If the corral is right there, then I will do that. I was talking about the times when returning the cart would mean trekking about half a mile across the parking lot–a very common thing here in SoCal, land of the superstore.
At the moment, though, I have a 6-month old and a 2 year old. Getting them through a store together is like juggling flaming torches. I can’t put both kids in the cart and I want to minimize the time my toddler is at large in the parking lot while I’m struggling with the thirty pound baby carrier.
I don’t let my cart run into other people’s cars and I don’t block parking spaces, but I do sometimes let the employees round up my cart.
Once again, I consider myself blessed to live where I do.
Our main grocery store has the following services:
1- first, they ALWAYS bag your groceries- they bag 'em as they ring 'em. Very nice
2- second, they offer drive up service. They put a sticker on your bagged order, give you the other half and wait for you to pull up. Then they load the stuff in the car for you and off you go!
3- They have special "Parents with Kids" parking spots that have a covered cart corral next to them so that the carts with seats in them are available, dry, and easy to return.
PS, I don’t mean to harp (I think I’ve said this about a zillion times) but try not to be so hard on “lazy” people (I’m talking about the bagging the groceries issue, not the cart return). I have a very, very bad back and I’m usually not up to bagging my groceries. I’m very sorry if that inconveniences you, but believe me- it inconveniences me more (I’m pretty sure). I also look nice, young and healthy. Rest assured, I’m not.
So get the fuck over it.
Zette
Love is like popsicles…you get too much you get too high.
I’ve only seen the drive-up option in a couple of places: A small town in Ohio and a suburb of Cambridge, MA. I really appreciated it on the few days when I had heavy stuff or when the weather was bad. (This was pre-kids.)
Here in SoCal grocery stores seem to hire many fewer people for those kinds of service. Often there is only one person bagging at a whole line of cashiers in a big store. Back in that small Ohio town they had a bagger for each cashier and they practically insisted on helping you out to your car. Interestingly, the baggers were almost all men in their 60’s who must have been retired and doing bagging to pick up a little cash. It could just be that the economy is so much better here that the potential baggers can get better jobs.
Bagging your own groceries??? No pick-up option??? I didn’t know I had it so good. D.C. area - cashier scans and bags; puts bags in cart; you wheel the cart out, go get your car, pull up, and a nice man puts the bags in your car for you. Just a reminder to those of you complaining about folks who don’t bag their own – they may be like me and simply used to having the cashier or someone else do it for them!
Umm, not to hijack this thread, but I’ve read that it’s not recommended to put sunscreen on infants 6 months and younger. That said, I just use the “drive up” feature of the grocery store. After the groceries are bagged, they write the cart # on the receipt, and match it up when I pull the car around. Or the grocery courtesy clerk will help us (baby and I) out to the car. No need to mess with the cart corral at all.
prairie rose
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
I know I’ll be flamed for this, and called a heartless bitch!
But, uh - I wonder if I have missed the point here, but I have to say, I do not respect the “I’ve got kids, I’m exempt” excuse. Though I’m not sure that’s what’s going on here.
If a person with small kids makes sure that the shopping carts are out of anyone’s way, not hogging a potential parking space, not putting the cart in a position where it could roll and hit a parked car, well, OK.
But, (I know I’ll be flamed for this) why should anyone (except the physically handicapped) be “exempt” from doing something that every other able-bodied person is basically “expected” to do? Especially when not doing this thing can inconsiderate and damned inconvenient to others?
There are parents that carry this “I have kids, I’m exempt” philosophy to the extreme, so maybe I have a knee-jerk reaction to any mention it. (The “I’m exempt” rationale can be something like: “I have kids, I should go to the front of the line” “I have kids, I should be able to park in the handicapped spot, just for a minute” “I have kids, I always get to leave work early” and on and on.) Maybe I’m just sick of hearing it.
It’s a fucking grocery cart, a car, and a few bags of groceries. If it’s in your way, go around! If the kid is gonna die of sun poisoning from walking across a parking lot, he needs to be under medical care, not shopping with mom. Park in a spot without a fucking cart, how much further are you gonna have to walk? Carry the damn bags! Make two trips. If you are in such a fucking rush that you can’t wait for someone to have his stuff bagged, (or even just pass the time of day, as if the checker were an actual human being) your problem isn’t other people at the grocery store, it’s time management. It’s also a wildly deluded sense of your own importance.
Get a fucking grip. If you weren’t so tired from toting around that big fucking attitude, you might have a moment to offer to push that cart back to the store for the lady with the baby. Hell, you could even bag the tourist’s groceries yourself! What the fuck is so urgent that you’re gonna miss? Is getting home to watch Oprah so important that you prefer despising the world at large for not getting out of your way?
<P ALIGN=“CENTER”> Tris </P><HR>
I often ride a motorcycle. When I go to the store I put my groceries into my daypack, take them out at the checkout counter, and answer “nylon” to the paper-or-plastic question. When the groceries are “bagged”, I put the pack on my back. Simple, what?
Simple my ass, I’m guessing 90% of the time they freeze and their eyes glaze over at such a seemly simple solution. Have you ever tried to buy something in a store and NOT get a bag? Goodness me, the confusion! “What? You don’t want a bag? Are you sure? Let me just give you a small one…What? No bag AT ALL??? Well, ok. If you’re really sure.”
