Dear Powers that Be at Costco,
Lately there have been lots of “open letters” in the media. I guess the idea is to write a letter and then post it to Twitter, Facebook, etc. so it is “open” to the general public. Well, here is my open letter.
To Costco.
Dear Powers That Be at Costco,
I frequent your establishment a couple of times per month. I have noticed that most of your clientele fall within one of two categories: moms and the elderly. What do moms and the elderly have in common? We are all up at 5 am. Therefore, on behalf of moms (and maybe the elderly — I don’t know their feelings on this subject) I would like to express my frustration at your 10:00 am opening time. By 10 am, I have been up for hours. One, if not two of my kids are already dropped off at school. My baby has probably already had a morning nap. 10 am is almost the middle of the day.
Kids are dropped off at school before the 9:00 hour, so by not opening until 10 am, moms are forced to wander aimlessly around town with our babies in the car or go home for 28 minutes and accomplish absolutely nothing before we can shop at your store. Since neither of these options are very appealing, moms like me have to wait until after picking the big kids up from school to enter your establishment. This is not what you want, Costco, trust me. You would rather I shop at your store with fewer kids and earlier in the morning when I am freshly caffeinated. Instead, I enter my local Costco at lunch time (school gets out at 11:30) with all 3 kids. My coffee has worn off. The kids are hungry for lunch so they insist on stopping at every single sampling station, even if it is beet jelly on pita bread. They will not like the beet jelly and will loudly state their opinions to anyone nearby.
I know your game. You are thinking, but Mommy! Stop at our cafe and treat your kids to a slice of pizza! Um, have you seen me? 3 kids. 5, 3, and 1. The 3-year old still pees and poops her pants on occasion. The 1-year old is 1. Enough said. Dining out is hazardous enough when my husband is with me. Do you really expect me to wait in line, order slices of pizza, and park it at one of your indoor picnic tables in a vain attempt at feeding all of my children without any of them dropping the entire slice of pizza on the floor, peeing on their chairs, or falling out of them?
In closing, please consider opening your doors at 9:00 am.
Sincerely,
Up-since-5-am-Mommy.
image credit: pixabay.com