Curse-co

If I had to list all the places I hate to go to, Costco comes only second to public urinals in Indian train stations. It is as if everything about Costco is designed to make you hate yourself for being a cheapo to go there in the first place. But you have no option when you buy enough bran cereal to feed a horse and enough milk to bathe the aforementioned metaphorical horse in.

For people who are not familiar with Costco, it's a huge warehouse-like store that promises to sell cheap stuff, both in price and quality, if you are willing to buy in bulk. Their business mantra is, “Customers buy any crap if it's cheap.”

When you go to Costco, the torture starts with finding a parking space. It doesn't matter what time you go, the parking lot is full. The only spot you will find is the one right next to the shopping cart area. You could as well paint a bullseye on your car because somebody is going to hit it with the cart.

Then you walk across half mile of parking lot, find a cart and try to enter the store but the entrance is blocked. You can tell even without looking that some moron is blocking the entrance with his shopping-cart trying to find his Costco membership card, which he did not bring.

You push your way through to find yourself in a 100 aisle store in which the products are organized in what seems to be a complete random fashion. Otherwise, what logic explains toothpaste and tampons being right next to each other, not anywhere near other bathroom or women's products? May be Costco believes people brush their teeth with tampons? Or may be the products are placed in some secret order, something like sorted in reverse alphabetical order of the second letter of the product name. In any case, mere mortals take half hour to find anything in that store.

The other interesting fact about Costco is all their employees are incognito, wearing civilian clothes, roaming among the crowds completely indistinguishable. How else could they run such huge store while making sure not a single employee is around when you need help?

After you spent 2 hours to find 4 products and ready to get out of the place promising yourself never to return, you find out that the lines are a mile long. As you wait impatiently in the line, you notice that every other line moves except yours. You crane your neck to find out that the woman who just had her 75 items scanned is asking, “Don't you accept Master Card?” And of course she doesn't speak English.

I will stop the post here. Because if I continue, rest of the post will be nothing but obscenities.