Seeing Costco Clearly
As if for the first time
I pretend to be a lot of things—lately it’s mostly Elsa from Frozen—but I can’t pull off discerning consumer, even in make believe. I shine at angry consumer, wronged but conciliatory consumer, even confused consumer. But I hate and suck at making decisions, plagued as I am by the paradox of choice, which makes picking out new eyeglasses somewhere just above disposing of dead mice barehanded on my list of favorite things to do. I’m light years from being a looksmaxxer, but glasses occupy a fairly crucial face location, so even I like to make it halfway home before the regret sets in.
But my wife, who since she sees my face more than anyone does or should is my best peeper picking partner, was outta town, and I had an appointment with our favorite Costco opthalmologist, and you don’t cancel those or they’ll reschedule just in time to see the robot apocalypse clearly. You don’t get your glasses at Costco because they have the best doctors or nicest offices or best selection or even the best prices. I don’t think they have any of those. What separates Costco is the experience.
In the past I’ve waxed poetic about my love of glasses stores; how you can be from another planet and they’ll fix your glasses for free no questions asked. Glasses stores are like safe houses for your eyes. And progressives—people, not lenses—have excellent choices when writing checks for their specs. Costco is a stellar corporate citizen, so much so that three days after Trump was re-inaugurated, 98% of their shareholders voted to reject a resolution from a conservative advocacy group demanding a report on the risks of maintaining their DEI policies. Warby Parker also professes robust DEI, offsets on much of its carbon footprint, and donation of a pair of glasses for every one it sells.
But Costco is closer and, more to the point, goofier. I had more fun there picking out glasses than I or anyone with a pulse had any reason to expect. I walked out with two sheets of paper and a promise, and if you don’t think that’s a pleasantly surreal Costco experience, I encourage you to try it.
But first things first. The optical area is in a front corner of the store, away from most of the mayhem. My first sight inside the doctor’s office was a very cute pair of identical twin boys about four or five years old, which I took as a good omen, much like an albatross at sea. The optical professionals here know you come for the excellent care, but you stay for the cool office shit. Exhibit A: a Vestaboard that every time the song changes, its thousands of flaps start spinning until one by one they land on letters that, when combined, tell you what the new song is. (It’s entirely possible I didn’t need to mention the letters must be combined in order to form intelligible words, but these days I try to assume less.) As the Vestaboard website proclaims, “It’s the best of analog and digital,” as you can control it from your phone, but the display and process are incredibly satisfying. I want one and today’s my half birthday, so who knows.
The tech in the office was sporting solid central face metal, which is not usually my jam but I’m pleasantly distracted by the wide, yellowish-green streak in her otherwise jet black hair. Seems she’s channeling her inner Alysa Liu but decided to go vertical instead, and it was a good move. I tell her I like it and she tells me it glows in the dark. Now if you’d asked me on the way in if I thought there was such a thing as glow-in-the-dark hair dye, I’m sure I would have said yes and thought little of it. But for some reason I found it really fun, and she clearly enjoyed my reaction, so a good time was had by all. I’d been off caffeine for a bit and so didn’t think till the next day to ask her to turn off the lights off so I could see it glow.
A few eye puffs and crazy bright lights seared into my corneas later, I am ushered into the doctor’s office. He’s really nice and so I’m unbothered by the somewhere between 85 and 117 racing bibs on his wall, as apparently he’s one of those folks who competes wholly unaided by machine power. Besides, it’s his goddamn office and he should decorate it with Waffle House receipts if he feels like it. My favorite piece in his office is decorative, functional and—here comes that word again—fun: a wall-mounted guitar-turntable that spins vinyl at a 90-degree angle.
The good times keep rolling, depending on your perspective. Turns out my vision, especially in my left eye, has gotten so much better the glasses I’ve been wearing likely mess it up almost as much as they correct it. I must be a much better tennis player than I thought, I thought, given I’ve viewed the court for the past two years through the bottom of Coke bottles. My vision, uncorrected, has improved to 20-40, but in this game the best one can hope for is a tie so it’s pretty good.
I’m released into the product picking out region, and in line I strike up a conversation with a guy from Pittsburgh, so we spend a couple minutes deconstructing yinzer slang. A couple more line minutes are spent reminiscing about my junior year in London with a woman from Devon who husband is loose in the store so she couldn’t be in less of a hurry. Costco is great for most things, but if you lose your shopping partner for a nanosecond it’s an almost Waldo-esque challenge finding them again.
My turn came and my new best friend Josuy took my info and pointed me to the back wall where the men’s options were, and because I’m trying to be less of an immediate smart ass I didn’t ask how the glasses knew my gender. As usual my first pass is disappointing, as I stupidly find a pair I love but forget my head is too wide for a 52 mm—Josuy did tell me 54-56 was my range—and, unlike shoes, glasses don’t seem to come in multiple sizes and widths. I fail to find an acceptable alternative.
I deliver the bad news, but Josuy told me there was a whole nother men’s display case I had totally whiffed on, and when life gives you second chances that huge, you’d have to be an undecided voter not to recognize the opportunity. So I go back and find back a pair I like that has my preferred auto-darkening feature but, according to Josuy, unlike my current specs, they clear quickly so I won’t look so sketchy for my first few indoor minutes.
I need to have two pairs, mostly so I can use one to find the other, and you know how one can get in Costco, so I went a little wild with a second possibility. I got over its Gucci label quickly, which I took as a sign of emotional maturity, and tried them on. I know it may not seem so if you read me and even less so if you know me, but I largely subscribe to a line from Jimmy Buffett’s The Wino and I Know: “I’m just trying to get by, being quiet and shy, in a world full of pushing and shove.” As such I’m not looking to make my face a fashion statement, but I liked these, so I snapped a couple bad selfies and texted them to my personal style gurus. While I waited for responses I wheeled around to see if I could snag a stranger to weigh in, but there were no proximate women, and asking a random man in Costco for help picking out glasses is like asking a quesadilla for directions.
But the nice Devon lady came back and seemed confident I could pull them off, and I know better than to: 1) not heed advice from small British women—Queen Victoria was 4’11’ and reigned for 63 years; and 2) push an hour-long funfest past its capacity, even at Costco. So I folded my two precious pieces of paper into my favorite pocket and exited this crucible of consumerism with a promise that in 7-10 days my vision will be better. And as I approach 70, upticks in any of my senses are as welcome as the last day of school.
I learned something else too. Costco truly seems to be a great employer, but working there can be tricky, as Josuy said way too often he shops before going home and winds up returning too much of his pay to his benevolent but still capitalist corporate overlords. I bid him adieu and ballet myself out amid the swirling dance of oversized carts groaning with oversized everything. I noticed people seemed to be buying an awful lot of bottled water, which made me wonder if I’d missed something important. Westfield Shoppingtown in Wheaton, Maryland is an unlikely place for your average survivalist to be stocking up, but nothing’s average these days so I made a note of it before heading to my car.
This is the third essay I’ve written with Costco as the main character, which would be less weird if I went there more often than Anna Wintour does her own hair. My wife is the family Costco shopper, and while we’ve had fun shopping there together, she likes it more than I and it’s important when living together to explore and champion fun, recurring, separate excursions. And the only thing I appreciate more than the irony of mining so much material from so few visits to a place that epitomizes good old American bulk, is the mystery of whether I’ll ever go back.
Elsa from frozen 😭😭😭
I know that eye doctor’s office!