Thanks for leaving your shopping cart in the middle of the parking space!
It was great: You leave the shopping cart there, and I had to stop my car in the middle of the turn – risking someone rear-ending me – and then get out of the car – risking being run over – to move the shopping cart! Then back in the car – same risk of death – and finally park!
It was a brilliant plan, and you pulled it off perfectly!
Keep up the asshole work!
Regards,
JasonG
Curses! Foiled again!
Now I’ll have to send my evil minions out to the grocery stores again NEXT week!
Unless you forgot the milk this time…
Nice rant.
As a counterpoint to this rant. I was parking the other day and there was a shopping trolley which was not quite in the way. It was a nuisance, but I was going to be able to park without having to get out and move it. To my pleasant surprise, a woman who had just got out of her car and obviously was not responsible for the trolley, moved it for me so I didn’t have to worry about hitting it at all.
Those carts are seldom left in fire lanes.
Here, all the shopping trolleys are chained together, and you have to put money in to release them. The only way to get the deposit back is to return the trolley and chain it up again. If you don’t take it back yourself there are homeless people who hang around supermarket car parks for precisely this reason… Problem solved.
I have a similar rant, which I unleased upon the representatives of this fine city quite recently.
See, The City of Tallahassee owns and runs all the utilities in this town, including trash and recycling pick up. It’s really a wonderful system. Twice a week they pick up the garbage and once every other week, they pick up the recycling. One of the two garbage days, the Waste Removal Engineers (or whatever they call themselves) will actually go get your trash can from wherever it lives – usually at the far end of the driveway – and walk it down to the curb. After the truck comes by to empty the can, they come back and put your can back where it belongs.
Nice, huh?
Except every trash day, I’d come home for lunch to find my trash can at the curb, in the street, slam in the middle of my driveway. They couldn’t be bothered to move it another two feet to leave it out of my way. I had to stop the car in the middle of the street, turn on my hazard lights, put it in park, get out, move the can out of the way, get back in the car, turn off the hazard lights, put the car back in gear… then I could pull into the driveway.
A quick call to the City corrected this problem. I doubt, however, the grocery store imps who leave carts in the middle of spaces, would be cured as easily.
I went to Target this afternoon. When I saw a shopping cart in the middle of a parking space, I thought of this post, and moved it to the cart corral, or whatever they call the holding spaces.
Another blow struck against ignorance.
My favorite is when someone leaves thier cart right behind your car when they are finished putting thier stuff into thier car.
This happened to me the other night. I went to Target for my regular shopping overexpenditure and happend to get a new CD to listen to. So I am in my car tyring to get the CD out of the plastic wrap (incredibly hard I think). While I was doing this, the woman in the car next to me finished putting the stuff in her car and proceeded to put her car right behind my car. bitch :mad: . I was too irritated to even attempt to say anything to her.
The PLA’s rudeness goes without saying, but are you seriously claiming that he endangered you? Merely stopping your car in a parking lot means you’re at an elevated risk of being rear-ended? For fuck’s sake. Also, if having to get out of your car in a parking lot is so frightening to you, why were you parking there in the first place?
LVgeogeek: I think my immediate reaction would be to jump out and move the cart behind the bitch’s car before she had a chance to pull out. 
Hey, galt , why you gotta hate?
This is Los Angeles, and parking lots are never empty.
During my encounter with the PLA, I was the lead car in a circling motorcade of parking-space hunters. When I found the PLA’s space and began to turn, the car behind me began to speed up in anticipation of my moving out of the way.
When I stopped suddenly, the car behind me stopped suddenly, and almost rear-ended me. So yes, that means I was at an “elevated risk” of being rear-ended, as you put it. When you stop suddenly, mid-turn, people sometimes rear-end you. Understand?
As for being afraid of parking lots? I wouldn’t say I’m afraid, but would you admit that with no sidewalks, pedestrians and cars travel on the same road? That there is no safe place for a pedestrian that a car couldn’t get to you? And there’s no place to drive that a pedestrian couldn’t suddenly appear? I think that increases the risk to pedestrians, but you are free to disagree.
I may not have painted the picture perfectly in the OP, but during my brief jaunt out of the car to move the shopping cart, cars were pulling out of spaces around me (some just to straighten out, but the effect is the same if a tire rolls over your foot). Someone was also pulling out across the aisle (i.e., behind me), further complicating the hold-up I was causing by stopping my car mid-turn.
The situation didn’t last long, but it was a little dangerous.
Rest assured, galt, my next emotional rant will come riddled with cites and footnotes, so as not to risk your disapproval.
On the contrary, you painted the picture perfectly in the OP. I pictured exactly what had happened, and I was right there with you, torqued off at some idiot who couldn’t be bothered to take the cart another 10 feet and put it out of everyone else’s way.
Who are these assholes, anyway? I’ve come to the conclusion that these PLAs have completed stopped trying to behave like civilized human beings in parking lots. They do exactly as they please, and have absolutely no concept of there being anyone else in the parking lot other than themselves.
(Oh, by the way, don’t worry about the rant critics. There’s always someone who has to come in and make the effort to tell you how lame your rant is, and ask you why you don’t just get over yourself. :rolleyes: )
I’m sorry, but it was 2 in the morning, raining, cold and I was in shorts.
Seriously, I really did do this the other day, and I even felt bad about it, but it was a big WalMart Supercenter grocery lot (meaning it was 95% empty) and it was under the conditions I described. But I promise I’d never do it during regular business hours. I’m sure someone got deservedly pissed at me for it, however.
Did I mention I felt bad about it? :o
Yes the PLAs need to made an example of. However to offset PLAs I have taught my kids to grab the nearest cart and return it to its holding pen. Just a thought.
If I were you, I wouldn’t even bother getting out of the car and moving the shopping cart. I would simply push it out of the way using my car’s bumper.
I just don’t understand why you gotta take a perfectly good complaint that basically boils down to “some complete fucking asshole left a goddamn cart in the middle of the parking space, and it pissed me off” and try to milk more points out of it by pretending that you could have been killed.
I think he did it just to piss you off.