I really don’t get the warehouse shopping thing

So, today was a real experience.  My Dad took me to CostCo Warehouse — maybe I have been out of the U.S. for too long, but I found this to be a very surreal and very strange experience.  Apparently, there are stores that people shop at when they want to buy bulk quantities of food and household product for their homes!

This really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.  Maybe I’ve just never had surplus storage space or, likely I’ve never had a family I needed to worry about when shopping.  So, when I buy two rolls of toilet paper, I tend not to run out for a while.  I just can’t see the need for buying 20 rolls at one time, even if I do save ten cents per roll.  I just don’t see the value.  Maybe some economist or smart financial person can explain it to me, but I really don’t see that buying a gallon of pickles at one time (how in the world do you store them?) saves me money.

It’s really strange to see people wandering around with huge carts and pulling food off the shelves in HUGE bundles. I don’t know, there is just something odd about food stocked in warehouses for customers.  It’s just so… strange.  I don’t know how to explain it.  But when you have to buy 12 lbs. of butter at a time, it just feels so… wasteful.  I suppose people use their way through it.  Maybe it’s not as wasteful as I think, but somehow I’m skeptical that any family can eat 1/2 gallon of sun dried tomates before they go bad.

The funny thing I noticed was that I think a great many shoppers were there to take advantage of the ‘free sample’ ladies.  There seems to be an army of senior citizens that work at CostCo to spread cheese on crackers, cook up mini tacos, slice cured meats and generally provide a very interesting buffet of food for the customers. I honestly think there are people who plan their Saturday lunch by going to CostCo.  The lines of people waiting for the little old ladies to provide the next batch of tasting foods were horrifying to me.  Hands out and impatient feet tapping seems to be the name of the game.

But, I guess that’s what the U.S. has become.  I’m glad I’m going back to Sudan.