Talk:Costco/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Map 2 Cuernavaca 3 Where did Costco start? 4 This article is horrible 5 NPOV Edit on Employees section 6 what does costco stand for on mean? 7 Profit Margin 8 Sales model suggestions 9 Products 10 NPOViness 11 Suggest merge of Costco cash into Costco 12 Food court access 13 Merge Kirkland Signature 14 Worlds largest Costco 15 Edits from 71.240.185.114 biased? 16 Mediation 16.1 Moving forwards 16.1.1 Lunkwill's prefered text 16.1.2 ElPablo69's prefered text 17 Return Policy 17.1 Comment 18 Working at Costco 18.1 Supervisory and managerial salaries 18.2 Termination of employment 18.3 Unions 18.4 Response 19 Viewpoint 20 Managers' Pay 21 Public Debate section 22 Canada

[edit] Map

"As of April 2006 Costco has 473 locations: 346 in the United States and Puerto Rico; 68 in Canada; 28 in Mexico; 17 in the United Kingdom; 5 in South Korea; 5 in Japan; and 4 in Taiwan." - Is there anyway to generate locations of the stores on a global map?

Edit for reply : While I haven't seen a map of all of them together, if you go to www.costco.com, and go to the warehouse locator, you can click on any location in the world and get a map of its' vicinity.

[edit] Cuernavaca

I noticed the interesting recent reverts. Upon further investigation, it seems the Cuernavaca boycott/incident is something worth including into the main article. To be honest, in the end, it appears to me that Costco comes out smelling very much like a rose, but nonetheless, I think it's news-worthy material that should be included in an NPOV manner. --C S 18:01, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Where did Costco start?

The article says the first location opened in San Diego under the Price Club name, and that Costco and Price Club merged in 1993. That tells us where Price Club came from, but where did Costco come from?

I'm fairly certain that Costco started in Kirkland, WA. The article is incorrect in placing Price Club history in the same location. Price Club either merged with the pre-existing Costco, or was purchased by it (I'm not certain), but it definitely was not the sole corporate parent of the current company, which is how the article presents it. --jcleaver

Costco's first warehouse was (and still is) in Seattle. The opening paragraph of the article notes that its "flagship warehouse #1" is in Seattle. Costco had its headquartersin Kirkland for some time before moving it to Issaquah, so perhaps that had you thinking "Kirkland" as its first location. I think thopening paragraph covers the issue, but it could certainly be made clearer if someone wants to expound on the issue somewhat. As to Price Club, the 1993 joining of Price Club and Costco was essentially a merger -- it was described by the company as a "partnership," which, while perhaps logical from a business perspective, is not a legally accurate description of the transaction.Cjkporter 22:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article is horrible

This article is absolutely horrid. For one thing, the "Price Club" article should not forward to this page -- Costco is what became of Price Club. Costco was not started in San Diego. I am not too sure where it started, however, Price Club was started in San Diego.

Nowhere in this article is the mention of Sol Price! He was the sole originator of the wholesale idea. James Sinegal and others helped to start Price Club but were not the people that first started the club. This cannot be caleld an article on price club is sol isn't mentioned.

I agree with you and added Sol Price's name for you :)--Chicbicyclist 06:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Edit on Employees section

The Employees section contains a fair bit of NPOV content I just removed. In particular:

• The "many loopholes" claim is weaselly-worded - it claims the company "is able to hold back this option" by various means, without actually claiming whether the company does or not (or providing sources, if the claim is that it does); "this option" is also ambiguous - does it refer to the 401-K benefit, the stock option benefit, or to the entire benefit package?
• The claim that moving workers around is used to prevent them from gaining seniority (or even that it has that effect) is also doubtful. Costco is unionized, and seniority in union shops is typically based on time employed; this needs more than someone's say-so.
• The NYT article mentioned (hard link at the bottom of the page) emphatically does not claim that the $17/hr rate is only "for those who have worked with the company for 6 or more years"; it's simply cited as average pay.
• The claim that part-time employees lose their benefits upon layoff is unexceptional; the claim that there are periodical yearly layoffs of them for 4 to 5 years is not, and is at variance with Federal and many states' labor law. Given that it's also claimed that 50% of the workforce is part-time, such layoffs would trigger the WARN Act.
• It is untrue that the company has high worker turnover; the WSJ article linked at the bottom of the page puts the annual turnover rate in 2004 at 24%.
• The claim that many employees suffer heat exhaustion is also unsupported, and rather unbelievable given the rest of the evidence on Costco's workforce-treatment policies.
• The claim that "So far [good wages reducing employee theft] has been proven wrong. As there are many thefts among the workers." is unverifiable and unsupported.
• Finally, note that this edit came in from 206.63.89.53, and that IP's edits on other articles during the same timeframe are uniformly vandalistic in nature.

-- Ivanski 14:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the above edits (in support)

• Point 2: Not all Costcos are union. Moving between stores does not affect seniority except for a provision as regards moving from a non-union building to a union building.
• Point 3: Pay raises are based upon hours worked the "6 or more years" portion of the original is not factual
• Point 4: The ONLY instance of periodic lay-offs, aside from slowing business, involve Holiday Seasonal help. Those employees are told during phone screening that they will be let go after the Holidays. Those seasonal employees are often the first called when business picks up after the holiday slowdown.
• Point 7: In agreement about employee theft Costco's shrink due to theft is very low and theft by employees is universally the biggest contributor to theft shrinkage. It appears most of the removed sections were unsuportable and false (malicious even?).

Chris Beckett 04:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Edit to support above -about 10% of the employees are covered by a union

[edit] what does costco stand for on mean?

what does costco stand for on mean?

The name "Costco" doesn't mean anything AFAIK but it does seem to follow the "mart", "price", "save" word formulas used by many retailers. Additionaly, though not worthy of inclusion in the article, Costco is occasionally mispronounced "Cosco" which is a Chinese company (I believe shipping). Chris Beckett 01:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Cost Company??? Elpablo69 06:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Profit Margin

The article mentions profit margins on most items at 14% with a strict cap at 15%. I believe the percentage is "most items at 10% with a strict cap at 15%". Per the company's training literature 10% is the goal. Costco operates on the philosophy, "how little can we charge for this product and still profit" instead of "how much can we charge." Additionally the company does not make use of loss leaders.

Edit to clarify: the goal is about 10% average for the store, the maximum is 14%, and the Kirkland line is 15%

[edit] Sales model suggestions

There is some mention of the limited selection at Costco maybe a comparison? Typical Costco: 5,000 items Typical Grocery: 60,000 items

This also ties into a sales philosophy 'inteligent loss of sales'. I believe that philosophy goes beyond the scope of the Costco Article but it might be worth mentioning. Again I think giving examples is best, but beyond the Costco article. Gernerally speaking, by carrying a smaller selection of the most purchased products in a given category more customers will "move up" to the more expensive model that costco caries rather than not purchase the item, though some will decline the purchase. Example: Instead of carrying 10 types of blenders in 3 price categories $25, $50, $75 Costco will carry 2 blenders one each in the $50 and $75 categories. More customers are likely to "move up" to the $50 blender then leave and find a $25 blender at another retailer.

[edit] Products

In the current "Products" section there is a mention of a $3 pizza coupon. Perhaps this should be expanded to mention the 2 yearly coupon books that are mailed out? Coscto mails a "Passport" coupon book and a "Wallet" coupon book. These mailed coupon books are also suplemented by coupon handouts which are given to member as they enter the warehouse. For the last several years Costco has also had a coupon strategy to help compete with Post-thanksgiving shopping, a special coupon booklet with coupons valid for the holiday shopping weekend. The Thanksgiving coupons tend to be on higher end electronics.

There is no mention of Costco's "early in, early out" strategy? Seasonal merchandise is stocked very early and sold out before many retailers even carry their seasonal products. Chris Beckett 04:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOViness

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Costco fan, but the article in general feels rather biased in a pro-Costco way. Not like it's marketing PR or anything, but more just that it's written by Costco fans. I'm not particularly sure of how I would fix it though. Glasser 13:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the article is horribly biased.

Weasel words: "Considered by many to be the most innovative and talented retailing team in the world today"

"Jim Sinegal and Jeff Brotman continued to lead Costco, and many talented employees from both the original Costco and Price Club contributed their expertise at all levels of the company."

