Why some Costco employees have different colored badges
- Most Costco employee badges boast a plain white background.
- However, there are exceptions.
- Costco employees told Business Insider that the company celebrates its longtime employees with silver- and gold-colored badges.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
When you walk around your local Costco store, you'll find most employees wearing name tags with white backgrounds. But every so often, you might notice an employee badge that's colored silver, or even gold.
Business Insider spoke to seven Costco employees from warehouses in Washington, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, and Canada about the meanings behind the different badge colors. Workers said that badge color depends on the length of an employee's tenure.
One Ohio employee told Business Insider that for the first 24 years of employment at the warehouse, a Costco worker will wear a plain white badge. Silver badges are given out to workers who have been with the company for 25 years, while gold badges commemorate 40 years of employment.
Four decades is a long time to work anywhere, and the employee from Ohio pointed out that a worker wearing a gold badge was a rare sight. In fact, it's so uncommon, that two workers told Business Insider that they weren't even aware of the gold-badge tradition. A representative from Costco declined to comment on the different colors of badges.
One employee from Illinois said that they didn't know about the gold badges. They did, however, hear that "every 25 year employee gets a silver badge" as well as a signed card from Costco CEO Craig Jelinek.
And another employee who's been with the store for a year said that employees who win the company's President's Award also get a gold addition to their badges, as seen in this photo posted to Costco Today's Facebook page.
"Not certain how exactly you get it, but you have to save the company a million dollars, save a bus load of orphaned nuns in the parking lot or something big," the employee said.