alt Hacker NewsI want to live like Costco people
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Costco encapsulates the American Dream; offering quality, value, and fair dealing to upwardly mobile strivers from all backgrounds.
>The kinds of brands I like to buy aren’t what they sell at Costco
If what food you buy is "brands", it's shit to begin with. Just that some of it is more expensive shit.
If you want to be uppity about it, buy mostly local, fresh produce and meats, not packaged brands, as much as you can.
Wow, reading some of these comments. I think I love my Costco.
If I'm grabbing an item or two and they haven't been moved I can be in and out in under 10 minutes.
Lethbridge AB, some of these other ones sound like an adventure.
It must be an issue with the European implementation, but I have a Costco not very far from home, and yet I never stepped inside.
Because simply asking to see what it sells requires me to subscribe upfront.
It's not like I cannot buy without a membership card; that is perfectly understandable. But I cannot even see what's sold inside, which prevents me from knowing if I actually want to become a member. They do have a "catalogue" of sorts... showing the prices of about 30 products or so. That's all. And the website describing the general aisles, with a few pictures.
So, they want me to subscribe to something before I can even see what they have to offer? What the heck is with that?
On the other hand, you can just walk straight to the food court and buy pizza, soda, and cookies, without being a member.
Is this how things work in the US as well? If so, how is that justified?
I want to live like Costco people too, but my house isn't big enough. Fortunately, one family member shops there, and splits the stuff between two households.
Has anyone else noticed the lack of free soda cups after they switched back to Coca-Cola products?
Back in the Pepsi days there were always free cups around from people that didn't like Pepsi. Now - nada.
The nearest costco to me is an hour and half away. I've been in costco only once, and I guess I got it, but I also was like: do i need this? This year they're opening one nearby (~10mins). I have this nagging growing feeling of fear I will be joining.
Costco culture is the haze of infinite feeds, sequels, casinos with no right turns, the feeling that there is no new art, and the death of the novel.
Stay repeat indulge enjoy
I've never been to Costco but there is a Sam's Club here. People talk about Costco hot dogs but Sam's Club hot dogs are pretty awesome.
when you consider the setup and infrastructure going to and fro the mega warehouse of dry and perishable goods, also considering the required equipment, (a sedan, or large car) - It begins to become apparent the genesis of costco largely rises out of Americas car culture and suburbia.
Alternatively elsewhere, small shops, many locally owned, butchers, vendors convenience stores replace the existence of 'costco'
In these facts, I dont know if its necessarily a bad thing, but there is something empty, soulless and anti social about it.
Maybe a few grape tomatoes for thought between the world salad of this article, "cognitive pattern. It is a jarring thoughtscape, remarkably compelling and nondiscursive and utterly hard to shake." - That is what the author too is getting at?
"I will never purchase Costco clothing"
Much of my wardrobe is from CostCo, effective suburban camouflage as well as being fine as clothes.
> You shift into Costco mode somewhere at the ten-minute driving mark. They’re always in far-off places, and so the last ten or twenty minutes of the drive feel like a rush
Or you just order from Costco as one more store on Instacart or similar, and don't make it part of your identity.
I have memories of a Costco similar to the author's, but I have no desire to ever go to a store again if I can help it.
Ah, the terrible agony of realizing the hoi polloi aren't entirely wrong about everything after all.
I don't get it, Costco is objectively great
Only an American could come up with an article like this, psychologizing about a supermarket.
Guys. Its a supermarket with a monthly fee. Based on your monthly expenses it might or might not be worthwhile to shop there. That's about all the philosophizing there is about it.
This article seemed mildly interesting to perhaps kill 5 minutes. I clicked through only to be slapped by a cookie consent and a newsletter signup pop up, together they entirely obscure the content on mobile. Too much friction, so I decided to just close it, this saved me from wasting 5 minutes of my life reading, which I instead proceeded to use cleaning a toilet. All in all, a good outcome I would say.