Impossible to verify: "Costco's success is a result of its focus on selling products at low prices, often at very high volume."

"Costco is able to charge sometimes astonishingly low prices..."

Un-encyclopedic marketing-speak: "Costco concentrates more on overall value than the lowest possible price for its product range. Many of the products it stocks are high quality at a reasonable cost instead of inferior quality at a low price."

More marketing-speak: "In many other categories the company constantly seeks the best deals currently available, so products will appear and disappear over short periods of time. This encourages consumers to regularly visit their local warehouse for surprise deals."

And again: "These perks are the highest in the industry and especially surprising considering Costco's price-centric sales strategy..." (Also, citation needed at the end of that paragraph. Quoting Sinegal without a source is especially egregious)

Biased and unencyclopedic: "These policies are considered a significant factor in Costco's high rate of customer loyalty, although it is true that some people of questionable morals do abuse the generous return policy."

Source? "The price of the hot dog and soda is still the same price as it was when they first opened ($1.50)- a price Jim Sinegal has stated will remain indefinitely."

I didn't write this, but I'll see if I can find a source for this. I recall hearing that from employees here in San Diego for years. Etcetera 01:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Needless to say, a "criticism" section does not an NPOV article make. I'm going to do some hack-and-slash editing; please don't take it personally, anyone. I just suspect it'll be easier than trying to fix such biased text piecemeal. Lunkwill 23:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggest merge of Costco cash into Costco

Suggest merge of Costco cash into Costco. Costco Cash is just Costco's single-store value card, so it really belongs in the Costco main article. --John Nagle 05:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Takeel 02:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Matt 04:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

After an extended period of time, done. --theSpectator _talk 04:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Food court access

Costco is only open to members and their guests, except for purchases of liquor, gasoline and prescription drugs in some U.S. states due to state law and liquor license restrictions. The food court where one can purchase fast food items such as hot dogs and pizza is open to both members and non-members (except in Mexico, where it is restricted to members only).'

I'm not sure how Costco decides which sections are open to non-members, but in their Redwood City, CA store, the "snack bar" ("food court" would be a stretch) is entirely inside the member-only store area. Maybe it's a construction and site planning thing. --John Nagle 22:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

edit : some US locations have windows in their food courts opening to the outside of the building. The food courts inside the building are in all cases restricted to members and their accompanying guests.

This is almost certainly a regional thing. In San Diego, the former Price Club locations and the post-merger Costco locations both have their food courts outside immediately adjacent to the store (generally integrated with the building itself but only reachable from the exterior). There is no membership card checking at that location.

While we're on the subject of food stands, perhaps someone could write up some small details on the origination of this concept. The food stands started as a small contracted service until it was discovered that they were bringing in over 100K a year on $1.50 hot dogs and sodas and subsequently brought it in-house. If no one else can, I'll see if I can whip something up; my father's been a Price Club/Costco employee for over 20 years. Etcetera 01:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I've seen the same arrangement as Nagle (food concessions on the inside only) at Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Culver City. --Coolcaesar 06:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

In Mexico, regardless of where the food court is located, you must to show your member card to the cashier before ordering. This policy was introduced during the late 90's but the reason why was not disclosed. SanGatiche 21:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Kirkland Signature

Merge, it's a private-label brand, not really notable by itself. Wl219 04:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge, I would oppose if the KS article offered anything interesting, but since it's a very basic stub, merge it. But put the "this section is a stub" tag on the section because it should be expanded. If later it became very in-depth I'd say re-split it. —Dan 18:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge --Matt 18:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge If and only that page is redirected to Costco. Herenthere (Talk) 00:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge -- Merge, for crying out loud. Everyone who is familiar with Costco knows that Kirkland is Costco's brand. Cross-referencing is good . .. User:Leenda324 20:12,11 March 2007(UTC)

[edit] Worlds largest Costco

Should we mention the location of the worlds largest Costco. Hillsboro, Oregon

By itself, probably not...nothing really noteworthy about a larger than usual building. However, if you work in the fact that the additional 50,000sqft is primarily furniture, kinda a combination of a Costco with a Costco Home, which itself is experimental, and this "mega warehouse" could be an indication of things to come, how the company will look going forward, then it seems noteworthy. Elpablo69 06:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edits from 71.240.185.114 biased?

This is a judgement call, but I feel rather strongly that recent edits from 71.240.185.114 are biased. Adding information from internal Costco documents is suspicious, doubly so when another edit the same day lists Sam's Club as #2 behind Costco -- as the second sentence of the article. I'm particularly jumpy as the Costco article seems to get marketer-speak edits on a fairly regular basis (which is why I watch the article at all), and earlier edits also crowed about Costco's employee policies in glowing terms. I doubt that our anon editor is an evil and brooding astroturfer making subtle jabs at competitors by bragging about employee policies, but on the other hand, he/she/they do seem to know quite a lot about Costco and other retailers, and have been writing in a promotional rather than an encyclopedic tone. I get the distinct impression that they have a point to push.

Sorry to wipe out the cleanup done by other editors -- I hate to make such harsh edits, but I think the choice to add the section was biased, which will only be softened (but not removed) by followup editors. Lunkwill 02:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to address the "skylights" paragraph that our anonymous editor asked about specifically. Partly that paragraph suffered guilt by association with the other content. But even alone, "lighting costs are kept to a minimum" along with "very common ... to have no interior lights burning" sounds like copy from a "Look how green and frugal Costco is" flyer.

Also, in Sam's Club edit comments, the editor comments that "Many, many people mistake Sam's to be #1 b/c they have more stores." That strongly implies to me that the editor has a conflict of interests. How many unbiased editors have talked to "many, many people" about the relative sizes of Costco/Sam's, and call it a "mistake" when they call Sam's #1 for having more stores, versus equating rank with sales volume? That's a biased statement in itself.

So I apologize in advance for being aggressive and so critical of the editor's edits, but I do still think they're pushing a viewpoint. And for what it's worth, I have a Costco membership myself, and have never even shopped at Sam's club... so if it were about taking sides, I'd probably side with Costco anyway. I just want to keep the debate off of WP. Lunkwill 03:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply to above------

Just found this page AFTER posting to Lunkwill's personal page. Yep, I'm a newbie.

Skylights. If you read retail publications (you guessed it...like me) you'll see that a "new" idea at Sam's is to have lots of skylights. In the past, they had far fewer than Costco. Some Sam's (such as Gilbert, AZ and Plano (Coit Rd) TX), have NO SKYLIGHTS. But just recently they discovered the benefits of what Costco has known all along. The handful of BJ's stores I've been didn't have any either.

When I was working for a city govt Costco was just coming to Texas. Every single person I spoke to (work, school, etc) thought that Costco was "like Sam's," but of course smaller.

Why is hourly pay rates and benefits worth mentioning? Because it is frequently in the media. Costco is a retail company that gets lots of good PR from their pay/benefits. The Container Store is another that comes to mind for being employee-friendly, however I don't know much about them. On the flipside, how often to you read/watch/hear about the pay and benefits at Albertson's, Office Depot, Macy's? Uh-huh. My point exactly. It is news because it stands out. Conversely, Wal-Mart's pay and benefits is relevant because it is also "always" in the news, however usually in a negative light. Whether Wal-Mart's pay/benefits "sucks" and whether Costco's pay/benefits "rocks," is a subjective matter of opinion. However simply providing the details allows people to make an informed comparison. The comparison is much easier on the Costco end of the equation because the pay/benefits is uniform (and published via the employee agreement) throughout the USA.

But again, simply becuase someone else hasn't yet provided the details on Wal-Mart doesn't mean you sould be deleting the factual info that I've posted.

In terms of me, I'm a retail manager, I've worked retail for all of my adult life, along with a part-time stint with a city. Most of my friends also work/have worked in retail. I can tell you good and bad things about tons of retailers from their personal experiences, but that's not objective. I follow retail news quite intensely, and as such I do happen to know a good deal about several retailers, not just the ones for whom I've worked. I have a Costco card and a Sam's card, both active...I don't live near BJ's. As for personal biases, I prefer Costco to Sam's; Lowe's to Home Depot; Office Depot to Office Max; Target to Wal-Mart; Kroger to Albertson's; 99 cent store to Dollar Tree; Whole Foods to Wild Oats; Cinemark to AMC; Wendy's to McDonald's. But I wouldn't say I'm on a mission to praise one and dis the other. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elpablo69 (talk • contribs).

