Let’s say that you’ve battled your way through the anxiety of making your way through a seemingly endless maze of aisles packed from floor to ceiling with enormous boxes. And let’s say that you’ve already used up the brain cells required to calculate that it is, in fact, more likely than not that you will use up two 48-ounce canisters of peanut butter before they go bad (sometime around two to three months after you open them, according to Healthline, which you had to consult while standing in front of said peanut butter display).
Even then, there’s still the matter of how you’re going to handle and store massive tubs of [insert bulk item], not to mention the matter of how you’re going to feel about carrying those tubs to the trunk of your car. That daunting prospect dawned on Lauren Wicks while shopping at Costco. “There was no way I was going to be able to haul more than a few items at a time to my car,” wrote Wicks, who later said, “I felt like everyone was laughing at me as they watched me try to fit (read: wrestle) a two-quart jar of soy sauce next to a three-liter tin of extra-virgin olive oil into my little canvas bag” (via EatingWell).
In other words, to paraphrase Gloria Estefan, in one way or another, eventually, the anxiety is “going to get you.”