Shopping Cart Etiquette

I was trying to get to sleep last night around 10:45, but it was difficult to turn my brain off.  You might wonder why.  Well, as always, I am going to give you an extra special glimpse into the inner workings of this thinker of mine.  I'd just finished watching the "Survivor: Redemption Island" finale and witnessed the victory one of my favorite players of all time, Boston Rob.  This season wasn't great, I'll admit.  It's one redeeming feature was the awesome strategic/mind-control game that Rob played, but he definitely deserved to win since no one else bothered to play any sort of game at all ... unless you count "do whatever Rob decides" as a strategy.

But I digress.  As I was mulling over the awesomeness of the fact that the person I was cheering for actually won, a completely unrelated and random thought invaded my revelry.  You may have deduced from the title of this post what this thought was about.  It was one of my biggest pet peeves of all time: people who don't understand shopping cart etiquette (in fact, if this pet peeve had been on an episode of Survivor, it probably would have been on "Survivor: All Stars" or a villain on "Survivor: Heroes vs Villains").

That's right, shopping carts. Not so much the etiquette inside the store, although I could probably come up with some issues there too.  I'm talking about after the shopping has occurred and the groceries have been deposited safely in the vehicle.  One of the things in this world that drives me absolutely up the wall (we're talking like Spiderman-esque up the wall) is when people don't return their carts to the designated cart holding pens.  The danger of this situation is made astronomically worse because I live in Southern Alberta where we consider a 30-40 km/hr wind to be "not that bad," but having days where the gusts reach upwards of 100 km/hr (anything over 100 km/hr is considered to be "hurricane force" according to Environment Canada by the way) is not unheard of.  Such are the perfect conditions for a phenomenon I like to call "shopping cart sailing."  I have actually witnessed an empty, human-less shopping cart racing across the parking lot of a store (which will remain nameless) toward some helpless parked vehicle.  Come on people, no one likes dents/scratches in their vehicles.  In fact, this is exactly how the signal light was broken on my Jeep!

So, I've decided to share some of my wisdom/common sense/courtesy tips with the world in the hopes that we can band together and make parking lots a safer place for all our vehicles.  It's really quite simple and generally takes only about 30 seconds to return your cart to the "cart holding facility."  Also, if you are lucky enough the witness the phenomenon of said facility being empty, count your blessings, but don't stop there.  Push your cart ALL THE WAY to the end of your side of the area.  If you are shopping somewhere that doesn't have a middle divider, just eyeball it.  But please, for the sake of my sanity, do not leave your cart at the entrance.  Please do not confuse the cart area with a cave that contains some sort of dragon/troll/evil wizard who is just waiting to prey upon unsuspecting shoppers.  I promise you this is not the case and you will be able to exit safely.  If you are not the first person to return your cart, please stack your cart neatly with the one(s) that were there before yours.  I know, it's amazing what they're doing with carts these days. The carts will actually transform their shape to accommodate the storage of more carts behind them!  Just like magic.  This will prevent what I like to call the "space wasting" effect which I'm pretty sure is cause by people who are just too busy (or lazy) to push their cart the proper distance.  And then the next person brings their cart but can't be bothered to insert their cart into the previous person's cart and push them both the proper distance.  No, instead the situation is compounded because this second person just haphazardly shoves their cart in the direction of the cart area and we end up with only about 5 carts inside the cart area while about 50 spill out into the driving lane (these 50 carts will actually be stacked together properly, however, because no one wants to be responsible for blocking the driving lane *sigh*).

Also, if you must use the "smart cart" as I have dubbed them (you know, the one that's half the size of a regular cart, like a "smart car" is half the size of a regular car) because you don't have much to buy or because you think it's cute, or some other reason that I can't fathom with my Mom-brain … please use your brain when it comes to cart storage.  I have seen what people put in these carts.  There is no way a person could fit enough groceries or heavy-enough groceries in one to necessitate pushing this cart out to their vehicle and then returning it to the cart storage area.  Because this cart is so much smaller than it's regular-sized relatives it causes all sorts of shenanigans.  In fact, this half cart is often the cause of the aforementioned "space wasting" effect.  This cart is not meant to mingle with the regular-sized carts (yes, I am advocating cart segregation here) and so it cannot be stored properly with the others.  If you must use one of these carts to accomplish your shopping please, please park it in the entrance before you exit the store and carry your 1-3 bags out to your vehicle under your own steam.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go forth into the world and spread this information to others ... especially those you might know who think it's "no big deal" to not properly store their shopping cart after using it.  Let them know the severity of their actions and have them consider that it might one day be them with a "mysterious" dent/scratch in their vehicle from a rogue shopping cart that has gone sailing.  And this message will not self-destruct.

Thanks for listening.