Why I Fired Costco (and why you should never work here) - Inventory Control Specialist (ICS) Costco Wholesale Employee Review

Ok, if this is really considered “one of the best companies to work for” then no wonder the American dream is dead.I know there is a lot to be said here, but if you are considering working for this company on any level I would highly encourage you to read this. It’s horrifying how this company preys on its employees and hides behind the narrative that “ThIs Is OnE oF tHe BeSt PlAcEs To WoRk At In ThE wHoLe WiDe WoRlD!” So it’s good to see this company is finally getting some press for the horrible place it really is. (Just Google "why people are unionizing at Costco")The “promote from within” inbred and nepotistic culture fueled by cancerous management that attracts terribly unprofessional, uneducated, and all sorts of very undesirable personalities, is probably by far the worst aspect of working for this company. To put this in perspective, two of the managers I reported to at the corporate office; one was a college dropout and the other was a former hairdresser (and again this was at corporate where the “good” employees work). Aside from that you have all of the alcoholics, home wreckers, attention seekers, professional brownnosers, elite backstabbers, pathological liars, and psychos with anger issues. Add to that all the misandrist women managers who  constantly feel the need to prove themselves. Oh and don’t forget the guy who went to jail for child SA. It should probably say in the job applications “must have had to endured some sort of childhood trauma to work here.” Let that sink in for a moment... yep. Those are just some of the people you are likely to be working with at Costco. That being said, let’s talk about the people who actually run Costco (because contrary to what Costco wants you to believe, it’s not the employees): the management. Man, If a lot of these people managed the way they do at a company with even the slightest hint of integrity above this place, they’d be fired immediately. Saying that this place has bad management is an understatement. I worked for a corporate buyer who had multiple people quit the company before myself, and I had another buyer who had 4 people put in for transfers away from their team in just a single year. YIKES. That is a major red flag. Yet upper management did nothing to change the behavior of those managers. Clearly, they would rather protect their friends instead of doing what is right for the employees and the business itself. Because once again, Costco promotes and retains on the basis of seniority and nepotism so many of these problem child managers stay where they are with no consequences. And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse listen to this: There is no requirement for managers to have an OBJECTIVE way of tracking or evaluating employee performance. No metrics. No quantifiable evidence towards progress. No job criteria. No way of interpreting things with fairness. Performance reviews and promotions are decided solely on the basis of SUBJECTIVITY ( a lot of it comes down to whether or not they take a liking to you as a person). I honestly cannot believe this company has not had more discrimination lawsuits brought against them. HR should be very worried, but then again they clearly don’t know what they are doing either. Let’s clarify the dictionary definition of management: “the people or groups of people responsible for conducting a business’s operations in order for it to run the most efficiently, effectively, and pragmatically in order to stay competitive and or intact.” The idea of management is to come up with plans, solutions, ideas, strategies in order for your business to run all within your mission statement and goals; then implement your team members accordingly through training and procedure. That being said, I am pretty sure a lot of these supervisors, managers, buyers, even the senior execs…are not managing anything. There is very limited support structure, no clear goal setting, expectations and trajectories change on the fly, being competent in your job description is invisible (no really, that’s literally what a manager once told me in an interview). Let me repeat this: the way managers interpret things at this company is not based on fact. They have these cookie cutter methods of doing things and many managers can never pinpoint the root cause of a problem. Rather they make decisions based on whatever silly opinions they come up with in their heads or even just the mood they are in that day (Most demand authority and control through fear, shame and anger). The infamous sink or swim mentality here means things getting done right are left to chance. Which leads me to my next point: there is a very stagnant and narrow minded culture with so many work processes and procedures that make absolutely no sense. For example, there is no standard operating procedure for ANY department or position. No consistency whatsoever. The expectations and the way things are conducted, for the same exact tasks, vary because they are up to the manager of each team/department/location. I have consistently, in all of the departments I worked in (across 3 warehouses and 2 corporate buy teams), had to ask for training and explanations on things that should be mandatory and of common sense. I have seen people get written up for mistakes they made because they were not trained, yet the blame still fell on them. I ran into so many issues when learning what I needed to learn when I worked in buying such as how to handle certain emails and prioritizing, report building, and understanding how to build a cadence