Costco worker reveals one thing customers did that drove her crazy
Getty Images / The Washington PostCostco shoppers beware - there's one thing you may be doing that employees hate.
Meghan DeMaria, a former Costco employee and current associate editor for Refinery29, published an article on the women's website about her experiences working at the chain.
Overall, DeMaria said she was surprised to find that she loved working at Costco. However, there was one assumption customers frequently made that rubbed her the wrong way.
DeMaria says when she was working part-time at the store, many customers assumed she was "looking for something better."
"Yes, some people take jobs at big-box stores as seasonal employees or to earn money on top of their 'real' job," writes DeMaria. "But plenty of other people stay with places like Costco for years, or even decades, and their jobs aren't any less real or important."
REUTERS/John Gress JG/GN
DeMaria says she felt customers were more likely to assume she had different long-term career goals because she was white. She found herself determined to prove to her coworkers that she didn't think working at Costco was less important than any other job.
"In the end, though, any distance I felt from my coworkers stemmed more from my shyness (and age), not from our long-term career ambitions," DeMaria writes.
Assuming that certain employees have loftier career goals than working at Costco wasn't the only obnoxious behavior DeMaria encountered while dealing with customers.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia/Flickr
Costco members frequently complained about store policies, which employees have no power to change. DeMaria says once a customer went so far as to slap her during an argument about her membership.
Rude questions and flirtatious comments similarly trap employees in inescapably awkward situations.
Ultimately, DeMaria enjoyed her job at Costco, which she quit when she got her dream job at Refinery29. While she no longer works for the chain, all customers can take her story as a reminder to avoid passing judgment on employees the next time they visit the discount retailer.