Costco Employees Want You To Break This Grocery Shopping Habit

Costco is a popular store, and with great popularity comes great responsibility. With many warehouses often being busy, it's best to keep everything moving smoothly for everyone. And Costco employees are sick and tired of customers who dig around in pallets or display cases in search of fresher groceries.

A Costco employee on Reddit vented that "The entire pallet comes out at the same time!! There's no first in first out ... the entire pallet is one." In the same Reddit thread, another complained that these date-diggers often cause milk spills that need to be cleaned up, all because "Their ultra pasteurized milk with an expiration date 2 months out isn't fresh enough and they needed the one 2 months and 2 days out. Stop it."

Costco doesn't just look like a warehouse; it functions like one, too. Products are put on the sales floor by the pallet, and items on each pallet have approximately the same expiration date. This is also true of produce, though, because items on the outside of the pallet refrigerate faster than those on the inside, you may notice more differences in product quality.

It's clear that all the items on a Costco pallet have either roughly or exactly the same expiration date, so what about the unopened pallets? One of the things Costco employees want shoppers to know is that it's uncouth to open a pallet yourself. You can try asking an employee to do so, but odds are that the product is available elsewhere on the floor, and they won't prematurely open a new pallet just to get you a couple extra days of shelf life.

But the good news is that, in some cases, those dates may not be exact. One of the most pervasive myths about food expiration dates is that it's necessarily unsafe to eat after that date. Some products may remain perfectly edible long after the date on the package, though it is of course safest to abide by those dates anyway.

One example of this can be seen in how Kirkland milk stays fresher for longer than other brands. This is thought to be because of Costco's stricter-than-average quality-control standards for milk production. And shoppers say it remains drinkable for longer than average, too. Another case where there's no need to rifle through the cooler for a barely-later date on the jug. Just get the one up front and keep shopping.