Costco’s lame, and so am I.
So. I went to Costco about a month ago – actually a little more than that, because it was right before Christmas – and I bought one of those big bags of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You know the ones I’m talking about? They’re individually wrapped, which I love. Costco’s Kirkland brand individually wrapped chicken breasts are probably the SOLE reason I drive twice as far to shop at Costco rather than just go to Sam’s Club.
A few weeks later, as I’m making my way through the bag o’ chicken breasts one meal at a time, I realized that there were several chicken breasts in the bag which were NOT wrapped! They were just thrown in there, willy nilly. What the hell? No biggie, I thought. Costco has a reputation for taking anything back, so I figured I’d just return the bag. Well, it was the holidays, and my kids were off track from school and home with me, so I kept putting it off. This week, they returned to school, so it’s just the little girls and me – much easier to make a Costco trip. By now, though, we’ve gone through pretty much the entire bag, except for one I left in its individual package, and the three that were without packaging. Still, I didn’t think it would be a big deal.
We hit Costco today, and I showed the manager guy my weird chicken. He made a face and said, “Well, what do you want us to do about this?” I was like…well, I’d just like to get what I paid for. Right? So, he went and got another bag just like the one I was bringing back, ripped it open, and gave me four chicken breasts out of it. Done. Then, I watched him throw the bag on a shelf behind him. I asked what was going to happen to it and he said after they charged it back, they would throw it out. Whaaaa? If you’re going to throw it out, why not just GIVE it to me? Or, lest Costco think I’m trying to slyly scam them out of some chicken, why not just determine the value of the four chicken breasts, and give me that amount in store credit? What a WASTE to just throw out like five pounds of chicken! The hell? People are starving all over the world and we’re just throwing out perfectly good chicken? This is really annoying to me. I’m already annoyed with the endless, wasteful, unnecessary plastic packaging they seal up everything in, and now I realize they just indiscriminately throw shit out, for no good reason at all. So lame. So here’s what I brought home with me today – the bag of chicken I bought, and the four chicken breasts that aren’t sitting in a dumpster right now:
Speaking of lame! Guess how lame I am? We’ve lived in this neighborhood over a year now – actually thirteen months and two days – and JUST TODAY I discovered a third park. The neighborhood is not that big, guys – if you drove around the perimeter of it, it’s less than three miles! There’s a big park just down the street, and a small pocket park basically on the other side of our house. And today, I realized there’s yet another pocket park just a bit further north – about a block from Kayley’s good friend’s house. In my defense, you can’t see it from the street – but to illustrate my dumbassedness, I spent HOURS scrutinizing every landmark on the map before we moved in here, trying to find every last park, pool, Starbucks, Target, and McDonald’s within MILES of this place. And I completely missed finding a park within walking distance of our house. DUH. It’s not a big giant park or anything, but it will be fun to go there once in awhile – they have monkey bars!
Happy Friday, y’all. I’m going to try to talk my sister into meeting me for a beer later. Twist her arm and all of that.
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Laura, also known as LaLaGirl, is the mother of a teenager and two young sets of twins. She's happily married, loves living in Colorado, and writes almost daily about married life, raising multiples, and parenting a child with autism.
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January 29th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
he threw it out?? are you kidding me? that’s ridiculous. guess i need to add costco to my sh*tlist. ;P
January 29th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
I thought at least he’d just give you the bag, no big whoop. And to write it off and still throw it away would be oh so wrong! We go to Sam’s because Sam’s has a INSTANT renewal system where they charge your credit card when your membership is up and we didn’t know that so were stuck with them for another year. But their chicken isn’t wrapped, it’s just a bunch of frozen breasts in a bag. Cute park by the way. We have a number of those little satellite parks that unless you happen down a certain street you wouldn’t know it’s there. Have fun with your sis!
January 29th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
OMG, that’s so lame. Costco does suck, I can’t believe he’d be such a dick. I would totally expect them to give you the replacement bad in whole. I mean, I bought a bag of funked-out dog food from them once & was able to return it after I opened it & used some of it & discovered it was ll funked-out & my dogs smelled like dead skunks after eating it. They didn’t give me part of a bag, they gave me a whole new bag. I think you should escalate that shit. (Like you have the time, I know!) Down with Costco!
January 29th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I was really stunned by it too – I seriously think they thought I was trying to pull a fast one – like I’d throw some frozen Sam’s chicken breasts in there and try to return them to Costco – for…some unknown reason.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Tamara, I was talking to one of the moms in the neighborhood after school today, and she told me that nobody even goes to that little park because it’s so hidden and has such lame equipment. (The two smaller parks have climbing walls and that sort of thing – no slides and no swings.) She said she views it as a collosal waste of money – $25K they spent to upgrade the equipment – and now our pool is junk and they have to replace the entire pool, and they’re dinging the homeowners for the cost. Would have been nice to have that 25 grand in escrow for the pool, I guess! Oh well. I don’t feel so bad about not realizing the park is there, since apparently nobody ever goes there! LOL!
January 29th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Hmmm… from your photo the park looks good to me!
My kids hate the swings and the slide and love the bars and anything to climb on. I like to venture out and go to all the parks that I can find so they don’t get bored. The new house we are looking at is caddy corner from a small satellite park. It’s not GREAT but the little one still has fun. It’s funny because no matter where we go Jack has more fun finding sticks and dried leaves then playing on the set!
January 30th, 2010 at 12:25 am
That is SO lame and wasteful of Costco. I have never heard of such a thing! I used to work in a grocery store, way back when, and yes, there are those scammers, but there’s no excuse to throw out a perfectly good bag of chicken like that. It also bugs me when you buy something and it is all individually wrapped.
January 30th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Holy lameness Costco! That is crazy that he even just said we’re going to toss it …. what a buttface. You should email your blog post to the VP of Costco and ask whats up with the wastefulness.