Cracked Window

I delay going to Costco as long as possible. But requirements of life, purchased inexpensively, make the trek unavoidable. Let’s face it, bulk toilet paper and laundry detergent and printer cartridges are essentials.

Judging from the overflow crowd today, lured partly by the approaching expiration of coupons, the economy isn’t shattered quite yet. That said, I did overhear several couples arguing about what was the best deal.

Savings aside, the experience was existential. A few times as I negotiated the crowded aisles and endured the food sample ladies reciting their scripts like robots, I wondered whether this was what life has become: a feeding frenzy of consumerism in a cavernous warehouse.

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