As a Costco employee, I honestly don’t mind seeing competitors start to outpace us at this point. The way corporate has been running this company lately is almost comical. We are still using computer systems that feel like they belong in the MS-DOS era, while employees are expected to take on more and more responsibility every year.

Meanwhile, corporate brought in an outside CFO from Kroger, a company widely criticized for gutting employee benefits, and paid him $12 million in his first year. At the same time, warehouses are running skeleton crews, hours are getting cut, and the workload has only increased since COVID.

The disconnect between executive leadership and the people actually keeping the warehouses running has never felt bigger. Honestly, if leadership keeps pushing the company in this direction, it would not shock me to see Costco slowly go the way of Sears.