If you're near a Costco and have a membership, their in-house brand Kirkland Signature wines are pretty good and you get a huge bottle for like $10. I'm a big fan of their cabernet for both drinking and cooking.
I have never gotten this Costco membership thing. Are they trying to keep out the "riff-raff" or just make a sense of like a golf club but for bulk produce?
Actually, epileptic seizure trigger warnings are okay in my book. I've heard great things about Save Me San Francisco wine. I really wish I could get it here. Also, Train is pretty awesome. In some states, even non-members are allowed to buy alcohol at Costco. Might be worth checking out. I don't know how it got started, but I imagine that there are a lot of people with memberships that rarely go, and that is basically free money. And I'm willing to bet that of the people who do go, a lot don't make up the difference in savings to cancel out the membership fee. I've been wanting to get a membership for a while, but buying in bulk doesn't really fit my current living arrangement.
Okay, so it's really super wierd when high school teachers are constantly tweeting students, right? Like, is it just me, or is that fucking strange? Tweeting poop jokes at male students and vaguely... Off... Tweets at female students is kinda fucked up, right? Just checking because it seems to be a fucked up trend at the school I work at, and they're all asking me why I'm not on Twitter. I want to say "I am but I don't want to interact with you fucking wierdos and put my job/livelihood at risk," but just saying I'm not on it at all is easier.
It's only wierd if they are not sleeping with the students. By not sleeping with the students it makes you a better person Mr. D26.
You could tweet their grades. As well as sarcastic and insulting comments about them as well. That might add a rule or two to the schools social media policy.
One guy I know is not sleeping with the students, he just lacks almost any common sense. The other guy, though? I've heard some rumors, though nothing concrete.
The explanation my mom gave me as a kid was basically that; they're offering you these great deals, and they can't just have everyone going in and dropping their profit margins. I joined Costco a few years ago with my only intention being to buy an 8-channel security camera setup, but then I saw that they had a lot of really great stuff that I buy all the time at higher prices elsewhere. If you're actually going to shop there on a regular basis, the membership fee more than makes up for itself (EX: I used to drink a few Red Bulls a day, at $2.?? each. The same thing is $.52 a can at Costco. Of course, you have to buy a case of it, but that case would only last me a week.). Hell, even one big purchase will do that. Also, the gas: Costco gas is consistently about $.10 a gallon cheaper than surrounding retail outlets. I know that not everyone has a Costco right down the block from where they live (Hell, the one in my area is 30 miles away), but I would always fill up my car whenever I stopped there. As soon as I can get out of the house, I'm going to renew my membership.
Algebra teacher at my high school was early 30s, taught sohomores mostly, rumors swirled about him for years and he eventually got fired for supposedly sleeping with a student. He maintained his denial through the whole process. 2 months after he got fired I ran into him in the grocery store with a girl who looked about 16 practically with her hands down his pants. Since I was 16 at the time, I was more jealous that she was smoking hot than anything else.
Both times I've signed up for Costco cards, it's been for major electronics purchases. The savings on buying 1 TV there more than makes up for the membership fee. Then you wander around and find a bunch of really decent shit you want at better prices than your grocery store. You just have to buy a ton of it at once. Kirkland brand booze ain't bad, but they also have the good stuff way cheaper than a liquor store. Want a big ass $1800 sectional sofa for $1500? No problem. And yeah, like Dixie said, the gas is consistently cheaper. As far as wine goes, I'm in the process right now of learning to become a winemaker. I started working as a cellar rat/harvest intern at a really nice boutique winery around here and I wake up sore as fuck but excited to go to work every morning. There are definitely some decent wines to be had for less than $10 a bottle, but not many. The best quality per dollar usually comes in around the $15 mark for whites and the $25 mark for reds (depending on the varietal). Actually, I take that back, the absolute best quality per dollar comes from fucking Franzia boxed wines (blasphemy, I know). At Albertsons here, you can get a 5L box of Cabernet Sauvignon for around $18, and it's beaten some of the bottles I've bought at tasting rooms when it comes to a blind taste test.