Some of the details are just too deep though. The price of hotdogs could be in the trivia section, but it's only interesting due to the fact it's stayed the same since opening. Which holidays employees get floating are a bit overboard (though since costco.com doesn't seem to list which holidays the stores are closed, I'm actually happy to have those in the article, but I could understand them being a bit out of scope). Also, some of it doesn't really flow, it needs to be more fully integrated into paragraphs and be made more cohesive and less list-like. --Matt 05:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting! I wasn't aware that Costco gets a lot of external press about their employee relations. How much of it do you think is influenced by Costco's PR department? (I say that not to be contentious, but because I'm curious about what you think; if I were Costco, I'd want to bring as much of the anti-Walmart backlash to my stores, so I'd make a lot of noise about how I treat my employees better.) It's one of the reasons I'm skeptical about having a major section in the article, though -- we can't let a PR department decide /what/ we focus on any more than we'd let them write the article itself.

So I'm reluctant to have a section about employee relations at all. But consider also the selection of facts you've chosen to include: guarantees of hours for part-timers, time and a half on Sunday, "Most supervisors earn the top rate of pay of $20.17 an hour", /minimum/ salaries for managers. Those are all positive things. That says "look how *good* Costco's policies are". So we have a section that Costco would want included, which is populated with the upsides of the issue.

Note that I'm not disputing whether what you've written is /factual/. You've just chosen your facts to place Costco in a positive light, and promoted them rather than presenting them. Consider your Sam's Club statement: I believe you that they're number 2 for sales volume. You said "It is the number 2 warehouse club based upon sales volume, behind rival Costco Wholesale." Instead you could have written "It is the number 1 warehouse club based upon number of locations, ahead of rival Costco Wholesale." Both factual, both biased. Worse, it's right at the top of the article, so now I'm skeptical about the whole article. We could put both statements at the top, but then it starts to get obsessive about ranks, which is also suspicious in an encyclopedia.

I think part of the problem is that you're taking a slightly more journalistic approach than an encyclopedic one -- a news article tells us about an ongoing conflict, and provides a forum in which we get to see the arguments for each side so we can make our own decisions, as you've pointed out the reader must do. But an encyclopedia just describes an entity. That entity may be involved in a struggle, but first and foremost we need to know about the entity itself. Any conflicts are then just attributes about that entity. Abortion is a really good example -- news articles are usually all about the debate, while the wp article doesn't even get to it until 2/3 of the way through the article, and it's only a few paragraphs long.

I'm going to whack the section one more time, but we're coming up on the 3 revert rule, and if we can't come to a consensus we'll have to let others decide what to do about it. I'll see if I can find a way to unbiased-ly describe the walmart-costco conflict, but let's point to news articles if people want to research the debate, rather than giving a bunch of factoids from an internal document. Lunkwill 02:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I've cited a few news articles on the big-box store ethical debate. Interestingly, I could find very little on google news about costco's employment practices. Maybe you notice such things more since you care a lot about retail sales? Lunkwill 03:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Costco does not have a PR dept...seriously, they don't.

I've seen good stuff on TV, newspaper and internet. And of course there is bad stuff like lawsuits (usually in California) over gender bias and wage/hour violations. Whether its true is yet to be seen. But I think bad (factual) stuff is also relevant, but the info I have to contribute is on the good side. Since I'm only one of millions of editors, I'm sure others will come along and "round it out" with some of the bad, as is already the case on Wal-Mart's article. I don't see it as my task to write the entire article and finish it out 100%.

Look at the page for Meijer, a midwest retailer. There you'll see a good example of pay/benefits/employee relations, done by others. And yes, there is negative info too...in this case about protections for gay/lesbian employees. I think all that is relevant there just as my info is with Costco.

I think any facts can be made to sound good. Every watched an infomercial? "My home based business had revenues of over $1M last year!" Whoop-tee-doo! How much NET INCOME did it make??? Revenue means nothing without profit, but on the sleek commercial those revenues sound really good.

Anyway I'm not familiar with the 3 edit rule. As of 9:10pm CT, it still shows up. Why not move it to the bottom like an appendix? I'll try this out and see what happens next....

Actually, I believe they do have some sort of a PR dept. I once emailed them about something I saw and they responded cheerfully and promptly. Herenthere (Talk) 21:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

To avoid Wikipedia:3RR problems (click the link to see what that's about), I've submitted a request for mediation so that we can get some other opinions on our disagreement (and I'm leaving your reverted section in place for now). But I've removed two problematic statements you added to the Trivia section: saying "CEO Jim Sinegal only earns..." is biased because it includes a value judgement. He /only/ earns this much, see how little that is? You put it in there to point out how greedy you think he isn't compared to other CEOs. See Wikipedia:NPOV for why that's no good. Second, "it has been speculated that" has weasel word problems: see Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words.

I also disagree that it's okay to add positive spin to an article and then leave it to others to add negative spin. Articles aren't debate forums; we need you to help us write an article that anybody would agree to, not one that sways people to one point of view or another (and not even one that sways people in exact proportion to the number of people who feel any which way about it.) Lunkwill 21:45, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation

Lunkwill has made a request that an involved editor act as an informal mediator in the dispute regarding the "Working at Costco" section. I am very willing to act in this capacity. If everyone is agreeable, my involvement would be to try and encourage the parties involved towards towards a compromise that is acceptable to all. I would not take sides in the dispute, just help everyone keep discussions calm and on-point so a revert war can be avoided.

I have read the article, focusing on the disputed section and also the discussion above. I believe I understand the nature of the disagreement. However, I think it would be helpful if those with an opinion on the matter could write a brief paragraph below expressing their opinion on whether this section should exist and, if it is to be included, what form it should take. I suggest the following questions be born in mind (liks to relevant Wikipedia policies included):

1. Should an article about a major employer include a section about its workers' employment terms?
2. How much detail should such a section have?
3. Should it mention terms standard in the industry or only those unique to the company in question?
4. How should such information be presented- as a paragraph(s) or as a series of bullet points?
5. Is a company handbook a reliable source? WP:RS
6. If the information is from one source only, should this be mentioned in the text itself?
7. Is the use of language in this section appropriate- does it avoid words that convey the opinions of the editors? WP:NPOV

I would appreciate seeing how you apply some of these issues to the matter at hand. Hopefully a middle ground can be found that. I look forward to reading your comments. WjBscribe 05:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

1. Maybe. My standard would be: is it something an ubiased editor would include if writing the article from scratch? 2. Should be in balance with the rest of the article. 3. Don't care, as long as it's unbiased and in balance. 4. Don't care. 5/6. WP:RS doesn't seem very relevant to this question; I'm uncomfortable with internal company documents, although I might not complain if there were no question of bias. I'm not too worried about our editor lying about the figures, although it is a concern for future editors. 7. The wording itself isn't too horrible, but the selection of facts is biased by emphasizing positive aspects of employment (chosen with respect to competitors) and doing so in a promotional way ("...an employee /cannot/ be fired", "employees are guaranteed X hours", etc.) They're the things I would expect Costco to tell me if I asked why I would want to work there. Perhaps Costco also flogs employees who come in late; an unbiased editor would certainly include that when writing the section, but Elpablo69 admits that his goal was to describe the positive aspects of Costco employment. Lunkwill 20:21, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

