alt Hacker NewsComparatively, as I have both a Costco and Sam's Club memberships, the floorplans on Costco stores are much more efficient. Both stores get crowded but Sams suffers from poor design which makes traffic worse. Although, Sams does compensate with a smoother checkout experience.
Costco checkouts are a nightmare, a giant queue on one side reaching back to the deli while people try to "zip merge" in from the other side in several smaller queues.
At one point they had the pallets at the front aligned so you could just queue behind a single register and then they changed it so the pallets at the front form a long wall facing the checkouts forcing you to join the checkout queues from either side.