Clyde got a household membership through work so he took advantage.
"Do you want to go on Saturday?" he asked.
"Let's go before lunch," I said naively, "we have to meet L___ at 11:00 so why don't we leave here at 9:30."
Now I always allow for way too much time. We both realized that we would be puttering around the store for a whole hour if we did that, so we agreed to leave at 10:00. 30 minutes would be plenty of time to see what this new store was all about.
We couldn't have been more wrong. 30 minutes didn't even cover the food section. If you've never been to Costco before, allow a good two hours to get acquainted. The new member orientation takes 15 minutes, and that's just to get your card with photo ID and to understand all the benefits and discounts.
USA: land of abundance, where there is plenty of everything, much of it affordable and available immediately. At Costco, you can buy a pretty good apple pie and a new washing machine in the same trip.
I'll never forget years ago when a friend visited from Eastern Europe. I had no idea what he'd want to eat, so I waited until he arrived and we went to the supermarket together. His reaction to King Soopers was one of amazement. First of all, it was huge. Not only were there millions of products, but several brands of each product to choose from. In his country, there might be one brand of everything, if it was there at all. And I was worried about how to entertain this guy.
USA: land of unfettered waste and addictive consumerism. We take convenience and immediate gratification so for granted that we're angry when we don't get it.
I recently ordered a washer through another big box retailer and found out I'd have to wait nearly two months for the exact model we wanted. I was livid. When I stop to think about it now, I realize that it's an unusual model that fits in our weird kitchen. They don't sell that many. It's probably shipped from China on one of those gigantic container ships. It's amazing that it only takes two months.
We completely disregard the resources used and the people whose labor it takes to get those products here. Our biggest worry is where to park the Range Rover on Saturday morning because have you seen that Costco parking lot? I give little thought to where that apple pie is made, where the apples come from, who trucks it in.
At Costco four pounds of chicken costs the same as one pound at King Soopers. Granted, at King Soopers, I buy the free range organic kind. At Costco, I am so blinded by low prices, I temporarily forget about my free range organic principles.
For all our worldliness, Clyde and I are about as American as you can get. Now we go to Costco. Is a Range Rover in our future? I don't think so. You have to draw the line somewhere.
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