Pundits talk a lot about red and blue states, about rural and urban, about the heartland and the “coastal elites,” but one ideological divide has gone largely unexplored: that of people who would be embarrassed to have dinner at the Olive Garden, and people who would not.

By escorting Olive Garden into the realm of acceptability, I’d revealed my belief that such a realm existed, and that I was one of its gatekeepers. True iconoclasm would’ve been my unqualified pleasure, but I couldn’t unqualify my pleasure.

Costco offers far more than a good deal. It offers the lulling comfort of permanent volume, the same bulwark against scarcity that draws us to the all-you-can-eat, the BOGO, the unlimited refill, the family size.

The joy of Costco does not lie in thrift. It lies in bulk.

Where my cousin saw waste as a form of excess—it was having something you didn’t need—my grandma saw waste as the act of a careless and unimaginative person.

An editorial in Punch magazine around the same time called middlebrows people who are hoping that someday they will get used to the stuff they ought to like.

The customer is not an individual, but part of a unified front, and so it’s imperative that a company cede to their demands.

Sometimes I choose a toy or a book, but some stores force you to be creative, like the Sports Authority, where I scoured the store for something to want and finally came upon a row of glittering plastic fish.

These entrepreneurs felt it important to be accountable to their clientele, not because of any business ethic, but because people were reluctant to open their wallets for caveat emptor.