This whole comment section reads of Costco astroturf haha
I find the quality of Costco food is lacking, especially things like Chips, which are usually quite stale. The overall experience is also off-putting, compared to a place like Whole Foods, that generally get me excited about cooking.
Author missing out on good wine deals for no apparent reason.
Did anyone else read this in Anthony Bordain voice?
this article is pretentious garbage and makes me glad i no longer live in the pacific northwest
I want to do whatever Costco people do.
I need that 82oz jar of Adam's at my costco
The article had Don DeLillo vibes.
> And this is where we wait together, regardless of our age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.
I resisted joining Costco for many years, because it seemed too culty, or just too popular in general (with my assumption being that most popular things are bad). Eventually they sucked me in though, and yes, it really is good.
Costco is the last holdout of true American abundance. In the 90s abundance seemed everywhere, even if out of reach. The difference in quality of a service or product was clear at higher price points. Now as a rich adult I generally feel poor, even at fancy restaurants. Nearly everything feels meagre, flimsy & rationed, despite being insanely expensive. Like that scene in Jojo Rabbit where the kids are wearing cardboard uniforms .
I buy 95% of my food and most of my household items from Costco. I will blindly buy any item without reading reviews. Out of thousands of purchases I can count the failures on one hand.
Many ridicule Costco for being excessive. But frugal buyers can produce great value out of 25 lbs of flour, 10 lb bags of rice and so on. With proper home economics you can still eat like a king on a lower-middle-class budget. I'm very proud of the nutritious and luxurious meals I produce with what most people are paying for Doritos & Mountain Dew.
I will never live out of reach of a Costco. It's the second most important factor when I live somewhere.
I will brave the downvotes and say: I don’t like Costco.
It’s not out of snobbishness, their quality is excellent at excellent prices.
My problem is that I find I spend more at Costco than at conventional grocery stores like Trader Joe’s.
The paradox is, it’s cheaper, but I spend more. I buy things I wouldn’t normally buy, and ant higher quantities. Even worse, I somehow eat it all quite quickly.
I spend more and eat more when I shop at Costco.
Unfortunately that’s neither healthy for my wallet nor for my waistline.
You can do better with corn in bulk at a grain elevator. Takes about 8 bushels (56 pounds, 25.4 kg) to provide the calorie requirements for an adult for a year. Current price for corn in USA is $5/bushel plus transport. So $40/person/year (modulo transport, cooking, dying of pellagra, etc.).
Look at Richie Rich paying $200 plus prorated membership for his subsidence calories (in white rice, no less, which is a premium starch in some Asian countries)…
The main reason i don't shop at costco is the lack of serendipity. i won't set foot in a walmart for the same reason. My expectations for any random human encounter there are net negative.
I've been to Costco (UK) a couple of times. It mostly seems to be: 4x the quantity for 4x the price (i.e. same price as any other store). I don't get it? I honestly think a large majority of people think it being in bulk MUST equal a saving?
Is it just for like catering companies or families of 20 where the bigger size is kind of helpful?
They do some nice discounts on Macs online though (can't say I'm a fan of their customer service either though based on my experience returning a Macbook)
I've been a costco member for more than 10 years now since it's about a 7 minute drive from my home. It's really fun to discover new things they bring in, like a flea market kind of vibe.
These past 2 years it has gotten significantly worse. Too crowded. Too many people who have no common decency of not blocking the lane. And way way way too many instacart delivery people FLOORING IT to get their next item pickup and leave. Looking at their phone and bumping into people/stuff. I don't like the vibes.
The one cool thing they have now is the 9am executive hours where you can go in earlier than normal. That feels more like the costco of 2016 to me.
When I lived in the US, I was a Trader Joe’s person. They had lots of interesting and gourmet-ish items at pretty reasonable prices. Not a lot in the way of fresh produce though, so needed to go to a supermarket for that.
