There’s something almost hypnotic about a Costco warehouse. The oversized carts, the towering pallets, the smell of a rotisserie chicken from three aisles away. Millions of members flock to these warehouses every single week, drawn in by bulk deals and the legendary $1.50 hot dog. It’s a shopping experience unlike any other.
But behind all that bulk-buying joy, there’s a team of real human beings doing a tough job. And some of what they witness day after day would genuinely surprise you. Let’s dive in.
1. Blocking the Aisles Like You Own the Place
Honestly, this one tops the list for a reason. People who stand right in the middle of the aisle and ignore the obvious traffic around them turn out to be the most irritating thing for employees at Costco. Think of it like stopping your car in the middle of a highway to admire the scenery. Everyone suffers.
Blocking walkways for whatever reason, whether it’s having a conversation or walking away to get a sample, worsens the traffic in an already busy store. Employees also notice distracted customers pushing their carts through the store while looking in different directions, which causes collisions, traffic jams, and forces others to maneuver around them.
Yes, Costco’s aisles are wide, but they aren’t park-your-cart-and-ponder-life-decisions wide. Standing right in the middle creates a bottleneck, making it difficult for store employees, who often need to push heavy loads through, to pass by. A little spatial awareness goes a very long way in a warehouse this size.
2. Leaving Trash Everywhere But the Bin
Among the common complaints shared by Costco employees, a considerable number agree that some members make a troublesome habit of depositing refuse anywhere but in garbage cans. Be it a wrapper from something they brought with them into the warehouse, the plate used for the food court, or one of the myriad of sample cups from vendors featured at the end of aisles, trash disposal alternatives include apathy, aggression, and sometimes unusual efforts in secrecy.
According to one worker on Reddit, there are more than 50 trash cans conveniently placed throughout the store. As such, there’s no excuse for trash to be left in the cart or anywhere other than a trash can. Let that sink in. Fifty trash cans. There is genuinely no excuse.
Still, some take extra lengths to stow their garbage within a product before leaving that on a shelf or hiding it behind something else. In such cases, one employee has admitted to catching up to the responsible member and casually suggesting it was something dropped, earning mixed responses. Extraordinary. Just use the bin.
3. Abandoning Perishables in Random Places
Where it concerns perishable products, the mere inconvenience of depositing merchandise in the aisles becomes a matter of dollars and cents. With no idea when a perishable good was abandoned by a customer, it is out of an employee’s hands on what can be done with it as Costco requires it be discarded out of safety concerns.
In one Reddit thread, Costco employees recounted times when they found perishable items placed randomly around the store, rather than back in the refrigerators or freezers. One found a roast on top of clothing; another found popsicles melting over boxes of crackers. I know it sounds crazy, but this is apparently a regular occurrence.
In some extreme instances, employees have discovered entire carts filled with frozen and refrigerated goods, abandoned for untold reasons, destined for the garbage, leading some to wish memberships would be revoked. That’s not just rude. It’s genuinely wasteful on a massive scale.
4. Not Returning Your Cart to the Corral
Here’s the thing: the cart return is kind of a moral test. The “Shopping Cart Theory” is essentially a morality test: do you do the right thing and return a cart when finished, even though no one will punish you if you don’t? Not all customers pass the test, as one of Costco employees’ greatest pet peeves is when members don’t return their carts to the parking lot corrals.
One employee on Reddit explains there are cart corrals everywhere in the lot, so there’s no excuse not to place a cart where it needs to be. Another cart pusher stated: “If you can walk around for 1 hour in the warehouse, you can walk another 30 seconds to find the cart corral.”
Leaving carts scattered around the parking lot isn’t just an inconvenience for Costco employees but for other shoppers, too. Stray carts block spaces, roll into cars, and generally make everything more chaotic. The 30 seconds it takes to return your cart is, genuinely, one of the most straightforward acts of courtesy you can perform.
5. Abusing the Return Policy
Costco’s return policy is almost legendary in its generosity. Too generous, some employees would argue. Costco’s recent crackdown on returns may stem from an uptick in members trying to abuse their very reasonable policy. In 2024, a member went viral after sharing her story of returning a couch two years later simply because she decided she no longer liked it.
