On your first visit to a Costco Wholesale warehouse, it’s easy to feel as if the whole experience is designed to haze the newbie.
Sensory overload starts the second you enter the airplane-hangar-size store. The place is packed with people. And do I smell … hot-dog water? (Yes, you do.) The shopping floor is a bewildering jumble of merchandise, much of it stacked high above your head, still in its cardboard boxes. There are virtually no signs to tell you what’s where; you eventually realize that the stuff you came to buy is, of course, all the way in the back.