1. I say yes if it is out of the ordinary (whether good or bad). Costco's pay and benefits are not "normal" for the reatil trade. Most people would look at them as at the top of the pack. Conversely, most people would look at Dollar General's pay/benefits as near the bottom of the heap, so I would also find it relevant to include that info. Most retailers don't really stand out in their industry, so probably not for them. For example, Macy's doesn't stand out from the deck (good or bad) so probably it wouldn't really be relevant to include their pay/benefits. 2. Of course there is such a thing as too much detail. Where to draw the line, I don't know. I thought I touched on the "major" stuff. Would agree that a longer, more detailed article it would make sense to have more, and vise-versa. 3. Not sure. 4. Not sure. I think bullets make it easier to read from point to point, but that is my personal opinion. 5. Yes if it is reasonably available. Its not published on the net, and I doubt you can just call up Costco HQ and request a copy, but with 130,000 employees having a copy (and how many more former employees) anyone who makes an effort (news reporter, researcher, etc.) could obtain a copy. On the flipside, for a company with just 100 employees it would be a lot more difficult. Would it make a difference if someone scanned the relevant pages??? 6. The reason I put the page numbers is to make it easier to verify the info; but of course you must first obtain a book. 7. I'm not an expert with regard to specific words and phrases. As I read more, I see other's improvements over my original. There's always room for improvement from a first edit, but alas I don't see deleting the entire section as an improvement! :)

I'm still of the opinion that all wiki articles are constant works in progress, with editors adding info they have. I just can't imagine each person having to do it as if from scratch, with every possible detail. The info I have is, in most readers opinions, positive. I don't see anything wrong with leaving negative stuff for someone else. They too can present factual info, which to most readers, would be read as negative. There are several pages on grounds for termination and discipline, I could include those (or a selection), however none seem out of the ordinary as compared to other companies (e.g. you can be fired for stealing...hardly noteworthy, IMO). ElPablo69

[edit] Moving forwards

OK, there seems to be a reasonable common ground between you and I think that's helped to narrow down the differences. I suggest the next step is for each party to propose a text they would be happy with (which of course includes endorsing the present text). These can then be discussed and we can try and come up with a suitable compromise. WjBscribe 17:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lunkwill's prefered text

Yeah, I think we've made it fairly clear what we think about the sections. He wants it there, I think it's biased... Lunkwill 18:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ElPablo69's prefered text

I'm not entirely certain what to do here. I'll wait for Lunkwill to get an idea.

Anything I suggest would be a revision in the pharsing or such, but the main disagreement is whether it should be there at all. If it shouldn't, then such info also shouldn't be in various other company articles (e.g. Meijer), but I don't see anyone flagging down them for some reason.

What about a sub-article (if such a thing exists) on working at Costco? Kinda split it from the main article, like the micropedia vs. macropedia for those of us old enough to recall the paper encyclopedia Brittianica.

If the info stays (either in the main article or "sub article"), would page scans help in terms of citations?

The main problem I have is not with company articles having employment data, it's that you tried to promote your point of view regarding costco, both in your selection of facts and in the way you worded them. If I have a grudge against some city, and find all the dirtiest parks to take pictures of and the worst things that happen there to describe in the article, then I shouldn't be surprised if somebody reverts it. Should bad things about a city be mentioned? Sure. Should pictures of parks be in a city's article? Errr, okay, I guess, if they're relevant. Should the biased data stay until somebody that likes the city comes along and puts up a bunch of pro-city text? Absolutely not, and I'd revert the pro-city text just as quickly. I've already pointed out the Abortion article, which is anything but a place for pro- and anti- abortion people to tout their ideas. Leave that for the newspaper's opinion column. That exceedingly polarized topic's article is a calm, unbiased description of what Abortion is, and oh, by the way, people also feel strongly about it sometimes. Lunkwill 20:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

To get things started, lets work on the wording. I've rephrased some stuff already, but would like to see if you feel more needs to be edited.

Then, what "negative" info should be added? I have obtained a copy of the 2007 employee agreement, which at 80 some pages covers just about everything that could possible come up. Here are some ideas.

Costco went to the US Supreme court and won against an employee who wanted to wear nose rings while working because it was her religion. Costco does not allow body piercings.

If a fulltime employee averages less than 34 hours a week between the first and second half of the year, they will be reclassified to part time.

Paychecks are issued bi-weekly instead of every week.

Time off is not allowed unless you have paid vacation or personal days. Unpaid time off is only permitted in Jan, Feb & Mar.

For week-long (or longer) vacations, which are scheduled at the same times twice a year, the more senior employees always get first pick.

The most senior employees get first choice of schedule prefrences.

You can't roll over more than 40 hours of vacation from year to year. If you have more than 40 hours in the bank at 90 days before you're going to lose it, and you haven't scheduled it, management will schedule your vacation for you.

Seasonal employees are not guaranteed minimum hours each week.

If you're 4 or minutes late for work 3 times in 30 days you get written up.

You can be fired for: Sexual harrassment. Assulting someone. Unauthorized use of member's personal info. No call/no show for 3 straight days. Any kind of theft (from Costco, Members or your co-workers). Accepting any gratuity of any kind from anyone. Failure to report a serious injury. Falisfying your time card, temperature log or sanatation records.

You can get a write up for: Excessive absences. Not calling in at least one hour before your shift if you're going to miss work. Parking in the customer parking area. Taking too long for your break or lunch. Using company property for your personal use (e.g. the copy or fax machine) Smoking inside the store. Writing a bad check to Costco. Violation of the personal appearance policy (dress code, nose rings, etc) Not following safety rules.

Elpablo69

It's not about having a 50/50 mix of positive/negative. It's about writing in an unbiased, encyclopedic way. Lunkwill 04:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll let you take the next step. Please show me what you mean, presenting it in a neutral way.

Of course, deleting is not an acceptable answer, as the info is relevant, as I've shown in prior posts. :-) Elpablo69

[edit] Return Policy

Although I wasn't the original author of the return policy, I'm going to re-add it because it is relevant. Costco has long been known for its liberal return policy, and a change to 90 days (albeit just for electronics) is indeed something worth mentioning...just as if Nordstrom did something similar. Going from unlimited to 90 days is big news.

[edit] Comment

Hi, I apologise- I've been rather distracted elsewhere and had forgotten about this issue. Very sorry. Let me read through the above and get back to you. WjBscribe 04:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Taking onboard some of the comments above, I wonder what you all think of the following alternative text for the section:

[edit] Working at Costco

According to the Costco's own Employee Agreement,^[1] which sets the rules for all non-union employees, in the United States non-supervisory hourly employees make between $11.00-$19.50 an hour depending upon senority. Specialized employees such as truck drivers, meat cutters, pharmacy technicians and licensed opticians have a different pay scale which is higher than that of regular employees.^[2] Hourly employees who have worked over 9,200 hours receive a twice yearly "extra check" of $2,000-$3,500. This is similar to a bonus but is not based upon any profit goals or employee review scores. ^[3] Such employees receive time and a half on Sundays. ^[4]

Also according to the Agreement, full-time employees are guaranteed 38-40 hours a week,^[5] whereas part-time employees are guaranteed 24 hours a week. ^[6] Each location maintains a minimum of 50% of full time employees, with the exception that each location may have up to 10 employees who (by mutual agreement) work "limited time," which is described as less than 24 hours a week. ^[7]

[edit] Supervisory and managerial salaries

Costco's Employee Agreement states that most supervisors earn the top rate of pay of $20.50 an hour.^[8] Junior (i.e. lower level) managers' salaries start at $56,000 a year,^{[citation needed]} with an exception of bakery or deli managers which can start as high as $62,000 a year depending on sales volume. Managers earn 1-5% raises annually, with 3% being the norm. All general managers earn over $100,000 a year.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Termination of employment

Costco policy requires that after 2 years of service, an employee's termination requires the express approval of a Senior Vice President. After 5 years of service, an Executive Vice President's approval is required.^[9]

[edit] Unions

Several California locations (as well as a handful in the Northeast) are represented by the Teamsters Union. Almost all unionized locations were former Price Club locations.

