Found at Costco today. Is this what you guys call a flipped stem?

looks like the guy who put them together didn't know what way it was supposed to go so he did both!

It kind of hurts my eyes...

Stems keep getting shorter, this guy just was just future-proofing the bike.

A visionary, really.

mattsl, I see you have only received wise-crack answers. Flipping the stem refers to removing the stem from both the steerer and handlebar, rolling it over so the logo now reads upside down and reinstalling, still pointing ahead. (There are stem makers who use labels with both right-side-up and up-side-down logos so you can flip them and not mess up their artwork.) This is done to change the handlebar height with only a minor change in the horizontal location. Doing this only makes a difference if the angle between the stem and steerer is not 90 degrees and makes little difference with short stems.

In 50 years around bikes, I have seen what you posted maybe 3 or 4 times. Maybe 1 or 2 that weren't by ignorance/accident.

This is due to Costco, Wal-Mart, Target, and other similar stores that are not bike shops not giving a damn or knowing what to do. People there are paid by the bike so quality and safety are at the absolute bottom of the list. So long as it looks enough like a bike and they can get it on the floor fast that is all that matters. In some cases they are also building grills and patio furniture and other stuff. The bikes also never see a mechanic before they leave and may not see one after which can lead to a very dangerous situation.

It is a shame there is always a constant race to the bottom instead of paying people hourly and teaching them how to do it correctly just let them do whatever and try to pay them as little as possible. Not that a Wally-mart special is going to be a particularly safe bike regardless but at least with a properly trained mechanic with at least some decent enough tools that isn't time crunched and can build properly will put out a potentially better bike shaped object that is less likely to have or cause issues.

they should do drug testing with their employees

Give them some credit, they got the forks the right direction.

This is what happens when you let Cubists assemble bikes.

Just maybe, it was set up for someone who had an extremely short body or arms?

Looks more like a display bike at the big box store

https://www.electric-bikes.com/better...mages/Full.JPG
Easy Racer recumbents are designed to use stems in that position.

this is EXTREMELY common at big-box stores where they hire people who have no idea what they are doing to slap bikes together as fast as possible. when you buy a bike from one of these stores, you get what you pay for.

As noted, the fork is the right way around. So are the handlebars. So close.

There was some bike I put together recently where if the fork and stem had been assembled properly, it would have taken no more room in the box and it seemed like it would have been shorter. But bike manufaburers are so used to putting the stem on backwards that they did it anyway.

Maybe they are already testing drugs on their employees.

No, that's a flopped stem.

My first bicycle was from Walmart and I rode it all summer/winter no problems. By Spring time I was ready to buy a better bicycle. I went to my local LBS and bought a $1000 dollar bicycle. On my first ride it would not shift into the smallest chain ring all the time. Five miles in, the handle bars released from the stem(it was never tighten down correctly). I almost crashed. I took the bicycle back and returned it. Went to another LBS and had success. So, mistakes are made and it can happen to any business. After the fact I brought this up with the mechanic at my new LBS and he said that the Spring rush was on and many bicycles had to be put together and they usually hire people off the street to help in the assembly.

I am sure this was the source of the confusion..

Yes issues can happen. That is why the bikes are generally exit tuned and at least our shop and other shops I have worked at have offered a tune up within the first few weeks or first month or so.

That sucks. however, it's extremely rare to have a bike shop that allows bikes assembled so poorly leave their property that way. bike shops like that would get a poor reputation and go out of business in less than a year. big box stores don't care because they make money selling so many other things. people expect bikes to be crappy when they pay minimal prices for them. if you got a bike that held up that well for an extended period, consider yourself lucky.

Another possibility is that they took it out of the box and didn't prep it - some bikes ship with the handlebars reversed so they fit in the box better. My Aventon Cordoba came that way, part of the setup was to flip the bars around.