just to name a few. In my first buy team, my initial  two performance reviews went really well. Then about a month after my second review, one day I get pulled into a room and SCREAMED at for being behind. Uhm ok. They told me I had two months to improve and would have another follow up review. The coaching that I received over the following months was very surface level and nonspecific (I don't think they ever really knew what I did/didn't know, they just "thought" I was behind because it was taking me a little bit longer to do some tasks). Yet they continued to berate me with scorn - all of this just for these people to never even give me the follow up review!!! In the second buy department I was often met with very condescending dialogue and often told I was underperforming but the management seldomly offered specific solutions on any of the issues. For example, they once asked me to create a project tracker and literally said “just go ahead and make it your own. Do what works for you” while handing me 3 previous examples, none of which had anything in common. Once I was done, they then proceeded to laugh at me and tell me it was completely wrong and useless. Let’s think about this - 3 random examples and “make it your own.” That is probably the most unclear way to describe something. Many issues employees face could be resolved within 10 minutes or less if the manager would just sit down and help explain the precise issue clearly and then help come up with a very specific plan to help them better perform the duties. Instead, all they do is yell at you for doing something wrong but never offer to actually fix the problem. Let me be clear: if you are gonna shoot your mouth off to me and tell me I am not performing well, it should then be very easy for you to tell me exactly where and what the problem is and you better have verifiable objective evidence that can show the root cause of the issue, as well as where I need to be and what I need to do to get there. Anyone with an eighth of a brain can stand up there and tell me that I need to work faster. Again, that’s not management. Costco does not have any training perimeters or have any way of documenting what an employee has been taught. Half the time managers seem to not even recall what you have and have not been taught or if you have been given enough time to actually fully master something, and then they FLIP OUT when it’s not done correctly (again it is left to the subjectivity of the manager as to whether or not you actually should be fully competent on something at that point in time - and a lot of these people don’t have any sound logic!)- Costco is so underprepared when it comes to providing support for their employees to do their jobs correctly, ESPECIALLY at the corporate level. They do a very good job at gaslighting employees for not doing something correctly, but do not take ANY accountability for not managing adequately. Some people will tell you they have good managers, but be aware the ratio of good managers to bad ones is significantly uneven. Even if you are lucky enough to get a good manager that you report to, you are still likely to have to work with many bad or difficult ones over time.  And if you thought life couldn’t get worse: let’s not get started on the computer systems and databases crashing all the time; reports and spreadsheets that should be automated and AI run lol forget about it. I literally had to wait 4 weeks for IT to fix my computer once. They couldn’t even get me a spare so luckily I was able to use someone’s who was on leave. This company made nearly $250 billion in 2023 alone and still runs on Google drive. One time I asked for a copy of my attendance records and employee reviews to apply to a position after I had gone on hiatus from the company, and it took them weeks to recover these since the only files they had were hard copy and had been sent to an offsite storage unit. But I think what is most disturbing out of any of the things I have mentioned, is that a lot of these issues are just seen as acceptable to these people (particularly the CEO) and there is no clear desire to improve upon or change any of these things. If you have a 4 year college degree, you should not be anywhere near this company. Have the courage that you can and will do better at virtually any other company. If you don’t have an education, which are often the types of employees Costco targets, consider a trade or the military (at least then you’ll be compensated for your PTSD). Yes, I know Costco doesn’t do layoffs (read the handbook, they’re possible they've just never happened), and pays sorta well (it really depends on what city you live in). But it comes with a steep trade off since they will get you to stay and slave your life away to a work environment with long hours, intense pressure, expectations that are unclear and often unrealistic, non-existent training and as a result constant belittling from upper management. You’ll have radiation poisoning from all the toxicity this place emits. Take it from someone who worked in 3 different stores and two different departments at corporate over the course of 7 years. This company’s reputation as a good employer is highly glorified and could not be further from the truth! They are extremely corrupt and someone seriously needs to find a way to sue them for all the exploitation they have committed! This place is genuinely a cult; it’s like working with people that you would find up in the mountains that have been away from civilization for the last 200 years and have all been doing each other the entire time - that’s how incestuous, archaic, stagnant, and illogical the whole system is!