Most of the information is retained but with a more encyclopedic feel and the nature of the source for this information is made clear to the reader. WjBscribe 04:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

This looks okay to me. Elpablo69

Lunkwill? WjBscribe 23:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It's an improvement. How do you address the problem that the selection of facts, and even the very existence of the section, were put in in a biased way? Elpablo69 concedes that point; he likes Costco and wanted people to know about their good employment practices. He makes the point that the information is relevant, which I likewise concede, but that's a straw man -- I never claimed the information was irrelevant, only that it was biased. I appreciate his attempt to find negative points to balance the positively biased ones, but that's not a reasonable way to build an encyclopedia article, as I pointed out with reference to Abortion. Thank you, WJBscribe, for making the /phrasing/ unbiased, but that's not enough. For example, pretend for a moment that the Costco article was perfectly balanced and unbiased, the very model of a wp article. Now I add this phrase: "CEO Jim Sinegal has a really hideous wart on his nose." If I take out the "really hideous", it's no longer /phrased/ in a biased way, but it's also not something an unbiased editor would choose to put in the article. So we'd take out the whole phrase. Lunkwill 01:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Its probably because I'm a Brit, but I have no instictive idea whether the material above are good employment terms or not (and I'm not going to convert the figures to sterling and consider average cost of living US vs UK). I need a little more information about what you don't like about the information. We have drawn attention to the fact the information is from one of Costco's own sources. And you seemed to agree above that information about terms of employment was relevant to the article (which a comment on the CEO's nose would not be). If we're to move forward on this, could you identify which bits you find problematic or propose a version you are more comfortable with? WjBscribe 01:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, could you first please address the notion of bias in a selection of facts (as opposed to the mere phrasing of those facts)? It bothers me that I described the question of "relevance" as a straw man, and yet you've returned to it without addressing what I described as the central point of my objection. If I'm wrong about it being a straw man, we can discuss that. But it's another one of those cases where the topic of debate is at least as important as how the debate ends. I don't care about relevance. I've never cared about relevance. I care about bias. I don't care about the phrasing of the "Employment" section because it begs the question of whether an unbiased editor would have thought to put it there in the first place or chosen that set of factoids as its topic. And it's okay that you don't have an instinctive idea of whether it's good or not -- I don't have a particularly good one either -- but he gave away his intentions with his original wording, and confirmed it when asked, and that means it should go. So I propose we delete the section entirely, and then if you then feel, as an impartial outsider, that you want to revamp the article (God knows it needs it) and it occurs to you to put in an employment section, then feel free to research it and create such a section. If ElPablo69 wants to provide page scans as primary source material, then it can go on wikisource and you can go read it if you feel that's a good use of your time. But it's folly to argue over the wording of, or selection of a subset of, a set of facts provided by someone pushing a viewpoint. Lunkwill 02:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Response

I'm sorry if you don't feel I've managed to see you objection completely, I had understood you to be concerned as to the bias of the source, not that you were worried by another editor's selection of facts from that source also. Elpablo69 seems to have been cooperative in finding less positive information- do you really think it fair to disgard his contributions completely because he made it clear early on that he was supportive of Costco. You seem to feel all his work is tarnished by your first interactions but having declared his bias, I would think Elpablo69 has paved the way for you too move forwards. It would appear that he is acting in good faith. So I guess the important questions are:

1. Do you think the information is untrue?
2. Do you think the reader has been fully informed of the source of the information (so they can make their own judgment about its accuracy)?
3. Are you willing to work with ElPablo69 in editing this article?

I believe the page scans were offered earlier- ElPablo96, are you still willing to make available such page scans? The scans can't be posted to Wikisource because of copyright issues, but could perhaps be emailed to Lunkwill and/or myself? WjBscribe 02:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

See my comments under "Viewpoint". I'd be extremely surprised if the Costco handbook were not horribly biased, being an internal publication, but that wouldn't itself be insurmountable. (I would expect it to be self-serving but also to contain plenty of facts). Matt makes a good point below about "if some other public source hasn't already discussed it, it probably doesn't belong here," since WP isn't for investigative journalism or original research. But as I've said before, I probably wouldn't have complained if the edits themselves had been unbiased and merely happened to cite that as a source. As I've also said, adding negatively biased statements to a section with positively biased ones doesn't make the section unbiased; it just makes the section biased in both directions. The goal isn't to take each side of the issue in turn, it's to describe what Costco is. He created a section that started out as an opinion piece and ended up more like a news segment. You edited that segment to take the bias out of the wording, but the selection of facts is still biased, some in each direction. To answer your questions, no, yes, and yes. But the salient part of the debate is whether it's appropriate for the article to have a section composed of facts chosen specifically to portray the company in both a good and bad way, and placed there to focus the reader on a major talking point for the company rather than as something an unbiased editor would have written to help improve the article's ability to answer the question "What is Costco?". When I look at the article, I don't think to myself "what this article needs is an emplyment section". I even tried to write one, and ended up with a one-sentence statement about the controversy that sucked. Companies want people to think of certain things in connection with them, and not to think about certain other things. They use a myriad of PR techniques to keep the debate focused on the things they want it to be. As encyclopedia editors, we have to ignore the shrill voices; we're not here to argue, just to describe what everything is. People don't come here because they think "gee, I wonder if Costco has changed its return policy on electronics recently, and if rival Sam's club will be doing the same. Let me look 'Costco' up in an encyclopedia to find out." That's the kind of thing somebody issues a press release about because they want their company to pass through your head, or to get you to think about who's better. Is it relevant to Costco? Sure. Does the PR blurb belong here? Hell no. Lunkwill 23:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

This section was from before. As I've stated before, everything I've listed has indeed been cited in the news. But we're not going to agree on this point, so lets move on. What about the sub article or separate article? This is the only middle ground I can think of. Elpablo69 00:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

See comments at the bottom of Viewpoint. Lunkwill 20:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Viewpoint

I guess the basic question is that if an editor has a viewpoint, all their info should be deleted? Problem is, every editor has a viewpoint (whether or not they will admit to it), so we'd have to delete every article. No human being is perfect or truly 100% objective. It's up to the community to ensure that stuff is correct and balanced.

I don't want to be repeating/annoying, but Costco's employment practices are relevant because they are out of the ordinary. I subscribe to the free Yahoo! Finance and track several stocks. I check this daily, and track several reatil stocks, so yes I do have a lot of info about the topic.

When you click on a specific company, you'll get the latest news. If you check Costco, you'll see tons of stuff about employment practices, most of which makes the company look good. Likewise, if you check Walmart, you'll see tons of stuff about their employment practices, most of which makes them look bad. Are you saying that ALL the different news sources are ALL biased towards Costco??? Of course not.

The practices of every retail company aren't relevant because most are "ordinary." But likewise, those that tend to be bad (such as Dollar General) are also relevant, and including that info doesn't make it biased simply because casting light upon them tends to make the company look bad, and the editor happens to be someone who thinks poorly of the company.

So, yes indeed, a "neutral" editor (of course none really exist) would have included it.

The fact that Costco's employment practices tend to make them look good doesn't make such info biased.

Take fictional John Smith cotton and tobacco plantation in the American south during slavery. They are widely known as the worst place to work in the South. They use slave labor, get paid $0.00/hr, work them 14 hours a day, six days a week, get no vacation or sick days and have no health insurance. That's all fact, but it does make the company look bad, but the info is what it is. The majority of the employment practices of the company will indeed make them look horrible. For balance, you could add that the slaves get Sundays off to worship the Lord, and the company built and maintains a church for the slaves. So there is a little bit that looks good, but overall any objective third party observer is going to look negative at their employment practices. But to "cover up" this info by deleting it, trying to justify such deletion by saying that the editor admits he doesn't like the company employment practices???

As for relevance of other info, the same type of test applies. Is it out of the ordinary? If so, it probably should be included. Earlier, you said that return policy info was not relevant. I agree that the way it was written and some of the details weren't written properly by the first guy. But the basic info itself is relevant because the old return policy was NOT ordinary, and the new electronics policy is a huge change. Look at the page for The Sports Authority, to which I haven't posted, lots of detail about their policy yet you aren't questioning that, and their policy is more mainstream. Burlington Coat Factory has long had a store credit only policy even with your receipt, so when they recently changed to a cash back policy, that was indeed worthy of a mention.

And again, I'll point to the page for midwestern supercenter retailer Meijer. Some really specific info regarding pay and other employment practices, yet you don't seem to have a problem with that. I'm sure that editor has an opinion about them, and as such he is also biased. But you haven't gone after that article????

The following comment *isn't* meant as an insult, but a humor remark to make a point. The fact that you have chosen to go after Costco, and not Meijer kinda suggests that you may be biased against Costco and don't want to see good info about them posted, therefore, since you're obiviously biased, we should delete anything that you do to the Costco article, regardless of how true or relevant it is.

No, I don't actually believe that, but this is the same type of logic you're using to justify against my edits...it is flawed logic that simply cannot be justified.

