When shopping at Costco, it’s important to be mindful of your etiquette, especially when it comes to free samples. It’s always better to admit if you don’t like a food item you’ve sampled, rather than putting some of the product in your cart without the intention of buying it, just to be polite.
Costco employees who give out samples keep an inventory of how many products leave their sample station and compare that to the number of products sold. If these numbers don’t match up, other Costco employees are tasked with finding the missing products, checking their sell-by date, and putting them back where they belong.
When frozen or refrigerated items, in particular, are moved, they are immediately thrown away, as workers never know how long the item was out of refrigeration and if it’s spoilt. So, even if you feel like the employee is pressuring you into buying the product, it’s responsible to leave it be rather than ditching it somewhere else in the store later on.