Costco Shoppers Are Bristling At This Employee Scolding Anecdote

The 151,000-member Costco subreddit serves a lot of purposes, one of the most important of which is the voicing of employee and customer complaints. Recently, someone took to the forum to share a story about an unpleasant employee-supervisor interaction they claimed to have witnessed

The title of the post tells you most of what you need to know: "Overheard employee getting in trouble for being 30 seconds late" (via Reddit). If that's piqued your interest, wait until you hear exactly what the supervisor said. According to the Reddit user, the supervisor claimed to have timed the employee on their watch, and then, after berating them for 30 seconds' tardiness, demanded: "What are you going to do about it?" 

Uncertain of what they purportedly witnessed and whether the supervisor's behavior as described was normal for Costco, the person took to Reddit to crowdsource an answer. As you can imagine, the members of the subreddit had strong feelings on the matter – with many coming down on the side of the employee.

To make an important caveat, we cannot verify any of the claims made surrounding the anecdote. However, a number of self-described Costco employees weighed in, seeming to confirm that the supervisor's exacting standards were not out of the ordinary for Costco. "If you are in your 90 day 'trial' period...[Costco] can fire you for literally anything," asserted one user (via Reddit). Others were quick to claim that Costco has a three-minute "grace period" for clocking in and that the supervisor's behavior was therefore out of line. 

According to one person claiming to be an ex-employee, Costco's entire clock-in system is mismanaged, with not only a flawed clock-in procedure (clock-in stations are located at the back of Costco stores, making it difficult for employees to arrive exactly on time) but frequent incidents of end-of-day time theft. A devil's advocate suggested that there might be some crucial context missing from the story, without which a fair ruling on the supervisor's conduct would be impossible.

Among the comments – most of which were thoughtful, well-considered responses to the poster's original question, about the supervisor – one shone through as the clear winner, with hundreds of upvotes: "That supervisor sounds like a colossal a**h***." Of course, we weren't there to see if that assessment rings true.