Costco

Mrs. Cynical dragged me to Costco the other day. I had never been in one before. I will admit, the prices there are great as long as you're willing to buy so much of something that you can't possibly eat it all before it goes bad.

I was immediately reminded of the episode of Family Guy where they do a cutaway of Peter as Jackee Harry's personal shopper (I had to look her up, too - I had no idea who she was). Peter is looking at the shopping list, and is baffled by the units of measure for various items: a pallet of chocolate-covered pretzels, a drum of grape jam, a desk of Cheez-Its, a hammock of cake.

So, I started making up units of measure for the stuff I was looking at: a safe of cereal, an ammo dump of bread, a console of eggs, a futon of lunchmeat, a fairway of toothpicks, a skyscraper of milk, a furnace of doughnuts, a flight deck of frozen pizzas, a tackle box of  mints, an engine block of cheese.

The most insulting part of the trip was having to show our receipt to some guy at the door on the way out. I mean, who does that? We went through the check-out, paid for our junk, got a receipt for it, and now we have to present that receipt to somebody in order to leave the store? Like an exit tax from some third-world country? I was really curious about what would happen if I just kept walking and ignored the guy, but my job probably depends on not getting into a shouting/wrestling match with the receipt man at Costco.