Saturdays At Costco

Is it just me, or are (what appears to be) several words or even entire paragraphs paragraphs missing on the page, but they’re in the HTML code and also there if you copy/paste?

Example. In my browser window, the lines go like this:

“But like all bulk retailers, there are some important ground rules - you

and use completely.”

But in the markup, and indeed when I copy/pasted this, it reads:

“But like all bulk retailers, there are some important ground rules - you should always eat before you go, and only purchase items you’ll use and use completely.”

And I have seen this phenomenon in several of your posts... weird, but true. Is it just me on my OSX 10.2.2, IE/5-latest machine?

Er... I think it's just you :)

I haven't encountered it.

You may want to try clearing your cache and reloading. Sometimes that helps. Otherwise, I've had the same issue on a variety of web sites. It's a bug, for sure, in IE under OSX. The latest OSX update actually mentioned this in the changelog, so they're aware of it. I use Chimera, partially b/c of this.

I've seen other accounts of Costco-hell recently in blogs (ie Blurb-O-Mat), I guess it's that time of year. And I wholeheartedly concurr about the Costco experience. Try this one on for size: One Sunday about a year ago, I had the extreme displeasure of visiting Costco, Home Depot and Ikea. In one day. A Sunday. Not unlike wisdom teeth removal sans anesthetic I think.

i get the same error sometimes in ie 5.1 in os9

i havent set foot in a costco in quite awhile

Regarding the vodka: "good call" (I would have gone for a little lemon flavored rum). By the way, the site looks fine on my machine (OSX 10.2.2, IE/5.2.2). Cheers!

The thing that freaks me out about Costco is that whole Land o' Giants thing. The biggest shopping carts I've ever seen, huge people, monstrous vehicles, and oh yeah, those giant jars of condiments. I've had a membership for years and have only been twice i think - I've been trying to work up the courage to go for about 6 months now.

(Me, OSX 10.2.2, IE 5.2, and this post looks fine, but I've seen the bug in the archives)

Everything looks fine here. (OS10.2/IE 5.2).

Anyhow. These big stores (I have a Sam's Club near me) kind of freak me out -- I mean, is it natural to have a store that sells liquor, puts tires on your car, and has 10lb buckets of mustard?

At your local Sam's club you can buy generic clothes, DVDs, a juke box, neon signs, bibles, bagel bites, a 10lb box of sour patch kids, a car stereo, a gazebo, a big bag of "miscellaneous seafood," and a multi-pack of pepto-bismol.

Weird.

OK, thanks for the feedback. IE is slowly but surely using up any and all goodwill I have for it. A change is imminent (*insert your own increasingly fast bass drum rhytm here*).

Re: costco. I'm in Denmark, Europe, and we're yet to experience the delight of tryly super-mega-huge-humongous malls, that you guys revel in on a regular basis. But before they come here, I'm all for moving to Italy... let’s make it pronto!

Costco reminds me of a section in the old book "MiG Pilot" about the 1976 defection of a Soviet MiG-25 pilot to the US. He thought every supermarket in the US was some sort of show put on for his benefit (as it would have been in the then-USSR) before he broke down and actually cried over the fact that the system he had left behind really didn't work and that the USA was truly the Land of Plenty. When I go to Costco I am stunned be the size/selection/prices etc. However, in the Costco/Sam's Club/Wal-Mart -ization of North America, we have accepted this convenience at a great price. We seem willing to sacrifice local food production, food safety, well-paid labour (with healthcare and all that that entails), land and air (every one of those warehouse stores takes up a huge amount of land, and then there's the car-centric road/gas/highway infrastructure that surrounds it...)

As many have noted, kids growing up today must think milk comes from "the store" instead of "a cow". If the world ended tomorrow, would we know which mushrooms are good to eat if we had to forage?

Brave experiments have tried to bring groceries to the people rather than vice versa (WebVan, etc.) - but an emerging trend that seems much more interesting is the idea of the personal farmer - put in your order and whatever's in season is brought to you in pre-arranged quantities. You're getting fresh, organic produce direct from the grower, with no intermediaries. Lots of times these people are on the web. Is this the ultimate P2P application? :)

From the almost complete generic demographic of people described at Costco (i.e. old people, screaming six year olds, soccer moms, and rich suburbanite women), where do you and your wife fall under?

You managed to leave the most important item there! Who needs food when you have vodka?

I went to the maul this weekend and decided that shopping for christmas online is the best choice I could ever make.

Plus, Todd you're so right about the big SUVs with the BIG American flags on the back windows. I would also like to add that if I get cut off in traffic by someone, it's more than likely....you guessed it, a SUV with a giant American flag and/or the jesus fish.

starbucks... boo! boo! boo!

Costco... *shudder*

I refuse to go there anymore. It's like nobody is paying attention to what they are doing when pushing around their shopping carts. You half expect the shopper's eyes to fall out of their heads and drool to drip from the corners of their mouths.

I send other people to go get things there if they "have to get it at Costco". The one here in Kansas City sounds just like your experience describes.

And I totally agree with the SUVs.... Why do people buy these?

