- Costco warehouses require a lot of different jobs to run smoothly each day.
- Few workers have more customer-facing responsibilities than front-end managers.
- Business Insider spoke with a longtime front-end manager about what the day-to-day is like.
Costco has more than 600 warehouses across the US, and each one depends on hundreds of employees performing a range of jobs each day.
Among those workers, few have more customer-facing responsibilities than front-end managers, whose duties extend from the parking lot to the back of the sales floor and almost everything in between.
Business Insider spoke with an assistant front-end manager in Texas who has been with the company for more than 20 years to learn what the day-to-day is like. BI has verified his identity but is not naming him as he is not authorized to speak to the media.
From starting in the food court to a stint as a supervisor on the membership desk, he says he's seen just about everything.
"I had a customer who didn't know that you had to refrigerate a cheesecake, so he brought it back literally as a brick of mold and wanted his money back," the manager recalled. "We did the refund."
Now, as an assistant front-end manager, he oversees a team of five supervisors and anywhere from 25 to 50 hourly workers, and is tasked with handling almost everything from the sales floor to the registers to the parking lot.
A typical day starts when he wakes up around 7:30 a.m., quickly gets showered and dressed, and arrives at the warehouse as it's opening around 9:45 a.m.
"I'm the guy who's there to run the business," he said. "Very much managing the people and the situations that you run into throughout that day."
"Every day is consistent, insofar as it's inconsistent," he added.
Inventory moves quickly in a warehouse, and it's up to the front-end manager to keep a close eye on levels and make sure there is enough staff clocked in to keep things running smoothly in the aisles and the checkout lanes.
Plus, if another team needs extra support, it's often up to him to assign someone to help.
"Everyone goes to the front end, because we have the largest amount of people," he said. "If something goes sideways and your department needs help, you come to the front end."
Around 1:30 p.m., he hands over the reins to the evening manager and steps into a support mode through the afternoon rush until his shift ends at 7:30 p.m.
Asked what his favorite thing about working at Costco is, and his response was quick and clear: the team.
"It doesn't matter what building you're at, or what building you go to, you always find good people to work with," he said.