Bigger waste of time than Costco checking my receipt as I leave?

[LSLGuy]

@Pantastic

One big difference between ‘Walmart’ receipt checks and ‘Costco’ receipt checks is that the major discount stores tend to have enough (and competent enough) checkers to keep up with everyone leaving. They make it a condition of membership to do the check, but also make it so that it’s at worse a very mild inconvenience. And it’s clearly part of their regular operation, so it just flows properly.

At places like Walmart, when they decide to do receipt checks it’s almost always one employee who isn’t used to the job handling a lot of people, and there’s a line to get out. I will just say ‘no thanks’ as I walk past the line of people being checked. I don’t have any obligation to stay, and while I don’t mind waiting for half a minute for their benefit, I’m not spending more than that waiting for ‘permission’ to leave the property that I don’t require to be on my way.

This. Which is why I avoid all those places.

Further by being a Costco shopper you’ve already demonstrated a willingness to wait in a monster line to check out. Waiting in two such lines to leave the store is evidently acceptable to such folks.

I’m not buying the self-righteous BS upthread; not even a little bit.

But I do value customer service that doesn’t waste my time. I routinely abandon shopping carts in stores with long checkout lines and unopened cashier stations. If I can catch a manager’s ear along the way to tell him/her why I do so. If not, perhaps they’ll figure it out. Eventually. As I sorta said in another thread recently:

We don’t get the customer service we want. We get the customer service everybody else is willing to put up with. Long lines are efficient for them, not for me. I support the places without long lines. You’re welcome to support whatever you want. But understand the consequences of your decisions.