All you need to know about Costco is that their rotisserie chicken is better than crack, sex and chocolate. And Kirkland booze and wines are actually pretty good. As are their margaritas.
One of my French teachers - who was the froggy varietal of French, mind you - told us that he used to be able to buy 10 litres of wine for something like 10 francs, at a time when 7 francs equalled 1 US dollar. And while it wasn't artisanal wine, it was perfectly good drinkable wine. I know we like to make fun of Europeans - and the French in particular - because of, well, everything, but in many cases they have their priorities in order.
And they are a great price. I buy their Kirkland Vodka for $11.99 a handle. In Connecticut at a liquor store the only vodka I could get at that price is Dubra which is like drinking gasoline.
Don't quote me on this, but I imagine the membership is around for a few reasons. One, if there's a recall, CostCo can contact everyone, and I mean everyone, who purchased that particular item and give them a heads up. Two, because they keep track of everything you purchase, you can return items without a receipt, which I have done a dozen times already. Everything from broken rotors on Kitchen-Aid mixers, to a rocking chair that broke the second time I sat in it. They simply bring up your account, you tell them the month you bought it in, and they refund your money without any hassle. I'd also wager that the income from the memberships goes straight into customer service, because at my location in Toon Town there's no less than 10 people working in that department when I come in. I have never stood in line for more than a minute. That place is a fucking gold mine. I've paid for my membership several times over in formula and diapers alone. The food is unbelievably cheap, to the point where I literally can't believe what I'm seeing on the tags. There are two restaurants that I know of, probably more, that buy their food there because it's far cheaper than the usual purveyors. So much so that's it's worth hauling the groceries themselves to save some coin. Also, if you get the Executive Membership, which runs $110 CAD, you get 1% of what you spend that year back. I got $180 last month. It's also worth mentioning that they are a company you can respect, for both their business practices and because they do not discriminate in regards to hiring practices. I'll get off their dicks now and let you folks get back to your regularly scheduled programming.
If you read the fine print -- and I'm not sure why this is in fine print, but it was -- you'll notice that if the amount you receive back is not greater than the extra cost you paid for the higher membership level, they'll automatically refund you the difference (so, for example, let's say you got back $30 from that 1%, but the difference between the regular and exec membership is $50, then they'll send you a check for $20). Last year I got back something like $360. I've never been to costco and not bought at least one or two things that were not on my list simply because they either looked cool and/or were priced at a point where the want vs. need scale was tipped in favor of purchase. I think Costco relies on many people doing this in order to help their profit margins. The best purchase(s) I've made in there actually came about this way. I'm really picky about my shirts, namely, they need to be soft. So when I came across their golf polos for $18 I bought 2 and figured I'd give it a try. A year later, and I have at least a dozen in my closet. They are what I wear exclusively for work now.
At least in tx, they're attached to the store kind of like a car wash to a gas station. They're owned by Costco and have the same bulk buy/cheap cost/few brands principle. Texas liquor laws don't let you charge a membership to a liquor store, so anyone can go into the Costco liquor store. The actual Costco part sells wine and beer, only a small portion of which is displayed in the non-membership liquor store part.
Costo/Sams club/ etc work on the same principal. Charge everyone shopping the annual fee, mark prices so low that they just barely cover costs/wages/expenses, multiply and repeat. These stores dont use ANY of your day to day shopping money to expand their business, that's what your "fee" is for. thats why everything is so cheap. and everything can be moved by forklift.
I have a buddy that works at Sam's and he claims they pay pretty fucking well for some floor positions (refrigeration workers make like 30 bucks and hour). Though he claims they also are trying to cut full time hours to help save money.
Costco's brands have higher quality standards than the regular stuff. Kirkland is rarely not worth it. And seriously, that rotisserie chicken is what dreams are made of. Am I the only one who realized football has returned? Thank God