Ant hill, give me less charge me more

It looks like today is a Friday Rant day.

So after work I needed to pick up a large package of chicken to use in the meals for the dogs.  I figured I may as well do so at Costco.  Well as soon as I entered the parking lot I knew I was going to be in for an annoying Costco experience, something which is the case more often or not.

I joined Costco last year, looking to a support a warehouse chain with a better business model than Sam’s Club.  Costco pays their employees better, treats them better and are generally viewed as the anti-Wal-mart, the godfathers of Sam’s Club.

I want to enjoy shopping at Costco.  I want to support the good things they stand for.  But regardless of my intent, time and again my shopping experience at our local store is anything but enjoyable.  The place is always packed and yesterday was even worse than normal.

There is nowhere you can look  that does not include human beings scurrying about.  Once you enter the store you merge into a current of shopping carts.  If you pause without making sure you exit the current you risk being rear ended.  If you forgot something and need to turn around against the river of humanity you are taking your life into your own hands.

Maybe they are just too successful, all I know is I can not STAND shopping at a place where I am bumping elbows with people repeatedly.  I literally feel like an ant in a colony, it sucks.

To make matters worse, for some reason they had absolutely NO CHICKEN.  I dipped myself into this humanity soup unnecessarily, great.  I grabbed a few other items but not the main reason I went there.

As I made my way to Sam’s to score the chicken, I tried to ascertain why Costco was SO horrible on a Thursday evening. I came up with a common cause of misery during this time of year, snowbirds.  A ton of them have probably just flocked back into town now that the holidays are over, necessitating stocking up their seasonal cupboards at Costco.

Ironically Sam’s was a calm and pleasant scene, 180 degrees from the Costco chaos I had just left.  The wide aisles left my personal space intact, I didn’t feel my blood pressure rising as I made my way to the poultry section where they had boneless breasts on sale for a very cheap $1.70 a pound.  I walked up to the self checkout line (Costco doesn’t have them) and exited the store without a fuss.

I wish I could get the shopping environment of Sam’s within the walls of Costco.

1546093_10152706502307841_985004810_n[1]When I got home I had something else waiting to annoy me.  It was a bill from the state of Florida for their TOLL-BY-PLATE system.  It was from when Cindy borrowed the party van to go to Key West and I knew the bill was coming.  However I still found myself being very annoyed by the premise behind the system.

So basically in certain areas of the state they decided that paying toll takers was an unnecessary expense so they removed them.  Their removal meant you are no longer able to simply pay for a toll with actual cash.  You have to have one of the prepaid Sunpass transponders.  If you don’t have one, they have a system in place that takes a picture of your license plate and then uses the plate registration info to mail you a paper bill.  This aggravates the shit out of me on several levels.

I can understand wanting to save costs but I think having at least one booth available to take cash for tolls is not a lot to ask.  Maybe I would like to just throw a buck for the toll instead of having to get a bill in the mail that I have to write a check for 3 weeks later. To add injury to insult, the state charges you an additional $2.50 “administrative fee” for the privilege of not being able to simply pay for a toll on the spot.

I am sure the thinking behind this process was hoping the admin fee plus the inconvenience of having to deal with a physical bill will push more people into buying a pre-paid Sunpass, where the state gets to hold our money in advance before it is actually spent.

Perhaps I am just being old fashioned but when push comes to shove I still think physical currency should be accepted in these situations.

This weekend I have things to do of course.  I think I will be removing my interior Xmas decorations but once again will leave my outside lights up for an extended period of time.  I just like having them out there.  I’d like to once again rip apart the SSR dash to turn down the gain on the stereo to silence the maddening electronic whine.

I’d also like to to string the slack line I bought for Cindy for Xmas.  It will be interesting to see how well we can balance on a 2-3 inch wide strip of fabric.  I also am looking to do another quadracopter aerial video session.  I bought some stuff called Moon Gel that is supposed to do a good job of reducing the amount of camera shake.

Saturday night will be consumed cheering on the Eagles to hopefully a first round playoff win.