Return of the Pie Snatchers

I went to Costco twice the day before Thanksgiving.  On its best day, Costco isn't the place to see a live enactment of peace on Earth and goodwill toward all men.  Have you seen the pushing to get that last sample of beef jerky?  Costco is Thunderdome.

At 3 o'clock Steve called and said we should bring pumpkin pie for the dinner we're attending.  Normally I'd bake my own pies, but we needed pie ASAP. During my morning trip to Costco they had pallets full o' pie.  By the 3 pm there was no pie, but an amazingly long line of people waiting for pies.  I actually took a bunch of photos because I thought it was so funny.

That's when it all started going to H-E-double-hockey sticks.  People started to try cutting into line by sneaking through other aisles.  If you want to get a Costco crowd violent, try budding in the pie line.  I finally had to say that I had photos and I could verify who had been in line and who had not.  That ended that skirmish.

The guy in front of me said he was going to buy all the pies and resell them at a profit. Seriously.  I'm in line behind a dude who's business plan is forming a pie monopoly and becoming Opie the Pumpkin Lord.  That was solved when a Costco employee said there was a two pie limit.  There would be not Pie DeBeers.

I finally got my two pies, plopped them in my cart and started the grindingly slow salmon-upstream trek toward the checkout line.  Why, oh why are they sampling hot soup today?  That takes people forever to sample and I'll never get out of this store.

While I was waiting for a clear path, I saw a lady try to take a pie from someone else's cart.  (Hey, if you abandon your cart mid-aisle to get a sample, this is going to happen.)  That's what we're reduced to...pie snatching.  I used an empty fabric softener box to build a Pie Defender™.  That way no one could distract me and steal my pies.