic radiation”). Shielded by my wife’s shopping prowess and discipline, I figured that in the time it took to find “ribs” and scurry to the checkout line, I’d escape all the hooks to get me to buy stuff that I didn’t need or want.
Yet, as often occurs in life, an idea, an encounter, or in my case, a desire prompted by the sight of a coconut-frosted chocolate donut can alter an entire game plan. The thing of it was, the donut existed in a cosmos entirely apart from Costco, albeit not too far down the street . . .
. . . When launched on the Costco mission, we’d been instructed to make a quick stop at the locally famous Flanders’s Donut Shop about a quarter mile from Costco cosmos. We were to pick-up two glazed sugar donuts for our daughter-in-law. Once inside the busy donut place, we had to consider donuts for ourselves as well. My all-time favorite donut is coconut-frosted chocolate, but rarely am I presented with the opportunity to consume one. And I mean one. I don’t need two or more. Just one.
Before the door to the establishment closed behind us, I espied among the innumerable selections of fresh famous donuts filling the multi-shelved display . . . THE PRIZE! A single coconut-frosted chocolate donut. I couldn’t believe my good fortune and told my wife to get it for me. I then exited the crowded place to wait in the spaceship.
Minutes later she rejoined me in the vehicle. I experienced a sugar high simply in anticipation of my initial bite into my donut. I could already taste the coconut-laced chocolate flavor.
“I couldn’t get your donut,” Beth said.
“Wha-a-a-a-t?!”
“The woman ahead of me asked for it. But then she changed her mind, so I thought good, I can get it. When I asked the employee, though, she said it was gone—and in fact I could no longer see it on the rack. I felt rushed and didn’t follow-up for an explanation.”
I was crestfallen . . .
. . . But as we approached the MEAT department inside Costco, I noticed an oversized BAKERY sign farther down the aisle. While Beth landed on “ribs,” I elected to take what I figured was an innocent detour—in the off chance I might find a coconut-frosted chocolate donut . . . or perhaps a carton of 20.
Instead, I found an oversupply of bagels, including my favorite: blueberry. They looked fresh and packaged by the half dozen, not by the boxload. In the moment I forgot all about coconut-frosted chocolate donuts and seized upon a half dozen blueberry bagels.
As I rushed back to “ribs,” I recognized that I’d yielded to impulse. Furtively, I tossed the batch of fresh bagels into the cart that Beth had just loaded with a hundred bucks’ worth of red meat. I figured that a dozen bagels—half a dozen more than I needed or wanted—was a minor deviation from our mission.
Our path to the checkout area, however, led us past an offering I couldn’t refuse: prominently displayed bags of “granola bakes.” Each bag contained nine oatmeal cranberry “bakes” and nine blueberry pomegranate ones. I grabbed a bag and slipped it into the cart when Beth was looking over her shoulder.
Now we were ready to check out. This would’ve taken no more than a minute, except the bag of bagels lacked a bar code. When the cashier keyed in the product number, we were informed that the bagels had to be purchased in minimum quantities of two bags of a half dozen bagels each. If Beth was prepared to jettison the bagels, I definitely wasn’t. I raced to the BAKERY to grab a second bag, then scurried back to the checkout counter. Now we were definitely free to exit the store with our two pounds of MEAT, my package of 18 “Granola Bites” and my two dozen bagels.
Once we burst into the sunshine, I realized we’d escaped Costco cosmos relatively unscathed. We’d managed not to embark on a hog-wild buying spree, filling our cart with a lifetime supply of hand soap, eight years’ worth of toothpaste, a new car, a 12-foot-wide flat TV screen, and 17 dozen eggs. We’d resisted the 847 buying impulses that we’d experienced in low orbit to and from meat section, the bakery and the cooler loaded with 8,000 sandwiches-to-go.
Only Beth would know if a 16-ounce package of “short ribs” for $46.50 was in bargain range (she expressed surprise in the form of a low-key “Wow.”). I have no idea what the 18 Granola Bakes or the dozen bagels cost. What I do know is that they weren’t on the list.
As we exited the Costco cosmos parking lot and returned to earth, I felt gratitude for living in the land of plenty yet being free to resist—mostly—the excess “plenty.” At the same time, however, I felt fear that on the next expedition to Costco cosmos, I might not feel so free to resist.
In the meantime . . . I’ll have to schedule another trip to Flanders Donut Shop.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
