costco – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

Just got back from an impromptu date night with my wife, which ended up, as I suspect many middle-aged date nights have, at Costco.

(Trigger warning: mild bragging, or at least a failure of humility)

The first thing you see when you walk into a Costco, of course, is the giant TVs. None of us really watch television, to be honest, and what TV is watched is generally done on a tablet; the TVs that are in the house are there for video games. But we glanced at the $2000 98″ set at the door and, as happens sometimes when encountering high-end electronics, I took a minute to reflect on how much better off we are now than when we got married.

“I could impulse-buy that TV,” I said. “Right now. Absolutely nothing bad would happen. We wouldn’t have to cancel anything or even cut back on anything. Just, fuck it, and buy a $2000 TV.” She laughed, we did not impulse-buy a $2000 TV, and we kept on walking. And, like, okay, there was no chance that we were buying a TV, but if we did, the actual problem with it would be where to put it, and not the cost.

Less than a minute later we walked past the saddest man in the world, some poor bastard who was trying to sell whole-house generators to random Costco people walking by. He greeted me, I said no as politely as I could, and then my wife surprised both of us by stopping and asking him what the basement price was to acquire such a thing. The hilarious thing was that it was completely obvious that no one had asked him anything during the time that he was there, as he took way too long to come up with an answer, which was ten thousand dollars, and then went straight into complaining about how two years ago it would have been five thousand dollars, and it was crazy how expensive his product that he was trying to sell us had gotten.

After we were done talking to him, my wife reminded me that we do, in fact, talk about having a generator installed every time our power goes out, which generally happens about once a year. So, okay. Ten grand, if we wanted to do that. Put that in the back pocket for now, though.

A few minutes later we were in the produce aisle, and I discovered they sold organic dates. The last time I had dates of any variety was in Israel, nearly thirty years ago. I would like to eat a date, I thought to myself, trying to ignore the fact that because we were in Costco the only real option would be to buy many dates and not just the one or two that would probably satisfy me, and then looked at the cost. $10, basically, for, I dunno, a couple of pounds of dates.

And I, the same dude who had just discussed impulse-buying a 98″ TV and had just had a serious conversation about a $10,000 home generator system (likely more than that, because remember, $10K was this guy’s floor,) almost put them back because the notion of spending $10 on dates was more than I was willing to do.

We bought the container. I look forward to throwing 95% of them out in a week or so. Or maybe longer. Hell, I have no idea what the shelf-life of organic dates might be.

So I discovered today that I can’t handle Costco. I’ve never been in one before, and one just opened nearby, and my mom and wife wanted to go, so I tagged along. I’ve never in my life had such a visceral negative reaction to a store before. I hated the place– from the fact that there aren’t any damn signs anywhere (even the bathrooms aren’t labeled) to the fact that the place where you walk in is nowhere near any registers to the utter fucking randomness of the layout– within a 15-foot radius you could find housewares, fresh seafood on ice, liquor, and piles of leather jackets, an item that should never be in a pile. I’d had enough after five minutes and told Bek and my mom that I’d be in the car; I had my phone with me to keep me entertained so they could take as long as they wanted.

On the way back to my car, it hit me just how much the place is like a casino. No signs, no markers, everything is set up to disorient you and keep you lost and wandering. And the $50 a year fee for the right to shop there as the icing on the cake. No thanks; I’ve had enough naked capitalism lately and this place, despite having a stellar reputation for how they treat their employees, is one of the most grotesquely capitalist places I’ve ever had the misfortune of entering. And I’m not even generally that down on capitalism, although it does get worse this time of year; it should be noted that the very next thing I did after leaving Costco was go to Best Buy and buy a new iPad. But, still… guh. If a store is going to try and manipulate my behavior I’d prefer it if it wasn’t so goddamned obvious. I don’t give a damn how cheap their diapers are, I’d rather go to fucking Wal-Mart, and I have literally never before in my life said the words “I’d rather go to Wal-Mart.”

Actually, that’s not true, because I still won’t be going to Wal-Mart. But walking into a Wal-Mart doesn’t immediately give me the creeping screamers the way Costco did. And note that all this is before we get to the fact that it was the second Saturday the place had been open and it was crammed full of filthy, stinking humanity. I’d have hated it empty; the people had nothing to do with it.

So. I’m crabby today, is the point. How’re you?