sharbrough.net

Pet peeve. People who don't put the carts neatly in the cart corral. You push it a mile around the store, a quarter mile out to your car – and it's full of stuff the whole time. Then, when it's empty, and presumably lighter and of less resistance to the wind, you can't push it over to the cart corral?

When you take a cart, you are implicitly agreeing to be responsible with it, and not to leave it where it presents a hazard to other shoppers. When you fail to put it away, you are in breach of that contract.

Shopping carts left near the cart corral

As you can see above (click on the photo to embiggen, as John C Dvorak says), at least four people have shoved their carts into the snowbank that's right next to the corral. It's close, but no cigar. Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and public toilet seats. A miss is as good as a mile.

This is nothing short of sloth. Selfishness. Laziness.

Stop it.

Resolve, right now, to never again cut a corner while putting the cart back. You are committing one of the 7 deadly sins here.

If you find yourself absolutely unable to replace the cart, after your best effort, just ask me for help. I'm very good at putting them back. I'm kind of strong. I can push the whole row together tighter. I've practiced and I can often roll a cart into the back of the last cart in the corral from a distance of 50 feet. It's great sport, and if a cart sails wide on me, I just laugh at it while I chase it and put it back like it goes.

And if you see someone else leaving the cart in the wrong place, perhaps someone who doesn't read this blog and doesn't know better, don't fuss at them. Just offer to take the cart since you're on your way into the store and will a) need a cart anyway; and b) walk past about 4 good places to put a cart. Leave judgement to god and Pat Robertson, they've got the energy for it.

If, however, you are leaving when you see a cart sloth, and don't need to go into the store again, feel free to honk at them and point at the corral. Be careful not to text while you do this.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.