REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES
The Day I Was Bested by Costco
How much does one pumpkin pie really cost?
A note was sent home from school with my seven-year-old last week.
They were having a pre-Thanksgiving party on Monday in her class. There was a list online to sign up for goodies to bring.
I quickly got online and found the list. All the easy things had been signed up for. Paper plates, plastic forks, fruit snacks, and cans of cranberry sauce all had been quickly claimed.
My eyes ran across pumpkin pie.
Yes!
I knew just what to do. I quickly checked the box and wrote in my name. I was feeling generous. I signed up for two pumpkin pies.
Was I planning on going to go to the store, buying the ingredients, and baking two pumpkin pies?
Certainly not.
I had just been to Costco last week and noticed piles and piles of extra-large pumpkin pies. An extra-large pumpkin pie for $7! I couldn’t bake one myself for that price.
I waited until Sunday to go to Costco to pick up the pies so they would be as fresh as possible.
That was my first mistake.
It was raining and NFL football games were in full swing so the store would be practically empty.
That was my thoughts.
What do I know? Apparently, not the shopping habits of my fair city on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
It was a madhouse. The parking lot was full.
As I drove around the lot looking for a place to park, I looked at my gas gauge. Three-fourths a tank.
That’s pretty good. No reasonable man would feel the need to stop for gas when he had three-fourths of a tank.
But I am not a reasonable man and I am obsessed with getting the best price on gas.
Costco’s gas was a full 25 cents per gallon cheaper than my normal gas station.
I couldn’t resist.
I got in the long line to fill my tank. I was six cars back.
When I finally got to the front of the line fifteen minutes later, it was still raining. I stood in the cold rain to put $11 worth of gas in my tank. I think I saved almost 75 cents.
Now, back to parking lot to look for a parking spot.
I found one towards the back. I walked to the front of the store still in the rain, of course.
Once I got to the entrance, there were no shopping carts. I waited but finally found one, soaking wet, abandoned near the entrance.
After fumbling for my card to prove to the person guarding the door that I was actually a card-carrying member and not just somebody random off the streets, I cased the store.
I had never seen so many people in that place at one time in my life.
I knew what I had to do. I headed straight to the back where the pies were kept.
But wait?
On my way to the pies, I passed the clothing section. There was a really good price on hoodies.
How many hoodies do I own? Two or three or twelve. That wasn’t important. That was a really good price.
And then there were the batteries.
40 AA batteries for only $18. Had I gone through 40 AA batteries in the last year? Two years?
It didn’t matter. Christmas was coming up. Surely, we would buy things that need batteries. I got me a pack. Well, might as well throw in the AAA batteries as well, I thought.
Nothing else could distract me.
I finally made it to the bakery. There they were.
Hundreds and hundreds of pumpkin pies for only $7 apiece.
I put two in my cart and started going away from the display. That really was a good price. I went back and picked up another.
We could have a pie for home as well. Never mind that nobody in my family but me even likes pumpkin pie. It was a really good price.
Well, while I was back there, I couldn’t leave without my Land-of-Lost-sized $5 rotisserie chicken.
I never leave Costco without one.
It probably stemmed from the time I was once offered $25 for my purchased chicken in the parking lot by a man waiting for his tires to be put on.
He didn’t want to battle his way through the store to get his own chicken.
He had told his wife that he would get a chicken and he decided it was easier to buy it from me than go through the store. I made $20 for a chicken that I had owned for roughly 5 minutes so I didn’t complain.
But I digress.
Back to my pumpkin-pie run.
Again, I couldn’t leave Costco without picking up a chicken so I waited patiently for the man to box them up and set them out.
I had to wait 5 minutes but at least they would be fresh off the grill.
It takes my small family of three, four days to finish one. We are sick of chicken by the time we are done with it. Often, I end up feeding the rest of it to my dogs.
But still, it was a good price.
By that time, in my mind, I had earned the 12-pack of beer that I also put in my cart. Might as well make it a case; it was a good price.
I am not even sure what else I put in my cart. Everything was so cheap.
I had to stand in line for twenty minutes to check out.
At the checkout, the cashier asked if I needed any holiday stamps.
You could buy an entire book of 50 stamps for cheaper than you could from the post office. It was a good price. Hell yeah, I need stamps.
The cashier finished ringing me up.
$346.72. I shook my head and put my credit card into the machine.
I sighed as I looked at the food court. There was a really good price for a slice of pizza and a soda posted.
As I sat at the tiny table eating my slice, people bumped into me constantly as they rushed by with their overloaded carts.
I looked at my cart.
Did I really need a $12 bottle of maple syrup. Don’t we still have a half-empty bottle in the refrigerator from last year?
I contemplated throwing my soda away and getting into one of my 12-packs of beer, but I am quite sure that Costco would have frowned on that.
I pushed my cart out in the rain and towards the back of the parking lot. My head was on a swivel for a man who might purchase my chicken for $25.
Alas, there was nobody.
As I loaded everything in the back of the car, I looked at the three extra-large pumpkin pies. $7 per pie. It really was a good price.
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