Fraudulent returns and claims alone cost U.S. retailers about $103 billion in 2024, according to Appriss Retail and Deloitte. That represented about 15% of all returned merchandise that year. Total returns in 2024, meanwhile, hit $685 billion, roughly 13.2% of all retail sales. That’s a staggering number, and Costco is not immune.
Reports indicate that warehouses have begun reviewing member history of returns to gauge whether or not the policy is being abused. According to the National Retail Federation, retail returns totaled around $850 billion in 2025 with just under 10% considered fraudulent. Some shoppers understand the reasoning, pointing out that abuse of the system ultimately drives up costs for everyone. Returning a couch you’ve been using for two years isn’t a life hack. It’s just unfair to every other member paying for that policy to exist.
6. Sharing Your Membership Card
Costco is a members-only club. That part isn’t subtle. Yet for years, card-sharing was rampant, and employees were caught right in the middle of the fallout. The days of sneaking into Costco with someone else’s card are coming to an end. The retailer is cracking down on sharing membership cards with a new policy in which all cards will be scanned at store entrances.
A Costco worker posted a lengthy rant on Reddit, claiming shoppers are bullying and harassing store employees over the membership card-scanning policy. “Members are irate about being mildly inconvenienced at the door by having to prove they are a member at a MEMBERS ONLY store,” the poster wrote. Employees are enforcing rules they didn’t create, and they’re the ones getting yelled at for it.
Costco has stated: “We don’t feel it’s right that nonmembers receive the same benefits and pricing as our members.” Costco ended fiscal 2024 with some 76.2 million members including five million new members who came on board, a 7.3 percent uptick. Executive memberships grew significantly faster, up nearly 10 percent to 35.4 million members. There’s clearly no shortage of people willing to pay. So just pay and stop making life hard for the door staff.
7. Opening and Tampering With Products on the Shelf
This one is genuinely hard to believe, yet it comes up constantly in employee accounts. A Costco shopper took to Reddit to sound off about “disgusting” behavior from members at their local Costco, sharing a photo of a bag of ube-flavored coconut rolls that had been ripped open, presumably by a customer who wanted to try one, and then abandoned on the shelf.
The post received more than 120 comments from fellow members, many of whom reported similar unruly behavior at warehouses near them. “I once saw someone remove several cookies of a flavor he didn’t like and swap them with the flavor he wanted with his bare hands. And he just shut the plastic container back and put it on the shelf,” one shopper commented.
Employees have also flagged customers “opening produce containers of apples, grapes, berries, mangos to make a new package.” This isn’t just bad manners, it’s genuinely unhygienic and forces employees to remove compromised stock. Critics believe that shoppers who behave this way should lose the privilege of being able to shop at Costco. Honestly, it’s hard to argue with that.
8. Shopping Right Before Closing Time
Let’s be real. We’ve all been that person who rushes into a store five minutes before closing. At most retailers, it’s a minor inconvenience. At Costco, with its massive warehouse floor and complex closing procedures, it causes a genuine disruption for the entire team.
Walking into Costco a few minutes before closing is a surefire way to ruin the staff’s evening. Latecomers ducking under the gate as it’s closing just to grab something are oblivious to the fact that because of them, the staff and the store managers can’t even start their closing routine. The posted closing time is there for a reason, so employees can finally call it a day.
Other customers berate employees when the item they’re looking for is out of stock or when they’re trying to shop after closing time, as if the employee has any control over such things. Remember that the people working those closing shifts have often been on their feet for hours. Showing up at the last minute and then arguing with staff about it is a level of inconsideration that employees genuinely dread.
The truth is, most of these behaviors are surprisingly simple to avoid. Costco works hard to offer one of the best value memberships in retail, and its employees work even harder to keep the experience running smoothly. A little courtesy, awareness, and basic warehouse etiquette costs nothing. What do you think? Have you witnessed any of these behaviors on your last Costco run? Tell us in the comments.
