Have been dozens of times in the past at a different stores without membership to look around or get the wife's glasses adjusted, but we moved and the wife's family was offering to buy us a membership at the local store. So we go to look around and decide on signing up the person checking memberships at the door who waved us through apparently called ahead on the radio headset that we didn't have memberships because they found us and stopped us in the store, told us we weren't even allowed in the store without a membership, and needed to leave immediately.
When I called bullshit on this because in my state they still have to let you in to use the pharmacy and buy liquor, the associate called a manager who proceeded to tell us nobody has ever been allowed in a Costco anywhere without an employee to chaperone them (have never experienced that) and that by bypassing the person checking memberships at the front of the store we were trespassing. I was like wtf, seriously, are you going to call the cops, and the manager said "I hope it doesn't have to come to that." Needless to say we decided to NOT sign up.
The girlfriend's mom one time got stopped mid checkout because despite being listed on the membership and having her ID on her they wouldn't let her checkout because she was using her husband's card, who was delayed in the eyeglass area having them refuse to re-do a prescription they'd fucked up. Made her stand there, off to the side (trying not to cry because women, amirite) as they announced over the speaker that he had to come up to the checkstand so they could verify he was actually present in the store.
I figured it was isolated incidents but have met 2-3 other people who had similar experiences. Apparently the local Costco store manager got sick of their legendary customer service and decided to go straight Nazi or some shit. They keep replacing the sometimes craveworthy food with 'healthy' shit that tastes like shit, too. And the supposed deals are never that good. And filled with very strong diversity here locally that all seem to have 8 kids running around like cockroaches. Oh, yeah, forgot I had been to the store once before when they tried to claim I wasn't allowed to buy a square trade plan unless I was a member, which isn't true, you just get a discount for being a member and can even buy them online.
Apologies, fucking Costco obviously triggers me.