February 6: The Costco Experience

When most people go out to eat, they like a place to sit down. They like to be waited on. Most people like to know what the chef's special is. What exactly is the catch of the day? Soup du Jour? I, on the other hand, am a simple man. I don't need anything fancy. In fact, I don't like having my food served to me on a silver platter. I don't like eating with polished silverware. I prefer eating my meals with a plastic spork out of a small, white crinkle-folded doily. I like to fight for my food. Getting that buttered piece of multi-grain toast should be as challenging as possible which is why I love Costco samples.

There is something magical about the entire Costco experience. I don't know if it's the mile-high ceilings or the overall vastness that the warehouse superstore offers. It could also just be the extremely smooth, cold, gray cement floors. Whatever it is, I love it. I could wander the aisles of a Costco for hours on end and never get bored. Where else can you get 64 ounces of Jelly Bellies? 36 rolls of toilet paper in one shrink-wrapped package? No problem! I can literally buy barrels of pretzels and Pop Tarts to last me for six months.

Not only is buying in bulk extremely appealing, but the food they serve at Costco is fantastic! Slices of pizza for $1.99 and fountain drinks for 55 cents. I honestly believe Costco pizza is up there with the best. I went to New York City three different times last summer and had pizza every time. It was pretty good, but Costco's pizza is just as good and it's much cheaper. I've never had more refreshing Coke either. There is something about Costco that makes everything better. When I see that 64 ounce bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup, I have to have it. I like chocolate syrup a lot, but do I really need that much of it? No. But for some odd reason, when I see it sitting in a cardboard box with twenty other bottles on a giant metal shelf, it speaks to me. It tells me that it will change my life. I must own it.

Not only does Costco have giant portions and delicious pizza, but the customer is treated to a bevy of fantastic samples every day. I may be exaggerating a bit with the chocolate syrup, but there is no embellishment involved when I describe the samples as "fantastic." Pulled pork, BBQ chicken sandwiches, slices of papaya, buffalo chicken wings, chips and salsa, chips and seven-layer dip, mini tacos, mozzarella sticks without any sauce, berry-flavored vitamin drinks, and brownies!

Is there anything more exciting and invigorating than standing in line to get a frozen steak and cheese flauta? That's what really makes a trip to Costco an adventure. The samples and the people waiting to get one. When I'm in the membership-only store, I become a vulture circling my prey. I know just when the toaster oven on that rolling station has finished its latest cooking cyle. The way that the employee in the red shirt and hat with the white hair net cuts through those hot pockets with scissors is just so appetizing. The only time the experience is better is when the hair net is wrapped around a male employee's facial hair like a pseudo beard.

A sample's shelf life on the little red tray is approximately ten seconds. Seriously. No matter how disgusting and undesirable a sample may look or sound, someone is always right there to swipe it up. My shins and ankles are in constant danger when approaching a sample table because of shopping carts and hungry customers. If you wait just one second too long to get your sample, someone else will take it. It doesn't matter if you've been waiting patiently and it's the last sample. Someone else will take it.

I love shopping at Costco. I can't think of a more satisfying feeling than leaving with a box of gold fish crackers that takes two people to lift into the car. The pizza and Very Berry Sundaes are to die for, but there is something barbaric, yet pleasurable about going in for a round of samples. There's something about dodging an out-of-control shopping cart that adds to the taste of three salted almonds. I don't go shopping on Black Friday, but I imagine it to be similar to trying to get a sample at Costco which intrigues me to no end.