I love Costco. Where else can you buy 497 rolls of toilet paper
or 142 bottles of water in one huge convenience pack? And what
about the free lunch they serve? I’m not talking about the hot dog
stand on the way out
– I’m talking about the sample stations sprinkled throughout the
store.
I love Costco. Where else can you buy 497 rolls of toilet paper or 142 bottles of water in one huge convenience pack? And what about the free lunch they serve? I’m not talking about the hot dog stand on the way out – I’m talking about the sample stations sprinkled throughout the store.
Oh, please – don’t lie and tell me you bypass the samples. I don’t care who you are. If you shop at Costco, you’ve sampled at Costco. It’s like breathing. It comes naturally. One minute, you’re trying to decide if the 15-pound pack of chicken breasts can be squeezed into the freezer along with the frozen lasagna that serves 25, and the next minute you’ve inhaled a mini cheese steak sample – and you’re desperately searching for an apple pie sample for dessert.
You can’t question it. Sampling just happens. And the weird thing is, most of the time you sample things you would normally never eat. I don’t know many people who believe that a microwaved cheeseburger is a delicious delicacy. But if a sample lady is standing in the freezer aisle, zapping cheeseburgers, cutting them up into quarters, and serving them to hungry shoppers, people will push their way into the line, just to get the sample while it’s hot. And the line for those tidbits of burger will be clear to the CDs.
And consider, if you will, frozen chimichangas. I’m not a big fan of the chimichanga – frozen or freshly made. But take that chimichanga, fry it up in an electric frying pan, cut it into mini slices, serve it in a tiny paper cup with a toothpick and I’m all over it.
Why? It’s not something I would ever buy. But hand it to me for free and I will wander the aisles aimlessly after eating it – forgetting everything else except trying to figure out how I can possibly go back to the chimichanga lady and beg her for a half-dozen free samples without looking desperate. Or actually buying my own box of chimichangas.
Of course, after wandering and brainstorming over the chimichangas, it’ll hit me. I don’t have to ask for seconds. I have a child. A sample lady might refuse an adult who asks for just one more sliver of chimichanga, but she usually won’t refuse a kid. So I send Junior to do my dirty work. Hey, after changing his diapers for several years, I think asking for another piece of chimichanga is the least he can do for me.
Of course, teaching Junior to ask for more samples is a decision I regret. A few weeks ago, Junior and I were at Costco and they were sampling Louisiana hot sausages. Junior loved them. I swear to you, he went back so many times I had to pretend I didn’t know him.
By the fifth trip to the sample table, the sample lady asked him where his mother was and if she ever fed him. And Junior, never one to miss a sampling opportunity, convinced this woman that his mother was so mean, she’d never, ever buy him his favorite food, which just happened to be the Louisiana sausages he was sampling. Before I knew it, that child was running around Costco with a full-sized sausage on a napkin, causing all the other patrons to have serious cases of sample-envy.
So of course, I had to prove to the woman that I’m not a mean mommy who brings her son to Costco for the sole purpose of feeding him all the free samples – even though that is what I am. But I bought the darned sausages. And I made them for dinner the next night. And do you know what? That child would not eat them. He said they were too hot. He said they weren’t the same as the ones at Costco. He said he hated them.
I swear to you, at that moment I knew why some animals kill their young.
So I did what any other reasonable person would do when her son would not eat the 27 sausages that she had just purchased and cooked. I sliced them up, put them on a toothpick, donned an apron and a shower cap and let Junior eat from the “samples.”
But that’s the last time I’m going to do that. If Junior wants more sausages, he’s going to have to beg the sample lady at Costco – same as everyone else.
