A Slice of Humble Pizza Pie

This will not be the most profound or earth shattering blog I ever write. It’s a silly story about a first world problem and my rather abysmal response to it. But there’s still a lesson in there if you care to look for it.

My Tuesday night routine is somewhat stressful. It involves picking kids up from various locations, shoveling food down their throats, hustling to get them to worship practice and youth group in a timely manner, and then sitting around waiting to pick them up again. On my good days, I remember to cherish the moments and thank God for the opportunity to spend time with my children. On my bad days, I’m just kinda grumpy about the demands on my schedule, especially when my toddler chooses vocal resistance to the game plan.

For the last year and a half, though, there is one thing about Tuesday nights that has not been stressful, and that’s our Costco food court dinner routine. (Judge me if you need to; I feed my kids crap sometimes. It’s the American way.) The routine involved me handing my Costco membership card to my teens, dropping them off at the door so they could run into the food court and buy pizza and/or hot dogs, and picking them up five minutes later so they could scarf down their food on the way to youth group. It’s cheap. It’s fast. They like it. Everyone wins.

This has worked brilliantly for our lives for quite some time.

So this past Tuesday, after dropping my teens off at the Costco entrance and beginning to circle the parking lot, I was surprised to see them rushing back to the car 30 seconds later without their food.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“They have a new scan-in system, and they won’t let us use your card without you anymore,” they reported. “The lady was kinda rude about it,” my daughter continued, imitating the employee’s snarky tone. “No transfers allowed.”

I was instantly irritated. “Just tell them you’re only going to the food court,” I instructed them.

They obeyed but returned empty-handed to me again shortly thereafter. Now I was really irritated. Costco was messing with my routine, and I didn’t have time for this. I finally found an open space at the outer edge of the Wild West of all parking lots, parked my car, marched up to the entrance, and demanded some answers.

“Do you mean to tell me I need to park all the way in Timbuktu and haul my often sleeping toddler out into the rain just so my kids can buy their dinner? They’re purchasing hot dogs, not a refrigerator,” I barked, alarmed at my own aggression.

The lady scanning the cards looked gloatingly at me as if she had been waiting for this singular opportunity to flex for her entire life. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” she said patronizingly. “It’s always been that way if you read your membership contract.” I sensed that she was deriving a deep sense of personal satisfaction from her newfound power to vex.

I felt my face flush before remarking, “Well that’s really dumb.” I scanned the membership card myself and turned to my teens. “There,” I said sarcastically. “I signed you in. They can see you’re not imposters. Grab your food, and I’ll meet you in the car.”

I turned to leave, but the lady called after me.

“Nope!” she stated. “This isn’t how it works. They cannot be in the store without you.”

Her manager, a woman who looked about 25 and equally eager to assert her dominance, called out from 15 feet away, signaling her agreement.

You guys, I’m a hot-headed person, and I’m not sure what was going on with me, but I just let it rip. I’m not proud of the way I behaved. At all. Somewhere between my perimenopausal hormones and my frustration with the entire universe, I had allowed myself to become what Gen Z would call a “Karen.” All that was missing was my “May I speak to the manager” haircut.

“Never mind,” I huffed. “I’ll just write a letter to corporate. I’ll be spending my money elsewhere.”

Now in that moment, it did not occur to me that Costco will probably soldier on just fine without my $6.50 contribution to their revenue. That was beside the point. I needed to feel powerful.

My kids ate McDonalds that night, and I spent the next hour and half drafting a lengthy pointed letter of complaint in my head. I’m good at letter writing. I’m also good at customer service, having managed a full membership department at the YMCA for quite some time, so I knew exactly what I would need to say to resonate with the people who held these employees’ jobs in their hands. “This is NOT how you treat loyal customers,” I coached myself, unfazed by the intensity of my unreasonableness in that moment.

Ironically, it was precisely my experience managing customer service reps that slowly pumped the brakes in my brain, kicking my anger out of the driver’s seat and turning the reins back over to my more logical side.

“Remember when people used to sneak into the Y using other peoples’ membership cards?” came this unwelcome nagging voice in my subconscious.

“Remember how everyone always thought they were so special and that they should get to be the exception to the rule? Remember what it was like to be verbally assaulted when you were just trying to do your job?”

The unwelcome conviction grew louder.

“What did you teach your kids tonight about the way God wants you to treat other people? Was this a wise hill on which to die? Are you really going to cancel your Costco membership because, God forbid, you should be expected to follow membership rules?”

Suddenly I wasn’t angry anymore. I was ashamed. Why was I behaving like this? Why was I so angry? What was really going on inside of me?

The voice continued with a directive that I really didn’t want to hear: “You write that letter, Kaeley, and instead of trying to get people in trouble, you tell them that you’re sorry for the way you treated them.”

I didn’t want to do this, of course, but I learned a long time ago that my conscience is unyielding to the point of sleeplessness, and my personal peace is entirely reliant on appeasing it, so I wrote the dang letter. And I apologized for my behavior. And I told the powers-that-be that I understand the rule and that I was sorry for being one of what I imagined must be hundreds of people who abused the messengers instead of honoring them for faithfully doing their jobs.

I told my kids that what I had done was wrong, and I prayed for God to heal whatever parts of myself were vulnerable to this kind of anger. And I left it alone.

Yesterday I got a phone call from a local number I didn’t recognize. I answered. It was the manager of the local Costco calling to thank me for my letter. “You don’t see this very often,” he informed me. “My staff get yelled at all day long, so we really appreciate it when people take the time to treat them like humans.”

I teared right on up because I had been part of the problem. I had been a very poor representative of the faith and the grace I professed.

And then he really twisted the knife but in the most beautiful way. He presented me with a way to continue our weekly Costco tradition with minimal disruption to our lives. “You know, if you buy a Costco shop card and load money onto it, anyone with or without a membership can use it to gain access to the store,” he said. “So if you get one for your kids, they can just bring that in, and that should solve the problem. In fact, we would like to load one of these cards with $20 to get you going.”

I know this is all a long rambling story about a first world problem, but for me the experience was a lot more profound than it might appear at face value. There’s something about people choosing to be kind to you when you don’t deserve it that really just gets your attention and makes you strive to evolve as a human. It’s an echo of what Jesus has done and a reminder to live in a state of grace as often as is humanly possible.

Our culture (even inside the church) is not particularly keen on repentance. WE preach it for everyone else, but when someone suggests that maybe we might personally need to repent of something, we recoil from the thought. “Me? Why would I need to do that?” We’re insulted at the mere suggestion. But the fact of the matter is that, as fallen humans, sometimes we get things wrong, and in those times, repentance is a gift, not a curse. It’s the key that unlocks so much more goodness than we could otherwise ever hope to know.

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