As for page scans, there is no copyright notice in the booklet, so would it still not be okay to upload them?

Whew, that's enough typing for today! :)

Elpablo69 16:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Writings in America are copyrighted by default, so the absence of a copyright symbol doesn't allow one to copy and upload this document. I have a problem with using the Employment Agreement as a source for this article, as it's not really published to the public. Plus, if it's notable, we should be able to find news articles that say the same thing. I don't think this article should go deeper than any newspaper or magazine has gone before into Costco's employment practices, or else the article definitely is biased. --Matt 16:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about the copyright, I had always thought you had to have a notice.

As for using the Employee Agreement thats a good point. Its not a public document. However, anyone that really wants to do their homework can easily obtain one, as there are over 100,000 current employees who have a copy, and goodness knows how many former employees. A researcher could obtain one if wanted, such as for a newspaper article, magazine or a TV spot. About a year ago, Wal-Mart issued a new internal policy of not calling the Police for first time shoplifters who steal less than $25. That was certainly not a public document. However, it became widespread and was soon the subject of newspaper articles and TV spots (again, mainline media, not just somebody's website). Also, union contracts aren't public documents (a few unions do post them on their websites, such as [UFCW789.org], but most do not), yet people cite those all the time. So I would have to respectfully disagree as to using a widely known, yet not officially public, internal company document. As long as it can be backed up, I don't see an issue.

Indeed, all the info I've listed has been published in various places (e.g. mainline TV, newspaper & magazines, not just somebody's website). However its bits and pieces, whereas the Employee Agreement puts it all in once easy place.

Costco is one of the stocks (along with several other retailers) that I follow, and have been since just before they came to Texas in 2000. I base my claims upon my 7 years of reading the stuff that comes up on Yahoo! Finance. They gather stuff from all sorts of different mainline sources, most of which you can read for free (notable exception is the Wall Street Journal, for which you can only see the headline and a brief summary). If anyone (and I'm not suggesting Mlaroche specifically, for example Lunkwill had done a Google search a while back and didn't find that much) wants to confirm that Costco's employment practices are "constantly" in the news, I would ask them to look at one years worth of articles from Yahoo! Finance. You needn't read each article, just the headlines give you the jist. Then do the same thing for another large publicly owned national retailer (NOT Wal-Mart, goodness knows their employment practices are the subject of everything) such as Macy's, Office Depot, Circuit City, etc. You'll see a huge difference, very few articles (good or bad) about employment practices. For TV spots, I suggest searching Lexus-Nexis. I'm certain that anyone who does this will then agree that Costco's employment practices are indeed not ordinary, and also "constantly" an issue. But you need to do just that, an entire year, to get a true picture. If you're serious about doing research and getting "The Big Picture," this should not be a problem.

Elpablo69 03:03, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

You're repeating what I'm saying, in different words - we should be able to cite the news sources that mention the things the employee agreement explain. If it's not notable enough to have been mentioned in a magazine or newspaper, it's probably not notable enough for this story. I agree that the article should mention some of the employment practices. Sure, newspapers can quote union contracts, but they're the ones making news - Wikipedia's not about making news, it's about stating what others find important. --Matt 03:09, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not 100% clear what you mean. Elpablo69 05:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The way I understand wikipedia's notability requirement is that if something is notable enough for wikipedia, it should have been written about in one source in depth or noted in multiple news sources. Since Costco as a company doesn't qualify as a news source, anything we talk about should be able to have a source or two apart from the employment agreement. You said that Walmart had an issue over their contract, but it was reported in the news - the news becomes the good source for wikipedia, and you can say it was in their contract, but it's not really notable until it's mentioned elsewhere.

I also have to comment, that as an external observer, it seems that you think Lunkwill dislikes Costco. I haven't noticed anything of the sort. I like Costco, I appreciate their progressive stance towards employees and I think they set a good example of how you can treat employees as humans and not milk them. That being said, the employment section does need work. You can find it over the top, as a Wikipedian, without being against Costco. --Matt 14:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Gotcha. Everything listed has also been mentioned in multiple news sources.

Actually, I think he's a member himself, so he must be satisified if he's willing to pay $50 or $100 a year to shop there. On the net its always extra important to highlight humor remarks. This was a humor remark. He thinks all my edits should be deleted because I'm biased, or have a viewpoint, he has said that simply "balancing" it won't do, because I have a viewpoint, I must be deleted completely. If that's the case, all of his should also be deleted because he wasn't neutral...that is, he went after one retailer's article (Costco), yet not another similar one (Meijer). And anyone that claims to have no biases is either a liar or a fool. Sometimes you must take things to the extreme to get across your point and show that the other person's logic is critically falwed (Jesuit tradition). That's what I did. I don't think his stuff should be deleted anymore than should mine. Balance and neutrality is the key. As for if some (non-existent) neutral editor would have included it, I think I've already drove that point into the ground. Anyone that doesn't believe its relevant needs to review a years worth of stuff as I've outlined above.

Summary: I don't think he dislikes Costco, or favors someone else for that matter. He has legitimate points, but some of his logic is simply wrong. Nothing evil about that.

Elpablo69 23:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems that you're taking a very adversarial approach to this; no one's attacking you. Lunkwill, has in fact, been entirely civil. I don't think Lunkwill was attacking this article, or Costco. I believe that he's trying to make the article better, and I agree with much of the way he's doing it.

I'd never even heard of Meijer - that's why I never edited that article either, so I don't understand your logic on him "choosing to go after Costco" (paraphrased). No one has attacked anything, or even gone after it. He's acting to make the article better. He and you have different opinions about what "better" is, however. From a quick scan, I don't see him claiming he doesn't have biases in something, it seems that like a straw man argument here.

I take a fairly conservative approach about bias - I don't edit my company's article, because I don't think anything would come off as impartial. However, Wikipedia is pretty interesting - we are all volunteers. Of course I'm going to edit things I'm interested in, it's human nature. However, at some point you have to draw a line. --Matt 06:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Elpablo69, you are of course correct that nobody is 100% bias-free, and I'm not claiming that your edits should have been deleted because *you* have bias. The problem was that your *phrasing* and *selection of facts* were biased. I think one of the big sticking points here is that I'm opposed to a /journalistic/ approach to article-writing. Newscasters dig up all sorts of details about a topic and tell us all about the ongoing conflicts. (Hopefully) they find somebody from each side and let them air their biased viewpoints. In an encyclopedia, we're primarily trying to define what the topic *is*, not provide a forum (or even a balanced, open-to-everyone forum) for people to air their opinions about it. WP articles primarily talk about how the legislature is made up, newscasters primarily tell us what they're arguing about and who's upset over it. That's why finding "negative" facts to counteract the positive ones doesn't help. It just makes the article into even more of an opinion forum and invites more argument over which facts should be there and what constitutes a balance of good and bad. Abortion is an article where people all across the spectrum can agree on what's said, and which answers the question "what is abortion?". Your proposals don't tell us "what is Costco?"; they're a better fit for a "What big retailers do/don't want you to know" spot on the evening news. Great things to know, but not the right place to host them. And as to why I haven't gone after other articles, I agree that they suck too. Corporate articles are a big problem because they don't make for very interesting encyclopedia articles, so people like me don't care to edit them much, yet their PR departments care a lot about pushing their corporate image. I happened across this article when it was in a horribly biased state, and realized nobody was watching to make sure it didn't turn into a page for shilling the company, so I've been watching it for months if only to revert the sloganizing that people keep coming back and putting up. You're in a great position to help, because you care about these kinds of things; you just need to get out of "news" mode and into "what is X" mode. Lunkwill 22:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone has great points, but now its clear the main sticking point is whether such info (regardless of wording and balance) belongs there in the first place. On that, there really isn't much middle ground, its a yes or no.

I think any company article with just one (or a handful) of editors will probably be slanted. I looked up a waterpark nearby my cousin's home Hawaiian Falls and oh my goodness, if that don't sound like copy from a PR agency... But there is no reason that company articles with several editors can't be good, complete and neutral.

I looked in a book encyclopedia at the Library, but didn't find company articles. The closest thing I find online is Hoovers, which is kinda sorta similar, but it of course has tons of details and also opinions. So its not like there is much "professional" stuff that we could compare to.

