Costco Checkout Conspiracy

Costco Checkout Conspiracy: The Line That Knows My Soul

Let me paint you a picture. A crisp Monday morning. Birds chirping. The scent of bulk rotisserie chicken wafts through the air. I roll into Costco like a seasoned gladiator entering the arena. I’ve got my membership card, and the kind of quiet confidence only someone who’s memorized the layout of almost all of the aisles in the store.

I head toward self-checkout—because I’m a modern man of efficiency, with mild control issues. And what do I see? A line. Not just a line. A biblical procession. Ten carts deep. Each one is loaded with enough toilet paper to survive a decade-long siege. One guy’s buying a kayak. Another has a pallet of protein powder and a single cucumber. It’s chaos. It’s a beautiful mess. It’s my personal Groundhog Day.

Now here’s the kicker: this happens every time. Monday morning? Line. Thursday afternoon? Line. Sunday midday? The line is so long it has its own gravitational pull. I could go at 3:17 AM on a leap year and still find myself behind a man buying 400 AA batteries and a tub of mayonnaise the size of a toddler.

But—and this is where the simulation tips its hand—by the time I finish checking out, the line is gone. Vanished. Like it was never there. Like I hallucinated a crowd of bulk-buying phantoms. I turn around and it’s just me, the receipt checker, and the faint echo of a cart wheel squeaking in the distance.

Coincidence? Please. This is not random. This is not retail. This is orchestration. Somewhere, deep in the simulation control room, there’s a guy—probably named Chad—watching my every move. He’s got a button labeled “Deploy Line,” and he hits it the moment I enter the building. He’s sipping coffee, chuckling, adjusting sliders labeled “Patience Threshold” and “Social Anxiety.”

And when I finally scan my last item—usually a 48-pack of granola bars I didn’t need—he hits “Clear Queue” and leans back like he just won a round of emotional Jenga.

I don’t know what I did to deserve this. Maybe I glitched the system once by returning a watermelon without a receipt. Maybe I asked too many questions about the sample lady’s schedule. But one thing’s for sure: the man behind the curtain sees me. And he’s having a blast.