Caltrops - Sushi Academy - How To Win At CostCo

Forum Overview :: Sushi Academy

by Chester J. Hornswaggle 03/09/2011, 11:25am PST

Either you already paid your $50 membership fee, and have completely screwed it up, or you are fearfully considering doing so, marveling at the prices, but wondering what you would do with a 2-pack of gallon-sized jars of four bean salad. So you are either currently losing at, or setting the table for lossage at, CostCo. I've recently become a member myself, and have taken my lumps, but I've come out the other side the better for it (and with my receipt, which you have to show to the Smilebot at the exit) and am here to tell you how to WIN AT COSTCO:

The main rule is, PICK YOUR SPOTS. If you play this thing right, your life is going to improve, and your wallet gonna stay fat, but look, it's like blackjack. If you play blackjack perfectly, it's the best bet in the casino, offering you odds of goddamn near 50/50. The casinos want you to know this, because then you'll play blackjack, but you forgot that you SUCK at blackjack, and if you SUCK at it, then it's among the worst bets, and you're going to lose your ass. "This is... the way that this works," as Daniel Plainview once said. Costco operates on the same principle. If you do it right, you're golden, but if you're not careful, if you don't PICK YOUR SPOTS, you're gonna get pummeled. Costco is a giant casino with pallets of giant jars of Miracle Whip instead of slot machines. Notice, no clocks in there either.

So, here we go. Let's just go down the aisles, and I'll tell you what to do:

1. ELECTRONICS / APPLIANCES: These fall into the SINGLE ITEM category, and thus, I apply the SINGLE ITEM rule. The general rule with SINGLE ITEMS, other than the hot dog at the snack bar at the front, is, skip it, unless it's REALLY good. The fact is, SINGLE ITEMS can often be found cheaper at other, less monstrous stores, when on sale. Case in point: We got a corned beef from there. $3.49 a pound! Hey, great deal! But it was a SINGLE ITEM. I knew I shouldn't have gone ahead when I wasn't 100%, but I did. Next day, at the local grocery store? Same goddamn beef, on sale for $2.99 a pound. MOTHER. FUCKER. So, in general, skip the single items. We're at a CostCo for fuck's sake, we're here to buy BULK. Whatever we want, we want LOTS OF IT.

2. CLOTHES: Jesus Christ, don't buy clothes at CostCo. "Where'd you get that shirt?" "CostCo." Just... let's move on.

3. BOOKS/DVDS/CDS: My point here is, you didn't go to CostCo to buy a book, or a DVD. The only reason you're even looking at them now is that the line for the cashier is 50 feet long and you're stuck back here. We're not here to impulse buy. EYES ON THE PRIZE, man. Eyes on the god damned prize.

4. THE SHELVES:

Alright. Now we're getting down to it. Giant shelves on either side of the store, packed with food and sundries, everything oversized, everything in packs of 50. WHAT DO?? Look, here is where you are most likely to get in trouble, and it takes DISCIPLINE to not fuck this up. Every ten feet, you are going to see a great price on a product that you have used in the past. And you're going to say, "Wow, ten pounds of processed eel innards, for eight bucks! Hey, I use processed eel innards some times, I better PICK THIS UP! What a GREAT DEAL!" And boom, you're sunk. Because you're going to get those innards home, and you're all excited, because now you can make your grandmother's famous Fishgut Pie, and you'll open up your 10 pound sack of innards, and make that pie, and you're still all proud of yourself, but then you put those innards away and NEVER TOUCH THEM AGAIN, until you want to make that disgusting pie again, but at this point, the 9.5 pounds that you haven't used have expired. Pummeled. GAME OVER. You lose.

So the discipline here is, if it's not something you know that you would use at least twice a week, skip it. Skip it! You have to. Otherwise you'll never even use half of whatever it is, and you'll wind up a goddamn embarrassment with giant jars of old, expired shit in your trash bins every week and the garbage man will point and laugh as he throws that crap into the truck.

To put an even finer point on it, the ONLY PRODUCT IN THE ENTIRE STORE that ANYONE should purchase without a second thought is: TOILET PAPER. So my advice is, go in there, grab a cart, and IMMEDIATELY PUT THE LARGEST PACK OF TOILET PAPER YOU CAN FIND INTO THAT CART. You're getting an excellent deal, you WILL use it, because you wipe your disgusting ass at least once a day, and it'll take up a lot of room in the cart to help you from making mistakes.

"But if I DID have 5 industrial sized cans of baked beans, I would definitely eat them more!" Don't do it. DO NOT DO IT. Go to your local grocery store, and buy three small cans of baked beans. See how long they last in your pantry (hint: FOREVER). If, in the unlikely event that you blow through those cans within a week or two and are hungry for even MORE BEANS, then go for it. But don't work backwards. Purchase ONLY based on past experience.

This all goes for the frozen/refrigerated sections, too. Here's an example:

1. 20-pound block of cheddar cheese. REACTION: "Hey, I like cheese! And there's 20 pounds of it! WHAT A DEAL!" Result: FAIL
2. Giant box of frozen BBQ pork buns. REACTION: "Man, these are great, and I put down at least two or three a week!" Result: ACES!

Now, right here is the best, and often most overlooked thing about CostCo, particularly as it pertains to food: A lot of their shit is EXCELLENT. The aforementioned pork buns, in fact, are the best I've found outside of an actual dim sum restaurant. "Kirkland" (Costco brand) Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil was recently voted the fourth best olive oil you can get in an independent tasting panel. We got some clam chowder? The other night? Better than 80% of the clam chowders we'd had in real, honest to goodness seafood restaurants. Check it out. Somehow, they managed to get REALLY GOOD STUFF in there, they just happened to get WAY TOO MUCH OF IT.

At the end, this is really how you win at CostCo. Find the good shit, buy it (along with your toilet paper), and use it a lot. That seems so obvious, when you say it like that, in retrospect, but when you're faced with 20 boxes of Captain Crunch all shrinkwrapped together, for $15, and you start thinking "Huh, maybe I should start eating cereal for breakfast," then you're this close to all those rules going out the window, and bam, not only is your $50 membership not going to pay for itself, it winds up just being the first fifty of your many thrown-away dollars.

5. MEATS/DELI: A lot of things in this section are SINGLE ITEMS. You know what to do there. The ones that are not... well... you know what to do there, too, now don't ya?

6. GAS: At every CostCo in the universe, there is a quarter-mile long line of cars filled with schlubs waiting an hour to save a few pennies per gallon. If you really have nothing better to do with your time than do this, then I wish you all the best, but you are in desperate need of help, oh my sweet dear Christ on a canoe paddle. Get the fuck out of here.

THAT'S IT. That's how you win at CostCo. Think you can do it? Pony up that $50. But stick to my rules, or else you'd be better off just mailing the $50 to me. Which would also be fine.