Costco is in hot water this week after it says “human error” left “Fiction” labels on every copy of the Bible for sale in at least one California store.
Todd Starnes writes he was contacted by a pastor who was outraged on seeing copies of the Bible labeled “Fiction.” Starnes writes,
“He thought there must be some sort of mistake so he scoured the shelf for other Bibles. Every copy was plastered with a sticker that read, ‘$14.99 Fiction.'”
Starnes contacted Costco for an explanation, and was promptly told the labels were the result of “human error.”
The problem is, as Starnes also points out, Costco hasn’t fixed the error. There’s still a pile of Bibles for sale at Costco under the “Fiction” category. Human error or not, that’s a big deal. As KERO-Bakersfield notes, “[T]he Bibles already labeled as fiction on store shelves have not been relabeled. The company did not apologize.”
Labeling the Bible as “Fiction” marginalizes our Christian faith, and refusing to correct that mistake once it’s noticed marginalizes it further. At the very least, it’s insulting; at worst, it shows that maybe Costco doesn’t really think slapping a “Fiction” label on the Bible was such a mistake after all.
Either way, it’s disconcerting.
