“My biggest role is still providing timely and correct data to everyone in the company who needs it,” he says, “but more broadly, it's about figuring out how do you fuel growth, and how do you communicate with people.”

One tough communications job that falls to Galanti is explaining to a skeptical Wall Street why treating workers well is good business. Unlike many of its competitors, Costco has long offered employees relatively high wages and a “quality” health plan mostly funded by the company. While many employers shifted premium costs onto employees during the late '90s, Costco held contributions flat from 1994 to 2003, so that the employee share of premiums actually fell from 12.5% to 5%. In 2003, when Costco chairman Jeffrey Brotman realized the employee contribution had to go up, he still insisted that their share of the cost not exceed 10% and that the increase be phased in over four years “so people won't get hit all at once.” Says Galanti, wearing his HR hat, “Don't think treating employees that way doesn't have an impact.”

In one way, Galanti's lucky. While many CFOs have been struggling through a brutal period of frozen credit, evaporating cash pools and shrinking sales, Costco, which offers low prices on popular consumer items, has picked up some business from consumers turning away from smaller and pricier retailers.

“Even when the economy went south fast in late '07 and during '08, we were the extreme value position,” Galanti says. “We saw some falloff in jewelry and furniture sales, but half of our business is food and consumer goods, which haven't suffered.”

Before the recession, Costco typically saw its same-store sales increases in the 6% to 8% range. Those same-store sales are now coming in flat to up 4%. But Galanti notes, “We're still arguably cash-rich, so our problem is how to spend it–on dividends, on investment, on stock buybacks?”

Now there's a problem a lot of CFOs today would love to have.