Costco Watch

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart.

Comments

[ted mills]

Great article. I especially like the consternation of the capitalists: "Employees and customers do better than the shareholders!"

Heaven forbid!!

Also, it's nice to see a CEO not insisting on a million dollar salary.

[Randy Paul]

Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.

"He has been too benevolent," she said. "He's right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden."

I wish one of these jackass analysts would go and get a real job for a while and see what that's like.

I saw an interview with Sinegal once and they pointed out to him that he did not take a raise and turned down his bonus one year. When he asked why, he responded "we didn't make our numbers for the year."

How refreshing. Apparently Ms. Kozloff didn't see that interview.

I buy most if not all of my electronics, DVD's and CD's at J & R for two reasons:

1.) It's near where I work.

2.) The owners kept all of their employees on payroll for the six weeks after 9/11 when the store could not open because of the damage and the complete loss of its inventory.

People don't just buy with their pocketbokks. Some of us use our brains and hearts.