A Happy Curmudgeon series.
Alongside the lying, cheating and stealing, I’ll call out the companies doing it right, and the habits that too many others get wrong.
First, a word about how these posts get made. I use Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, as a research and drafting partner. On a post like this one, Claude does a good share of the legwork: it digs up the facts and sources and hands me a first draft. Then I do what I’ve done for 50 years with every writer’s copy, my own included. I review and edit it and keep only what I stand behind. I’m telling you this upfront because a column that calls out lying and cheating had better not be sneaking anything past you itself.
In marketing, we talk about “know, like and trust.” Get people to know you, like you and trust you, and they’ll buy from you for life.
Costco has built its reputation on something close to that: trust, like and respect, extended to everybody it deals with. Members, employees, suppliers, even the guy handing out samples of frozen potstickers.
Costco does it because it’s the right thing to do. And it has made a pile of money doing it.
Too many American companies take the other road. They lie, cheat and steal to fatten the bottom line, and they keep at it until somebody catches them. These days, that somebody is usually social media, the best lie detector ever invented. Only when the truth starts hitting them in the reputation and revenue breadbaskets do they suddenly discover their values.
So let’s hand out some grades. One Kudo, and a handful of Kudon’ts.
Kudos to Costco
Jim Sinegal co-founded Costco in 1983 and ran it until 2012, and under him Costco paid its people well above what the competition paid. In the mid-2000s, Costco’s average wage was about $17 an hour, roughly 40% more than at its rival Sam’s Club, with better health coverage to boot. Sinegal’s own salary was about $350,000 a year, pocket change by Fortune 500 CEO standards.
Wall Street hated it. In 2005, a Deutsche Bank analyst complained that “at Costco it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.” Investors wanted lower wages and fatter markups. Sinegal refused. His reasoning was good business, too: pay people well and they stay, they don’t steal, and they take care of your customers.
He was right. Costco caps its markups at about 14% on name brands and 15% on its Kirkland label. Most of its profit comes from membership fees, and about 90% of members renew. The hot dog and soda combo has cost $1.50 since 1985. Sinegal reportedly told his successor, “If you raise the [effing] hot dog, I will kill you.” And the pay tradition continues. In 2025, Costco raised top-scale clerks above $30 an hour, about $62,000 a year for full-time work.
Costco isn’t a saint. Early in 2025, the Teamsters, who represent about 18,000 of its workers, threatened a strike before the two sides reached a new contract. But the company treats people well even when nobody is watching. That’s the difference.
Kudon’ts
No names here. You won’t need them. You’ll fill them in yourself.
The junk fee. The advertised price, followed by the “service fee,” the “convenience fee” and the “facility fee” that show up only at checkout.
The cancellation maze. Sign up online in 30 seconds. Cancel by phone, during business hours, after a sales pitch to stay.
The shrinking box. Same price, same package, less inside.
The endless phone tree. “Your call is important to us,” repeated for 45 minutes.
The fine print. Whatever the big type promised, the small type takes back.
None of this is new. What’s new is that it’s getting harder to hide. A generation ago, an unhappy customer wrote a letter, and maybe it got answered. Today, one video of a customer being mistreated can reach millions of people by dinnertime and knock real money off a company’s value by morning. The complaint that used to disappear into a filing cabinet now lives forever online.
And that’s when the magic happens. Suddenly there’s an apology from the CEO, a “review of our policies,” and a new commitment to customers. Nothing about the company’s conscience changed. The cost of getting caught did.
Costco didn’t need a viral video to treat people right. That’s the whole point.
Your turn
I’ve spent 50 years in marketing, and here’s what I know for sure. You can buy attention. You can’t buy trust. You earn it the slow way, by treating people right when there’s no camera around, and you lose it fast.
Costco figured that out in 1983. Plenty of companies are still learning it one viral video at a time.
So who deserves a Kudo? Who’s earned a Kudon’t?
Send me your nominations: the business that went out of its way for you, or the one that made you want to throw your phone across the room. I’ll check them out before I name anybody. Fair is fair.
