CW, depression, suicidal ideation.
Edit: I wrote this as a comment in the above thread, and found out after I tried to submit it that it had been deleted. I figured it might be worthwhile for some of you to hear what the inside story sounds like, and how variable it can be.
Currently coming up on three years Costco after fifteen in retail, two of which were as a salaried manager.
My time at Costco has been almost refreshing. The store functions as perfectly as can be said of any business in history, even in a pandemic. Everything that can go wrong has a plan in place with mostly good authorities in charge of it making the changes necessary when someone calls in, or someone gets hurt, or a department is getting crushed. People are cross-trained to cover, extra help is there. The worst thing that happens is a supervisor gets paid $26/hr to get bitched out about something minor. Seemed TGTBT.
When a company is that far above its peers in a given industry, you're going to have that ego-cult factor. Better than average wages and working conditions tend to insure that. And when people are placed in charge of that for various cultural reasons who, frankly, shouldn't be there, they let the success get to them. They hold people back, defend their positions, and wind up super-tenured, making exactly what checkout lady above is making. Put someone like that in a leadership role, and it becomes… sticky.
I defended my boss early on, when she made decisions I, and my team, felt weren't the best call. I didn't think much of it, I'd just gotten done running a dumpster fire of a Lowe's building and was dealing with other trauma as well in my personal life.
But time, and time again, I could see her making calls that supported my peers, at my expense. And there were little negging things. Most of which were inconsequential. When I went to her to help me with various issues I was facing, she'd brush me off and give me some variation of 'It's not Costco policy for me to deal with that.”. Verifying income for a mortgage (which another manager wound up helping me with), accommodating scheduling concerns. There were a couple really glaring ones that opened my eyes to it. One was a situation where myself and a peer were being offered a chance to operate lift equipment (which I'd done previously for a decade plus, my peer as well) and I asked to be trained by two specific people, both of whom were in the department, and knew that aspect of the business well. She flatly told me she was going to have another peer, hired a week prior to me, train me, and that was how it was going to be, and I needed to accept it. I'd also had problems with this person, both in terms of professional demeanor on his part, and personality issues as well.
My peer got one of the instructors that I'd been asking for, to teach him for a six week period. My proposed instructor was promoted out, which was a relief and an irritation since I had basically one or two nights of hands on training and was then left on my own.
Fast forward a few months, and that boss and our regular dock driver are both on vacation during the same two months. Guess who covered the dock? Nonstop driving, every day. I get a shift differential out of the deal, an extra dollar an hour. I don't complain. I want to succeed. I want to do well. I know I can. Christ, I've run a building before and been accountable for every mistake made on a daily basis. This is easy. The only mistakes I'm accountable for are my own, and I call them out when the happen. The dock gets operated every day, as per usual. I come in to work on the day my boss comes back.
It's a half hour before I actually clock in. I pull the hot sheets to see what new products are coming in. It's not company policy for anyone to do this, but I did it, and my peer drivers at the time did it as well, since we don't have time during the day and if we don't do it product doesn't get worked in properly. I don't like having another shift shoehorn shit into my sales floor incorrectly, so I make sure it gets done during the times where I'm there. I'm honestly glad to see her, I want to ask what feedback she's gotten from her peers about my driving.
Me @ my boss: “Hey X, welcome back. How was vacation?”
My boss: “Good. Hey, I'm just curious, have you been 'accidentally' [you could hear the fucking quotes around this word when she said it] clocking in as a driver?”
Me: “No. I'm pretty sure that would be an unethical practice, given the pay differential involved. And I've been covering the dock most days for [regular dock driver's] absence. Is he coming back soon?”
Boss: “No. Hey, I need you to log your exact hours driven going forward, and not drive dock anymore. You can still do an hour or two in the last part of the day if we need you. It's triggering on my reporting that you might be doing more hours as a driver than Costco wants you to.”
I was dumbstruck. Lost for words. Not a “Hey, thanks for covering.”, not even “Did you learn anything during your time covering these past couple months?” Just borderline accusing me of stealing company time and casual dismissal. Later, she gave me a very lackluster review. I bit my tongue. Put in for another department, Got shot down. Someone had “A long talk” about me with the person hiring for that role. That person no longer felt comfortable hiring me for that role.
I cried. Had my first real accident that day, dented a door. Write-up. Back on the lift two days later. Three accidents in one night. Another write up, and I'm off lifts for six months, after eighteen months with few to none issues. I talk with my therapist about suicidal ideation. I cry. I drink. I seek out other jobs. My then-partner rants about how I'm letting Costco hurt me. But something tells me to hang in there.
I do. My boss and another switch places.
To say that it's night and day would be the understatement of the fucking century. My new boss puts a stop to the work-off-the-clock shit (and he had to really, really talk me down from it, that's how indoctrinated I was). He compliments me on the things I do well.
He tells me he sees a lot of self-sacrificing behavior from me. He wants me to do a better job looking after myself, and enforcing better performance from my team. He has me pair up with them, one on one, night after night. We actually work together. The griping lessens. The crew improves. I see him having real, human, one on one talks with each of them. And they all, almost to a man, improve.
I'm up for promotion this week to supervisor training. The same week, I had a job offer for more money working as an insurance adjuster. Who did I have a real, honest conversation with? My current boss. Today. Someone who made me feel real again. Valued again. He played it back to me, from the same perspective he would have taken to it himself: “Do what's best for you. Draw up pros, cons, and what you want to achieve. I won't blame you whatever you choose. And it's been a pleasure working for you. Selfishly, I want to keep doing that with you. But you need to be the deciding factor in what your career looks like.”
I've seen awesome bosses, and horrid ones. I've seen unappreciative folks, gaslighters, downright abusive pricks. And I've seen amazing people who give a shit even in this stinking mire of capitalism, and who inspire others to do the same. Costco is way better of a place to be in terms of less things to go wrong, and easier answers when they do go wrong. It's a well oiled machine. That environment tends to attract good people, who in turn work hard to keep it that way. It's smart strategy.
It's still a very real possibility that you'll get hurt. My boss was by the book to a fault. She did everything the company told her to, including the one thing she got right for me, coming out as a trans employee in the workplace, in one of the most conservative parts of the country. She never failed there. It's one of the reasons I stuck it out, arguably longer than I should. I suspect now that she did so because of a company policy put into place on supporting trans folk during their tenure at Costco, once I grasped that, all of her other bullshit snapped into focus: only doing the bare minimum for me, no above-and-beyond, ever, falling back on the company line, and using it to justify persecuting me, and favoring others. It's just another guise for nepotism.
My point with all this being, Costco isn't a cult. But it's close. Acknowledge that and you're still dealing with a very human institution, with all the good, bad and ugly that goes along with that, plus capitalism. Judge accordingly. I see them as kind of the lodestone in this fucked up economy, setting the standard for every other business to follow so long as they exist. But I'm keenly aware that there are still very real, very human problems present there.