Dear Costco

The following is a comment/suggestion I just submitted via Costco's website. Don't judge me.

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I've been very disappointed in the past few years with my Costco experience. You keep discontinuing the products I like.

First, it was the double-fudge chocolate chip cookies. Your bakeries stopped making these and instead started putting oatmeal raisin cookies in with the chocolate chip and macadamia nut packages. Are you kidding? Is that some effort toward providing a healthier cookie? If I want to buy something healthy, I'm not going anywhere near your bakery. I'll hang out over in produce. The double-fudge chocolate chip cookies were the BEST of the three offered in those packs. Often I wished that they were sold separately so I could buy a box that just had double-fudge in it. Since their discontinuance, I haven't purchased another costco cookie.

Next, there's the protein shakes. Costco used to sell some decent-tasting powder protein shake mixes. They came in big tubs. You stopped selling them and now I'm forced to buy the overpriced stuff at GNC. And I'm talking about the chocolate kind. I just saw the vanilla flavor today. Please, that's just gross. Give me chocolate or give me nothing at all. (At this point I'm probably starting to sound like a woman. I'm not. However, I am hungry, and this hunger fuels my rage.)

Similarly, you have recently discontinued the Premier Nutrition protein bars. Why? These were by FAR the best tasting protein bars I have ever found (and I've tried quite a few). Now I'm stuck with the garbage brand you still carry: "Balance Gold" or something. I even contacted Premier Nutrition directly to see if I could just purchase them from their website. I can, but at a considerably higher price. This is why I pay membership fees: so you can buy in bulk and I don't pay so much. And I'm also not going to pay for ridiculously overpriced protein bars at GNC. Please, I'm in school. Why do you think I shop in a warehouse.

Now, most recently, and perhaps most atrociously, you have apparently discontinued the delicious garlic chicken alfredo thin-crust pizzas that I discovered just a couple months ago. Is this some kind of conspiracy? If I discover more of your best-kept secrets will you stop carrying those, too? Are you secretly monitoring my purchase history and conspiring to make my already-limited food options (remember: I'm a student, and a bachelor--do the math) even more pathetic? These pizzas were just amazing. They taste like something I might buy at California Pizza Kitchen, and they're not big circles of grease, like those Di'Giorno pizzas you sell.

If you're going to discontinue products, why not focus on the nasty stuff instead? How about those Lean Cuisine four-packs? First of all, if you're going to stick four Lean Cuisines together, you should probably get the "best" tasting ones you can find. It's really frustrating to buy a four-pack containing three somewhat palatable lean cuisines, and then a fourth one like squash ravioli that makes you want to puke. That alone defeats the economy of buying them at costco. I would be better off going to a regular supermarket and picking four boxes of poison I can tolerate. Anyway, my point is, Lean Cuisines are pretty nasty. Give them the boot and you'd have room for those pizzas again. Switch the balance gold protein bars of nastiness for the premier ones (which, incidentally, had more protein in them anyway). And for the love of all that is good, BRING BACK THE DOUBLE-FUDGE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES! You know the kids aren't eating those "healthy" oatmeal raisin ones anyway. They're just getting left in the box and then thrown away after they get too stale. Go ahead, do a test. Put a chocolate one and an oatmeal raisin one in front of a child. Remember how the face of a child says it all? Well that cute, smiling little mug is now covered in chocolate, and it's trying to tell you something. Please listen.