Regarding the original post, I don’t have a problem with people leaving their carts in the lot, if they’re in a spot I want I just nose them in with my bumper (that’s why it’s called a “bumper,” see) and take it into the store with me. For the record, I always take it up to the front of the store when I’m done.
My major, MAJOR pet peeve though is people who take their carts home and LEAVE them out by the side of the road or in their yard. To me this is big-time “hillbilly” behavior and it makes my blood boil. When I lived in SF the mayor made the unpardonable mistake (sarcasm) of allowing the police to round up all the shopping carts and milk crates the homeless were using and return them to their rightful owners. Sorry, but stolen property is stolen property and just because you’re homeless doesn’t make you exempt from theft laws. (I know this is an unrelated rant, but it DOES have to do with shopping carts, haha.)
One week only! Special Valentine’s Candy Heart Sig Line! "OU KID"
Yesterday I went to Wal Mart. Not a normal occurance for me, but my ISP was down, so I went with my mom. We didn’t get a cart form the lot on the way in, because we thought they would be inside. Wrong! ALL the carts were still out in the lot and the corrals. They didn’t have a cart-guy rounding them up. People were nearly fighting for the ones coming out of the check out lines. We just picked up a little basket, since we didn’t need much.
you’re upset because lazy people don’t put their carts away, and this bothers you because then you can’t park as close to the store. you say that it’s not like they don’t need the fresh air and exercise, but ahem what about you?
i don’t condone leaving the carts because yes, it is lazy. but so is driving around forever so you don’t have to walk as far.
i don’t know about there, but we have the quarter system here. where all the carts are linked together, and to unlock them you put in a quarter. then, when you go to put it back you get your quarter pops back out.
it’s quite amazing the lengths people will go for their quarter. and hey, if they don’t, somebody else most certainly will.
“If anybody wants a sheep, that is proof that he exists.”
In my case, at least, there are grocery stores that have packed parking lots. PACKED. It’s not just a matter of driving around endlessly looking for a “close” spot, it’s looking for any spot.
Actually, I was raised with the philosophy of parking farther away from the store, where you don’t get “AlphaBeta Rash” (it’s a term our family came up with - the “rash” your car gets from having stray carts roll into it and scratch it.) So, I usually park farther away anyway. But when there are no frigging spots, and then somebody is too lazy to put the cart away, and leave it instead in one of the few free spots - it’s annoying.
But, Tris is right - we are all too anal about this for the most part.
Grocery store rants (and this applies just as much to Wal-Mart, too):
[ul][li]Loose carts in the lots. Not because I can park close, but because of the damage they cause to vehicles, etc.[/li][li]Lines of 5-6 people at the only two open registers on a Sunday night.[/li][li]And my (least) favorite - assholes that follow you around in the parking lot as you walk to your car. It already bugs me to get in my car and have idiot stop behind me and start backing up traffic which then makes me feel obligated to rush out of the space because now, all of a sudden, it’s ME causing the backup. Or at least it makes me feel that way. But honestly, I don’t like being stalked as soon as I walk out of the front door because I MIGHT have a space near the front. I usually park in the back anyway, even though it ends up costing me thirty seconds each way in additional walking time, so a lot of these people just get mad and wheel around back to the front and look for someone else to follow. But when I notice that it’s happening, I will usually walk past my car, cut across a few lanes, and then walk in circles just to piss them off.[/ul][/li]
It’s petty, and my friends usually give me shit for it, but it’s my right to be pissed off at whatever I choose. WHOO-HOO!
If you’re bitching about being followed around to get your parking space, do NOT come to UMKC. About 13,000 students, and only about 2,000 parking spaces. Persons stalking the parking lots for people leaving is a common and expected thing. I love their reaction when they follow me all the way to the back of the lot only to see that I’m parked illegally. Oooh, I’m a bastard.
What really gets me is the people who, in the gravel lots, park halfway between two parking curbs, because their car is SO FUCKING IMPORTANT THAT THEY CAN FUCKING TAKE UP TWO FUCKING SPACES IN AN ALREADY FUCKING CRAMPED LOT! You son of a bitch.
The other day I was walking into classes, and I saw a piece of notebook paper in the rear wiper of a Grand Cherokee. Intrigued, I investigated further. The paper said: “Wait your turn, BITCH!” and featured a smiley face with a gunshot wound to the forehead.
Do not sneak into a spot someone has their blinker on waiting for. We get violent out here.
–Tim
Hello again. Do you like my hat? I do not like your hat. Goodbye again. Goodbye.
When a lane ends, the car in the lane that continues - the lane towards the middle - has the right of way, OK? That means all of the cars at the light are stacked up in the middle lane because they are WAITING THEIR TURN. It does not mean that we are all chumps who didn’t get in the left lane and take the opportunity to cut in front of everyone else when the light changes, OK?
Same thing when there’s road work and traffic is backing up. Get out of the lane buddy and wait your freakin’ turn!
Or, when there’s two left turn lanes and only one lane has an entrance ramp onto the freeway, the cars on the inside lane have the right of way to the ramp. That means they have the right to get on the freeway first and shouldn’t have to DODGE YOUR SORRY ASS as you try and pull your best Mario Andretti and cut in front of me by squeezing into a space that’s barely big enough to hold my bicycle, much less your rice rocket, dammit.
Fuck, this shit pisses me off even more than the parking lot thing.