My final solution would be to create a sub-article (if there is such a thing) or otherwise a separate one with the info. Then that can be editied for balance.

I'm interested to hear what people think. Elpablo69 22:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

"now its clear the main sticking point is whether such info belongs there in the fist place"

I don't believe that either Lunkwill or I have said that Costco's employment practices don't belong in the article. I believe the main sticking point is really how much belongs, and how it's presented. I mean, you can call this a lost discussion if you want, but I think we can come to agreement on how much information is included. --Matt 00:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Not you, but Lunkwill has suggested the whole thing does not belong. See response to WjBscribe, its not about balance or wording, its about being there in the first place. If that's not the issue, let's just put in the info WjBscribe typed. I've already agreed with that. Lunkwill has not wanted to do that. And of course we can add the "negative" info into another paragraph.

If it is indeed about being there in the first place, the middle ground has already been reached and rejected. Multiple re-phrasings, some details deleted, then the re-write by the mediator, and the "negative" stuff to add. Beyond that there is no more compromise. Deleting my stuff and putting it the way it was before I got here is not a "compromise" or "agreement." What do you think?

The sub article idea is the only remaining fix. If I'm missing something, please let me know. Otherwise, I think we should proceed with it. Elpablo69 18:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, while I'm all for compromise where appropriate, it's not appropriate when it comes to bias. From Wikipedia:NPOV: 'Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle. According to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable."' What I want is an article whose selection and wording of facts are not the result of someone pushing a viewpoint (whether positive or negative) or flogging the company's talking points. You've offered to paint the company in a negative light as well, which to me is just as bad, and wjbscribe fixed just the wording. You've also cited other articles on WP that suck. I agree they suck, and in fact the Hawaiian Falls article you mentioned is flagged with a number of disclaimers describing that it needs to be fixed. But that's anything but an excuse to make this article suck as well. I tried my hand at fixing the article, and couldn't find much to say about employment that felt like it belonged. What I'm hoping people will do is to set aside their biases, read over some excellent articles to see how we address controversial topics here, and then make the Costco article *not suck*. If you're trying to do that and we still don't totally agree about how something should be, then we can talk about compromise. But not when you're arguing that you don't need to write in an unbiased way. Lunkwill 20:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

So it's your way or the highway? :-) If you beleive you're correct, there isn't anything wrong with that. Problem is, I also believe I am correct, so the same thing could apply in my case. I think we're going in circles. We're not going to agree on the main article, so let's quit wasting time rehashing the same points. You haven't said much about the sub article. What do you think? Elpablo69 00:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's not an option about having bias. We won't consciously endorse bias. Of course, Lunkwill did just offer to discuss how to add information without being biased. But I guess you're choosing to make it your way or the highway. Sub-articling will not make it not biased. I also don't think there's enough material for a sub article. --Matt 00:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, but who says who's correct about having/not having bias? I don't think mine is biased, within the context that nobody is actually 100% unbiased. I've tried to do just what he suggests. I've hammered down the point that the info is relevant, if anyone does what I said to do (see above) they too will agree, yes it does belong. Anyone not willing to do that research really has no business drawing conclusions about the matter. The question is how is it nuetral. I've been working constantly on that. So lets talk about compromise??? What is your/his idea of compromise? (Hint: deleting isn't acceptable to me).

The idea that someone having a viewpoint makes them ineligible is absurd. Let's look at the abortion article, and pretend that as it stands now it is 100% unbiased. Every editor on that article had a viewpoint on the topic of whether its morally right or wrong. Perhaps they wrote in an unbiased way, but the fact remains they still have a viewpoint and underlying bias. Some people's feelings are much stronger than others. Using Lunkwill's logic, there should be no abortion article at all, because each and every editor, regardless of how well they wrote, how balanced it was, how it just stuck to the facts, they all had a viewpoint (i.e. they're all human).

I understand where both of you are coming from in terms of "Firstly, while I'm all for compromise where appropriate, it's not appropriate when it comes to bias." If you believe something is wrong to begin with, then no amount of "compromise" will really do the trick. But again, who determines who is truly right or wrong? I hold my opinion on the matter just as strongly as you guys do.

Take parental notification of a minor having an abortion. There are only two possible stands on that issue. You are for it or against it. There is no compromise, no middle ground. You can't be for it on weekdays, but against it on weekends. Lawmakers will try to find a middle ground to save as many voters as possible, but they're only dealing with small details: notification vs. approval, at what age, what options for judical bypass, etc. All of that may sound nice, and it may appease some folks, but it doesn't solve the issue. If it is made law, a bunch of people are going to be ticked. If it isn't made law, another bunch of people are going to be ticked. It's one way or the other.

Our issue is similar. I've re-phrased, removed stuff, moved stuff around, listened to the mediator, and finally offered to move it to a sub article or seperate one. Lunkwill has only said he wants it gone. Unless I'm missing something, then there is no middle ground. He will not be happy unless it is completely removed. I will not be happy unless it is there. He thinks he is completely correct about it, as do I. I Please enlighten me as to where there is room for compromise.

Yes, I have a viewpoint, as does everyone else. That does not make me ineligible to edit. I guarantee you that every editor for Britannica also has biases and viewpoints. So what? What matters is the finished product.

The sub-article removes the debate as to whether this sort of info (regardless of how unbiased it is) belongs there in the first place. If either of you (or anyone else) are willing to do the research (as outlined above, a simple Google search will not suffice), I am confident that you'll find it is relevant to the main article, but we can bypass that whole issue by just seperating it. The sub-article isn't my favored option by any means, it is a compromise I'm offering. Indeed, there is plenty of info to fill it up, and remember that once we start it, countless others will come along and add to it.

If we do this, then the only issue becomes how to maintain NPOV, and I think that is much easier to work out.

The "ball" is in your court! :-)

Elpablo69 01:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I still don't believe another article will solve the issues. Also, Lunkwill says "I'm not claiming that your edits should have been deleted because *you* have bias. The problem was that your *phrasing* and *selection of facts* were biased." I believe people with bias can write neutrally. They might not choose their articles to edit neutrally, but they can write neutrally. I like Costco, I like their employment practices, but I'm against going into deep details about their employment practices. In fact, I think you should really re-read what Lunkwill has said, because you saying "Using Lunkwill's logic, there should be no abortion article at all, because each and every editor, ... they all had a viewpoint" (edited slightly for brevity). He's not saying that at all. Really. --Matt 17:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that, "Costco is the best store it has revolutinized the ordinary store" doesn't belong. WTF??? Elpablo69 02:57, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hm? I'm not sure where that came from. Regarding your previous comment, Matt's right that I have no problem with *you* being biased, only with the claim that it's okay to write in a biased way. Also that "my way or the highway" isn't what I'm claiming at all, except with respect to NPOV, which is perhaps the most important single tenet of Wikipedia. When you wrote above that "I don't think mine is biased", that's the first time I've noticed you making that claim; you've argued that *nobody* can be unbiased, and that adding negatively biased facts is a way to counteract positively biased facts, but I haven't thought that you think your version of the section is unbiased. That's good progress in a sense, if we can agree that a neutral point of view is the goal. I'd also agree with Matt that putting the information in a subarticle doesn't make it unbiased, and so it doesn't really solve the problem at hand.

The way to move forward, as I see it, would be to delete the employment section as it is now, since it seems clear to me that the first set of points were biased pro-Costco while the second set were biased anti-Costco, with apologies to you for the loss of the effort you put into it. Then someone other than the two of us -- perhaps Matt working with wjbscribe, but there are also other ways to put something up for 3rd party editing -- could look at the article and decide if and how much should be said about employment in the article as it stands. We could each try to sway them from this Talk: page, but their goal would be to see what the article needs as an encyclopedia article (vs. what Costco -- or Walmart! -- might want said about it). You or I could try re-editing the section ourselves, but it's pretty common here to step out of the fray when one has been battling one side too long. Lunkwill 22:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

This talk page is getting too long... "I don't think mine is biased, within the context that nobody is actually 100% unbiased." Notice the second part of that statement.

