Close Encounters with Costco

April 14, 2025

Greetings from the prodigal,

In the list of life’s milestones, there are two you might not associate together.

Several years ago, I was in Las Vegas for a meeting, and naturally I was curious about the casino experience there.  While I had lost my share of coins in slot machines, I was interested in feeling the dangerous edge that James Bond knew as he sat at the baccarat table or bested the dealer at poker.  I dressed in my most suave JC Penney couture, and folded my budgeted amount of money in my wallet, and headed to the casino floor.

I wasn’t there long.  In part because I love saying “Hit me,” at the blackjack table, even when I have two kings.  But the real reason was I was dizzy and a little nauseated, and not at the loss of the $23.00.  I made my way away toward the exit, eschewing the baccarat, (a phrase I later trademarked) and as I looked back across the sea of people and machines and cards and dice I felt disoriented and sick. 

There was something about the vibration in the place that was unsettling. I felt lost, a little confused, and there were no windows, no horizon to tell me what the world was.

Which is how I felt when I went to Costco.

There are rites of passage for communities. The streets get paved, electricity lights our houses, schools are built, a newspaper is started, and then one day the world changes. Costco comes to town.

As we approached the store it felt just like the scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The land had been cleared of everything but rocks and curbs, and there in the middle of that empty was this enormous entity. The Mother Ship: Costco.

We parked about a kilometer from the entrance, carefully choosing the last space, and wrestled free a shopping cart that was bigger than a 1985 Chevette.  (As you know the 1985 Chevette was designed to resemble a shopping cart, hence the reference.)

Normally I don’t share my religious doctrines, but one of my fundamental tenets is that I don’t believe in going to the store without a list, and I don’t buy anything that’s not on the list. I will also confess that I am in a mixed marriage, meaning my wife does not share in this faith doctrine.

I mention this because of the immense cognitive dissonance I experienced while gripping the handle of the enormous cart, which according to my beliefs, should not be filled with anything on this excursion.

I am technically not a member of Costco, so there was a moment when security nearly stopped me. To be honest, she was a little old lady with one of those canes with the tripod on the bottom, so I think I could have taken her. Luckily, my spouse has a membership so I got in without a fight.  I will admit feeling some empathy with Green Card holders.

In the first few steps I found myself pointing up like a tourist in Time Square.  Here was a 96” TV and a towering display of kayaks and five-gallon jugs of malted milk balls and an inflatable pickleball court and a rack filled with 12-packs of enormous flashlights, which I assume were displayed at the front so the search parties could get them and get out quickly.

Within a few minutes, I felt that Las Vegas casino vertigo. (I am trademarking the term ‘Las Vertigo’) I felt overwhelmed with the size of the ten-pound bags of puffed cheeseballs and the lights and the smell of free bacon samples and the swarms of people jockeying for position to get the best deals on pet caskets.  I gripped the handle of the Chevette and closed my eyes.

There is a sort of carnival hysteria inside Costco.  People trudge with glazed eyes behind these giant clown-carts, which are designed to shame you into buying hoarder-quantities of meat and 400 cubic inch cans of beans and frozen pizzas the size of wagon wheels.  There were enormous piles of blue jeans and people were scooping them up like it was a Soviet black-market bazaar.  Is there a shortage of jeans in this country?

A news report about the store said that Costco’s Kirkland brand sells more than Nike or Coca Cola. Before this weekend I’d never heard of it.

The thing even more dizzying than the size of the place and the pre-apocalyptic buying frenzy is the outlandish variety of what is offered at Costco.  You can book vacations, get your eyes checked, get any kind of food you can name, packaged in quantities that will guarantee you will never need to come back to Costco.  You can buy a car, get tires for it, get gas for it. Kiddie pools, pet supplies, rotisserie chicken, furniture, clothing, 100 roll packs of toilet paper, and if you are feeling weak from wandering the aisles, order a hot dog and a soda for $1.99.   

I read that Costco sells half the world’s cashews. Just writing that made me want to lie down.

I staggered behind my wife, reeling from the overstimulation, desperate to get to where I could see the sky, see the world, have a sense of reality.  I had to believe that this is how people who are kidnapped by aliens feel.  We bought ten thousand dollars’ worth of something not on a list and made our way across the vast parking lot. 

Besides their popularity, their discombobulating environment, and the fact that you leave a lot of money there, Costco and casinos have one other thing in common: I won’t be going back to either place.

Hope this finds you eschewing the baccarat,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith