Mark's Costco Chicken Crisis

So, I follow two or three blogs and I introduced you to one of them a while back in the whole late-night mess. It's written by a guy named Mark Evanier and it's pretty entertaining. The other day, he wrote about an incident at Costco where a few guys hogged every rotisserie chicken that particular Costco had at the moment. You can read the original post here and a follow-up here. A lady was so upset that she would have to wait forty minutes for her chicken she threw a massive temper tantrum to the point of using foul language, insulting employees, and making other customers uncomfortable.

One of the things Mr. Evanier says is that the employees had to take it. That is Costco's problem for making it a policy to accept that behavior. I work at a clothing store, and at the first cuss word or insult hurled at one of our employees the customer would be asked to leave. If the tantrum continued they would be banned from the store. To an extent we have to try to be patient, but it's all about the customer's behavior. This lady's was way out of line and unnacceptable.

My biggest beef with this story, though, is the reaction of the other customers, including Mr. Evanier, who you should know I have a lot of respect for. But, none of them spoke up or countered this lady. I'm sorry, but as soon as someone declares she speaks on behalf of everyone I'm going to interject. Furthermore, other customers should have pointed out how they understood the situation and knew it wouldn't be the norm. OTHER CUSTOMERS should have done something. Is it their job? No. Is it the right thing to do? Yes.

But what does this lady think will be the overall outcome of this experience? Costco can't change their routine for these chickens, really, because they can't make excess chickens for the reason they stated and also for the reason that if they didn't have the two-hour rule this lady would probably constantly get old chickens. She wants a fresh chicken but doesn't want to wait while someone else does the work for her? You can't always have fresh and immediate. You just can't, lady.

P.S. I think the word "chicken" should be plural like "fish" and "sheep."