Originally Posted by
WhyFi
That's... dumb. I have to think that you ran in to some crazy stickler and that this isn't representative. Hell, I scanned my membership card today and my wife paid... of course, this was on the self-checkout.
On a related note, we just renewed our membership today. As my wife was doing that, I was in the liquor store (do they generally have separate liquor sections, or just in the blue law states [formerly, in our case]?) and I found out that one doesn't need a Costco membership to shop in their liquor store. We seem to flirt with not renewing each year, this could be another reason to let it slide.
Yes, that's likely. That it happened on vacation, in front of her parents, and that they were too incompetent to find her in their system makes it hard to look past. Pointedly, when she first moved here (before a stint in CA), she stocked her apartment with a friend. The checkout lady did say it was a new policy, and certainly someone else could have said "look at his card and their rings, they're fine", but no.
As for the liquor side, at least in Texas the liquor has to be outside the member area. It's not just a blue laws thing; I believe it's a holdover from Prohibition, and laws specifically banning members-only alcohol sales to prevent speakeasys and similar clubs.