You would be interested on knowing the Costco effect is present beyond First World countries. Here in Costa Rica, PriceSmart is our tropicalized version of CostCo (same company) and... well, just about everything you said applies, no surprises here. The one reason I still endure having to go there once in a while is because I can buy a big bag of dog food for less price than anywhere else. Oh, and maybe some wine and a pack of burritos and stuff I like to have around 'cause I'm a lazy cooker. I've seen people spending literally hundreds of dollars there in things they don't need... and this is the Third World for fsck's sake! Makes you wonder there is more wealth spread around here than you'd think.

I've been following your site since some weeks ago. Good stuff. I'm jealous of your CSS. Keep it going.

AJ> If the world ended tomorrow, there would be no mushrooms to forage :)

I've encountered the same error on my machine. OSX10.2.2/IE5.2.2

I could simply not live in a world without Costco, all those wonderful things so cheap and plenty in quantity.

Oh, boy. Having grown up in Marietta, your comment about "Rich suburbanite women wearing gold necklaces outside their black Neiman Marcus turtlenecks" put me into a fit of post-traumatic shock. What an image that conjurs.

I get the same "line of text disappearing" problem on OSX10.2.2/IE5.2.2 and only on your site, lucky guy. I can make the invisible lines show up by resizing my browser too small and pulling it back out again. Don't ask me why. The only si milar problem I have is sometimes a site will come in with most of the content invisible until I resize the browser just barely and suddenly everything pops into view. This didn't happen before Jaguar. Dunno...

i finally got the hell out of Atlanta (after living in midtown/downtown for 13 yrs) to the sunny ghettos of Los Angeles only to find the grocery shoppers wet dream. TRADER jOES! Of course it is no "acme" like in the cartoons but it is dirt cheap, eg a bottle of Bombay sapphire for $14 that usually is $22, organic bread for $1, fresh produce. Plus there is a whole bunch in town so they are bikeable instead of having to drive 40miles. Trader Joes Trader Joes Trader Joes. !!!!!!!

in reference to marthe's post, I get a lot of "disappearing text" on web pages too. you click on the screen, and some text disappears while others reappear. I also have the latest IE and 10.2jaguar...

Thought I would chime in... WOW lots of people posting using OSX.2.2 good to see. ( I am using 10.2 running Chimera .6 ) I just joined Costco but I haven't been on a weekend.

Cheers

Yes, even Costco has its place--I found a wireless D-Link gateway there for $99! I'm so there. Cheaper than anything online I've seen.

I want one of those giant mayo jars! Cool! I promise I'm not as consumptionalist as I sound...it just overpowers rationality when you enter The Maw of Costco. Hey, they do have great hot dogs!

They also have like 3-foot long salmon sometimes. I go just to look.

Trader Joe's rules! I just moved out east (to Cambridge, MA) from the LA area, and am glad to see that there are some Trader Joe's around...unfortunately, they're all quite far away from the T. Alas, that's about the only thing I miss from LA.

SUVS? Duh, you have to drive one of those to fit all the over-sized bulk containers of pretzels, ketchup, Cheer, and boxes of Milano cookies. Of course I don't have a SUV, so it means filling the entire back seat and front of my Beretta. Oh yeah, don't forget the paper towels and toilet paper!

Canadian comedian DJ McCarthy has this to say about Costco:

"It's the only place in the world where you can buy 96 rolls of toilet paper at once. I mean, if you need 96 rolls of toilet paper, should you be shopping?

"I can get 15-pound bags of M&Ms....and a canoe! .... so I can portage right outta there.... in my diabetic coma!...."

It's good to know I'm not alone in my mixed emotions about Costco. I am planning to go there this weekend, and I am looking forward to replenishing my bare cupboards (and getting 44 lbs. of dog food for even cheaper than usual because they sent me a coupon.) We have gotten some really great deals there (we use the industrial strength steel shelves on wheels as our entertainment center, and not only can we roll it around to suit our whims, but it cost less than the much smaller, non-rollable unit we got at the Container Store.) The biggest challenge to my sanity down here in Miami is not just the volume of the crowds, but that 99% of these people do not speak English and they bring their entire extended families to the store with them. I don't know why people are always coming up to me to ask me questions - presumably about the location of merchandise - in a language I don't speak. The last time I went, I decided I wouldn't go back without wearing a t-shirt with "NO HABLA ESPANOL" on it. I never did get around to making that, but my experiences in the rest of the city have taught me that saying "I don't speak your language" (or anything else in English, for that matter) will have the desired effect of being left alone. I wish I didn't love their ginger soy dressing (and the new Asian Caesar one) so much, and I just can't pass up their organic lettuce packs that are at least 50% cheaper than anywhere else. They have this 3-pack of linen/room spray that we use to deoderize rooms made stinky by our 2 kittens and 1 big dog, and I'm planning to save a bundle on the Aveeno body lotion this time around. They have the best disposable latex gloves around (great for a multitude of messy projects), and the Michael Angelo pasta sauce is really great - it's the only sauce of its kind I can buy in bulk that is made from actual tomatoes instead of some puree. When we were eating more meat, I found that their pork chops were fabulous - thick and not fatty at all - and their pork tenderloins are half the price than at Publix. I heard that Julia Child gets all her meat at Costco - I don't know if that's true, but if it is, I bet she doesn't go there on the weekends.