Costco has always had it’s challenges, busy parking lots, isles that sometimes needed traffic control, checkout lines that were at times long enough that there was time to make friends with those around you…. BUT always a shopper could count on a fair price with quality products and consistent product packaging, especially from the “Kirkland” brands.

Costco has been unlike the other “chain” or “discounters” and like most banks today their images and brand has blurred so much as to effectively serve to image them as clones, indistinguishable from one another save the sign on their store front.

But then, my confidence in the “C” store alas took a hit when the last 36 count bag of “Bath Tissue” was opened to reveal that they are no longer (since 1985) individually wrapped as we have grown so accustomed to but packed in internal packages of nine. My first reaction was to of course “over react” and immediately check the roll sheet count which to my relief was (at least listed) the same as the previous individually wrapped rolls.

Could it be that Costco and their Kirkland brand has been the victim of a revolution and have been taken over by the accountants? Those rows after rows of men and women dressed in white shirts and bow ties with glasses and sharp pencils auditing endless ledgers of numbers looking for a place to save a penny here and there. Of course their job has nothing to do with customer satisfaction… something that seems to have taken a lower priority across the board most everywhere.

Hopefully this is but just a bump in an otherwise smooth road for Costco as it would be a shame to “color them the same” as the others.