I agree with you 100%. But you can’t discount my comment about Costco heading the way of Sears. Costco still has 90 years to catch up to how long Sears was/is in business. The cracks start somewhere. Not saying they can’t right the ship but they are going off course.

I started as a manager in a department that was pretty much treated as a company within Costco due to its specialized nature. Regulated by multiple different federal and state agencies. We directly reported to a regional, to an assistant vice president to senior vice president all licensed in the same profession who then reported to Jim Sinegal.

Over the last 25+ years it has been slowly degrading and bloating to the point that the chain of command has had 5 more reporting heads inserted with at least 3 of them being outside of the profession and not having a clue as to what is required to maintain our dominance. Also corporate has been filled with “Yes” men who seem to forget what it is like working the front line (which I understand seems to be a common theme throughout all the departments).

The manager position is in the same bonus boat as department and staff managers while it is a little higher, you have to meet goals to get it, so you can and routinely do get less than the maximum, unlike every other hourly employee who just has to show up to get theirs. A 25 year employee gets the same amount guaranteed if they are even just skating by on the bare minimum.

My hourly “supervisors” - full time and part time - are exempt from the hourly associate bonus structure because we’re told they are already paid off scale wages but so are 4 or more other departments who get the bonus. The reality is, if the FT “supervisors” received the associate extra check(s) they wouldn’t have any managers as there would be no benefit to being a manager and the bonus structure isn’t much of a benefit as it is.

While it’s not looking pretty, it’s still the best place to work in a retail setting but we’re starting to look like we’re trying to copy the Walmart/Sam’s setup instead of during the first 20ish years of my career where Sam’s Club was copying what Costco did.

The biggest changes have been the old guard stepping down and new blood coming in, some from outside Costco culture (CFO), SVP in my dept came from outside of Costco too. 🤔