I don’t know if you’re familiar with a certain big-box warehouse store – hmm, let’s call it Wastco – but if not, make sure you don’t ever find out.

This store is insidious and evil incarnate in so many ways that I don’t have enough room in this column to describe them all.

To begin with, Wastco encourages the rumor that you can save a lot of money by shopping there. This is blatantly untrue. Because you always buy too much.

The only way you can save money at Wastco is by getting stuck behind one of those huge families that hogs the entire aisle, finally becoming so exhausted and frustrated that you’re forced to go home without buying anything.

Although I would be curious to know if anyone has ever left a Wastco store without buying anything. If you have, email and let me know how you did it. Magic wand? Blindfold? Psychedelic drugs?

See, Wastco stores are always the size of a football field, and the carts hold enough to feed the entire Slovenian army for a week, so you actually feel slightly guilty if you don’t buy enough to make the expedition worthwhile. Especially if you’ve circled the parking lot a few dozen times trying to find a space.

Inside Wastco, friendly, smiling employees in white paper hats give out free samples of food regularly as you peruse the aisles, and even stick them in front of your face as you walk by. This is tough if – like me – you’re perennially on a diet.

I bet many of you are under the impression that this is because they’re trying to sell the product being offered. But, no. Secret documents said to have been liberated from a safe inside Wastco headquarters actually reveal that the executives just want to make sure you have enough nourishment to keep pushing that immense shopping cart around.

They don’t want to make this obvious, so they disguise it as attempts to sell individual products like raisin-carrot wheat bran muffins, or vegan taquitos with spinach dip.

They have a bank set up in one aisle, so you can mortgage your house on the spot while you’re there, allowing you to buy even more,

I know lots of you looove those Wastco samples. But I wish they would announce the sample-free days, because people tend to cluster around the food carts, making it impossible to shove your way through to the side where the 300-pound bags of dog food live. Sorry, Fido. Too many taquitos in the way.

I have learned over the years to never, ever take my children into the store with me, even now that they’re adults, no matter how fervently they beg. They always hide something in the bottom of the cart that they’ll never, ever eat.

Like so many of you, I have gone in with the express intention of “just buying a rotisserie chicken.” At $4.99, the chain deliberately loses money on these hot, juicy, aromatic chickens, because they require you to walk all the way to the back of the store to get one.

And it’s nearly impossible to make that trek without finding something else that you simply must own right now.

When I enter its doors, I do my best to become a heat-seeking missile, heading straight for the back without allowing myself to become distracted. But I inevitably get waylaid by my own weakness. I realize that I really do need one of those large cartons of croissants. And a pair of $19.99 pajamas. A new blender that’s being demonstrated and described as the best one ever made.

Yes, I realize I already have a blender. But it’s not as cool as this one, which not only whirls stuff around, but also feeds your goldfish and heats your house.

It’s practically Satanic. I’m sure you’ve noticed that they regularly move the products around onto different aisles. This is their evil way of requiring you to walk through the entire store looking desperately for the paper towels, because they know that you’ll pick up a snorkel set, memory foam pillows and a bottle of vodka along the way. You might be drinking the vodka by the time you leave.

I created a rule for myself to cut down on impulse purchases. I keep a small notebook and a pen in my hand as I shop. If I see something I absolutely must buy right now, I make a note of it – but I do not put it in my cart. When I’m in the checkout line, I look over the notebook. Only very rarely is there anything I need so desperately I’m willing to walk 1.2 miles back to get it.

Wastco says they make most of their profit from their membership fees, not their products. And of course if you are looking at individual items, you actually can save money per ounce over other stores.

But you know the problem. It’s impossible to resist anything that seems like a good deal. This is actually hard-wired into our brains from way back when we lived in caves. Seriously. I read it in a book so it must be true.

Plus, I find myself buying a box of fresh pineapple the size of the state of Delaware. No one can eat that much pineapple before it goes bad. But, yum. It looked so good.

I used to call Wastco the $300 store, but that’s no longer true for me. Nowadays, with inflation, it’s the $450 store. And that’s if I don’t bring the kids.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to walk in and just buy a chicken. If you can do it, tell me how.

Want to email me? Hit me up at [email protected]. I especially enjoy it when you tell me everything I’m doing wrong.

Related links

Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: I’m back and I’m buying too much at Costco
Marla Jo Fisher: Costco, the land of the giant carts
Letting go of my junky ways
I’d like to flip my lid — if I could find it
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: Are you in line at Costco today? And why?

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