Shoutout to the intense Costco Receipt Checker who stopped a guy from robbing me!

WOW this has been a crazy morning.

I had scheduled PTO for today figuring I would be hungover after a crazy St Pattys, but my ex-wife dropped off our son at my place unexpectedly yesterday so I was unable to partake in any libations.

This morning I woke up very chipper— it’s amazing what a combination of no hangover and no work does to a man’s demeanor. I decided to do a Costco run after dropping my son back off (and finding my ex-wife throwing up, claiming she was having “morning sickness”; her Instagram story from last night tells a different tale).

As it often goes with Costco, I came in just aiming to just restock on my protein powder and my oats, but ended up with a mountain of stuff in my cart. Among that stuff was 10 sets of AMC giftcards— I am a cinephile and try to see everything that comes out, so I stock up every so often.

After I dropped half of my last paycheck at check out, I consoled myself with some pizza and Diet Pepsi at the food court, then made my way to the exit.

The receipt checker was very intense in his job, literally digging though my cart and checking off every item on the receipt, which I had never seen before and thought was a lot for a Monday at 10am. In the middle of the inspection, something clearly alarmed him and he gave me a look which I initially took to mean he thought I was stealing something. Instead, he said “you’re missing two gift cards.” I was relieved but also confused. Indeed, he showed me the discrepancy between the 10 noted in the receipt and the 8 that were in my cart.

I figured I must have dropped them, so I went back to the food court/check out area to look for them. As I was doing that, I heard the receipt checker yell “Hey! I found your giftcards!” I looked over and saw he was blocking the path of another shopper from exiting. I rushed over and the checker notified me that he saw two unlisted gift cards in this guy’s cart, and that he must have stolen them from me.

The guy was flustered and insisted he had no idea how they got there, but folded very quickly and gave them back.

I thanked the checker and offered him one of the sets of gift cards but he insisted that he was just doing his job, and said that the gift cards were worthless to him since he preferred reading. I also asked if I could post his picture here but he preferred to remain anonymous. So yeah.