No, you’re reading it wrong. But it’s not your fault. Manda JO also read it wrong, and (apparently) thought that tumbleddown is not a woman.
So, yes, there are two ladies in the story; the lady with a herd of kids who had a quandary about safely shutting her car door, and tumbleddown, whose kind action in helping her out may have led some readers to assume that she is a male.
There’s also the cuntbag who stole tumbleddown’s shopping cart. A non-careful first reading of the OP makes it possible to think that she’s the same woman with all the kids.
ETA: Welcome to the SDMB, tumbleddown! Your New Year’s resolution should be to stick around.
I’m a little nuts, so it wouldn’t be the first time I’d made a scene in a public place over principle. Many of the ideas expressed here would have come to me without thinking, some of them might have occurred to me in the process of acting out, but one thing is for certain. At the very least, the woman needed to have someone shouting her down for her actions. A quarter is petty in the grand scheme, but as far as I’m concerned, has zero to do with the real story.
Sorry you ran into such a douchebag. You are unhurt, but so is she, which is unfair, but she’s a miserable twat that has to live with herself, which is pretty big punishment at her stage of the severity.
You’re a nice person.
Is there anyway you could have called the cops and ruined her day? I mean theft is theft, even if it’s a quarter. Does the law put a minimum on the value of stolen property?
You might even have been able to make her serve time.
I really doubt they would have showed up before 10 hours later for a quarter, and only then if you kept calling. The ladies gone? Oh well. Call us if it happens again or you find her.
I think I would have done just what tumbledown did - gawk at her incredulously, ask her (fairly politely) what she thinks she’s doing with my cart, and then come rant here. I’m not getting into a fistfight over a quarter, even based on the principle of the thing. Some days you just have to believe in karma - I think I will believe that she bought some bad potato salad, and is barfing as we type.
She was a few yards ahead of me by the time we got through a bit of a traffic jam at the door. The way ALDI stores are set up, you enter into one aisle, and only after you get to the end of that aisle can you enter aisles two, three or four. It’s like a chute. There were enough people jammed up in the first part of that first aisle that she was able to get even further ahead of me and I didn’t feel like yelling after her.
I’m not usually a “lady” to be honest, there are so many connotations to that word that I find it troublesome. But I am certainly not a cuntbag. Or at least I try my hardest not to be!
I have every intention of it. I’m going to use some of my Chrismukkah loot to buy my membership.
Note my use of past tense “could have” vs present tense “should”
Maybe your part is different but I remember the warm fuzzy feeling of my road trip through Ontario and how quickly it was crushed mercilessly in Detroit. Politeness is alot more appreciated and respected up there. Down here in alot of places it wouldn’t make an impact at all.
I still remember embarrassing my friend up there with some things I was doing without realizing they’re crass.
Likewise, although I wouldn’t wrestle her for it lest I somehow injure her - I would have simply grabbed onto it and not let go. If she was a 60-year old woman she’s not gonna be able to keep pushing it with you holding it in place.
Is it possible she was totally unaware of the cart system there? If she was she might have just thought that carts are free to take, and yours wasn’t even in the store yet (or you were actually done shopping and were returning to your car), so it wouldn’t matter all that much if she took the cart. Just trying to give you a different angle on this. It’s either this or she is indeed a total fucking cunt.
Only a quarter? At one of my local stores it is either $1.25 or $2.50.
I know from the 22c bag charge that we have that people are really, really, really, really petty about avoiding small charges.