Their staff felt a bit cultish, but they were always pretty friendly and helpful so from a customer perspective it was nice.
I tried Costco once and everything was too big. By the time we got to the end of anything we were absolutely sick of it.
normcore?
If I’m being honest I find a lot of this kind of stuff pretentiously performative. It’s a wholesale market with a membership fee. The food is nutritious and cheap and there are economies of scale to be had.
There are no Costco people. There are no Whole Foods people. There are no Gus’s people. In San Francisco, I live a block from Whole Foods, a block from Safeway and a block past that is Gus’s. Costco is six blocks away. We go to all of these places at various times. My gym is near Gus’s. Whole Foods has the biggest selection. Safeway has Envy apples. Costco is where we get the base load of stuff when we do weekly shopping.
As commentary on consumerism has filtered down from philosophy to the masses it really has become incredibly middle-brow. Copy-paste opinions about shopping substitute for any intellectual examination of food availability. Like LLM text the language is sound but the ideas are incredibly shallow shadows of the ultimate concept.
It really brings home the idea that if you can’t appreciate living in an era of abundance where fruit of high quality is available throughout the year and it has been bred to high perfection and eggs, milk, and rice are practically costless compared to the past, that perhaps there is nothing that can bring you joy. All the “this is late stage capitalism where you consume consume consume without thought and reason” takes have the shape of meaning but carry nothing. They’re some kind of cargo cult mimicry of some concept.
We have solved food. Costco is the solved form. $2.99/lb of chicken.
Stopped reading at "cheugy". Born near Seattle and now lives in Portland - like two of the biggest non-conformist regions out there..
With dynamic pricing and other consumer predatory schemes out there, Costco feels like the only one that fights for the consumer. The checkout is lightyears faster than any local supermarket, return policies are good, and I don't feel like the warehouse is trying to waste my time. The low price of good quality meat alone is worth the price of admission. If you cook, you come out doubly saving money.
"Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me." -> What even is this? Get over yourself.
Remember that the CEO of Costco wears his name tag to work, and eats the Costco hotdog like everyone else. I'd buy that for a dollar!
This could possibly be the most cringe piece of coastal elite content I've ever read.
Aesthetically-minded hipster writes a think piece on reluctantly aging out of high school fears of being "uncool," finally grows up and has a family, but 15 years too late.
Discovers the concept of economies of scale and also that families in the center of the country who spend their weekends at Costco instead of marching at pride events might not be nazis after all...and actually it's kind of convenient to go to a big warehouse full of curated bulk items and buy shit when you have kids.
I imagine its exactly the type of thing boomer hippies (the hipsters of their generation) wrote about in the 80s/90s after they realized dropping acid in nudist drum circles gets old after a while and that communes don't actually work. Just rewrite the title to "I want to live like Kmart people," and voila, you've got a New Yorker thinkpiece from 1986.
shopping at Costco reminds me of reading news in a bad way, Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect way. And it's bit of a shame because there's this already implicit trust that have formed over the years, but it just seems really hard to keep enshittification at bay. For Costco to continue they really need to up their game and make consumer their absolute fan by first stop destroying their gut health. Junk food's fine, but chicken mince honestly don't need all that additives.
This is kind of a weird take on Costco, but I also somewhat resonate with it. I've always seen Costco as somehow the perfect aspirational ideal of the American middle class. Personally, I love Costco, and my love for it has grown as I've become more affluent, because I can actually attain that aspirational lifestyle. On any given day in my local Costco, I'm probably the highest earning person in the store, but that doesn't matter because I want the exact same Kirkland Signature toilet paper as the next guy. As someone who often obsesses over trying to acquire the best things so that they last longer (BIFL), Costco tickles my internal register of "good enough". I don't think I've ever regretted a purchase at Costco other than occasionally upsetting my wife for getting something that wasn't on the list.
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Living in Japan, I have a membership because it's a good source of western food at a cheaper price than most import shops. Good bacon and cheese isn't common over here.