I have shopped at several Costco branches in the Seattle Puget Sound area. The Costco at Kirkland is always reliable when it comes to items it sells. The checkout counter guys are often the contact with the customers and can tend to make Costco shopping experience either good or repulsive. On more than one occasion, I have encountered rude check out counter employees at Costco Kirkland, and that leads me to believe this is more than just isolated incidents.

The most recent incident happened last night when I was shopping with my 4-year old daughter. Just like many other kids shopping with their parents, my daughter was seated on the shopping cart while I arrived at the check out counter with a cart load full of purchases. Seeing that there were 2 or 3 other carts in the line behind the check out counter employee, I proceeded to unload all the purchases on to the belt and push the cart with my daughter on to the other side of the check out counter. This harmless action triggered the check out counter employee and his side kick that helps in loading things into the cart. What ensued were 3 minutes of impolite and often rude comments like "How would you send your daughter to school if you don't leave her and the cart on the other side of check out counter?". This was followed by the Costco employee refusing to help load my cart and also my receipt was not given to me for the purchases as I exited the check out counter. Overall, I sense that Costco Kirkland has grown so fast in short time that they have lower standards of hiring of check out counter employees. As a long time customer of Costco, I felt their employees did not act professionally and in keeping with the standards of employees at other Costco stores I visit.