Here he says the mediator's phrasing is now unbiased, but the whole thing still must be deleted: Thank you, WJBscribe, for making the /phrasing/ unbiased, but that's not enough. For example, pretend for a moment that the Costco article was perfectly balanced and unbiased, the very model of a wp article. Now I add this phrase: "CEO Jim Sinegal has a really hideous wart on his nose." If I take out the "really hideous", it's no longer /phrased/ in a biased way, but it's also not something an unbiased editor would choose to put in the article. So we'd take out the whole phrase. Lunkwill 01:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's the thing. If we do what you just proposed, you get exactly what you've wanted all along, complete deletion. You get everything, I get nothing. Do you really expect me to agree with that? It's not "you vs. me" granted, but the end result is the same. That is "my way or the highway."

In terms of letting others come along, there is nothing wrong with any of us three, and it again gives you 100% victory as the immediate result is full deletion. Plus, that really doesn't work on the net. I can easily create a new username or hide behind a proxy server to get a new IP address. For all I know you and Matt are the same person, and for all you know I'm the CEO of Costco.

The net is a wonderful place. You get diverse folks from all over the place. Here we have 3 people who are volunteers who all want to make this site better. None of us are paid employees. But we all are of the type that wants to see the "right" thing done. Of course, agreeing on what is "right" isn't always easy.

Since none of us are paid, are either of you willing to do as I've explained in terms of researching? I am 100% certain that both of you will agree that detailed employment info is appropriate if you do as I've said. I realize this is a large time investment on you guy's part, but if you do it, you will agree with me. Again, I've been tracking retail stocks on a daily basis for over 10 years (Costco for about 7). I don't expect someone who hasn't been doing that to readily agree with me on what is relevant, but I respectfully put forth that I am the expert in this regard, and indeed, I say it is relevant. If you wish to verify my position, you must be willing to look at at least 1 years worth of data for Costco (and at least 3 other major retailers for comparison purposes). But if you do not wish to verify my position, you should (I say this with the utmost respect) back off and recgonize the view of the expert (i.e. me).

For ease of flow, I've copied this from an earlier post.

"Costco is one of the stocks (along with several other retailers) that I follow, and have been since just before they came to Texas in 2000. I base my claims upon my 7 years of reading the stuff that comes up on Yahoo! Finance. They gather stuff from all sorts of different mainline sources, most of which you can read for free (notable exception is the Wall Street Journal, for which you can only see the headline and a brief summary). If anyone (and I'm not suggesting Mlaroche specifically, for example Lunkwill had done a Google search a while back and didn't find that much) wants to confirm that Costco's employment practices are "constantly" in the news, I would ask them to look at one years worth of articles from Yahoo! Finance. You needn't read each article, just the headlines give you the jist. Then do the same thing for another large publicly owned national retailer (NOT Wal-Mart, goodness knows their employment practices are the subject of everything) such as Macy's, Office Depot, Circuit City, etc. You'll see a huge difference, very few articles (good or bad) about employment practices. For TV spots, I suggest searching Lexus-Nexis. I'm certain that anyone who does this will then agree that Costco's employment practices are indeed not ordinary, and also "constantly" an issue. But you need to do just that, an entire year, to get a true picture. If you're serious about doing research and getting "The Big Picture," this should not be a problem."

That having been said, a separate article takes away the argument about relevance, and saves you guys the time to do as I've explained.

So, wouldn't it be better to move on to discuss the proper way to write, phrase and select facts for the section? I've offered two ways to eliminate the "does it belong" argument. Do the research (and thus agree with me) or just seperate it into a sub article/seperate article. Can we P L E A S E get over the relevance argument??? Pretty please?

Obiviously, I think this is the way to go. I'd love to see some of you guy's ideas for how to properly write this section or new article! :-) Elpablo69 04:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so you've made it clear that you're *not* agreeing on articles being unbiased. Your next objection is that it's not a compromise if the biased text gets deleted. I agree with that, and I've already explained why nobody is entitled to a compromise on bias at wikipedia; that's not just my opinion, it's a central tenet to WP. Next you claim that asking others to edit the article doesn't work because of the risk of Wikipedia:Sock Puppetry; that's an understandable concern, but one that has been dealt with for a long time here (see the linked page). Next you return to the notion of relevance, which I've already said isn't my concern, except inasmuch as PR efforts often try to keep public attention focused on certain aspects of a debate, which is a form of bias (bias in the selection of facts to discuss). You claim to be an expert on the topic of Costco, which I don't find hard to believe at all, and hasn't been a concern for me. I did look up COST in yahoo finance as you requested, and looked over its headlines for a month (not a year, as you requested, but just a month constituted many dozens of headlines over several pages), but I didn't see any relating to employment at Costco. Note that seeing employment-related headlines wouldn't necessarily have swayed me, since as I already described with the Abortion article, encyclopedia articles have a different aim from news outlets (and news outlets often respond to press releases). Perhaps you could post some links to the articles you've seen in the press? They'd be a better starting point than the internal company document anyway.

I and Matt have both already argued that a separate article doesn't address the bias problem. Next you ask whether we can discuss selection of facts and wording, which is fine by me, although if you still think that bias is okay, then we're not going to get very far with it since we'll be arguing from very different assumptions about what's okay. You ask to stop arguing about relevance, which I've been asking for for quite a while, so I'm fine with that, although the fact that you thought it was still an issue makes me think that maybe you're calling "relevance" what I'm calling "biased selection of facts" or "avoiding bias in what we discuss in the article" (as promoted by PR efforts). Lunkwill 17:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps some outside viewpoints will help; see section at the bottom requesting comments from other editors. Lunkwill 18:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Managers' Pay

In the article it is stated that "most managers make... $20.50 an hour" while it is later stated that salaries for lower-level start at $56,000 a year. Which one is it? If a mangers makes $20.50/hr for 40hr/week X 52 weeks he or she would make $42,640. A salary of $56,000 translates into $27/hr (40hr/week for 52 weeks). So do Costco managers make $20.50/hr or do they have a starting salary of $56,000. Perhaps there is there something I'm missing that should be clarified in the article. Regards, Signature^brendel 07:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent question. The $20.50/hr refers to supervisors, not managers. Supervisors are paid by the hour, whereas managers are paid a fixed salary, regardless of how many hours they work.

Lots of people use the term "supervisor" and "manager" interchangably, and this is partly the fault of many major retailers. Lots of stores have "customer service managers" or "department managers," as it says on their nametags, but in fact they are just hourly supervisors. Of course, when an angry customers wants to "speak to a manager," well here's somebody with the manager title on their nametag that can take the abuse and keep the real managers at bay. Also, perhaps having the "manager" title makes the employee feel more important, kinda along the lines that you're not an employee, but an "assoicate," "partner" or "team member." Gimme a break! You're an employee!

If I am at a store and need to speak with a manager, I'll ask them 3 questions to determine of they're a "real" manager. Do you get paid a fixed salary? Do you have keys to the store and an alarm code? Do you have the combination to the safe? A real manager will answer yes to all 3. A "fake" manager will most likely fail some if not all of those tests. Elpablo69

Costco managers are paid salary. Something that many people aren't aware of nor does this article mention is that managers generally work 9 hour shifts five days a week instead of the traditonal 8 hour shifts that most other employees will have. ~~Unsigned comment.

Good info. Being on salary removes the "rush" to get you off the clock and out the door at the end of 8 hours, so that makes it all the more easy to go over. I think their standard is 45 hours, but of course I'm sure there are plenty that go over that too. In my salaried retail positions, I've probably averaged 50-55 hours a week. I do understand that some California managers get overtime, but I think that's a union thing. Elpablo69 06:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Public Debate section

Why is there a public debate section? And how is the info in it related to Costco?!? Should it be removed? Herenthere (Talk) 21:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That section was added after it was questioned whether the "working at Costco" section was biased. We're just wrapping up a solution to that, so the public debate section may get redone or deleted. Elpablo69 03:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Canada

An employee from Canada recently added some info relating to Sunday OT pay. It was removed by another user because the section refres only to non-union Costcos in the USA. However, instead of overtime on Sunday, Canadians only get an extra $4/hr. Also some other stuff isn't as good as for their American counterparts. Anyone with more Canada info may want to add a Canada subsection to the "working at Costco" section. Likewise, anyone with union contract info may want to add some details as well. Elpablo69 00:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)