I Pit Those SUV-Sized Shopping Cart/Kiddie Cars and the Parents Who Use Them

The BBQ Pit
1

I pit those super-humongous POS shopping cart/kiddie car things that way too many stores have these days. They’re nearly twice as long as a regular shopping cart but have a plastic cab with a plastic seat and one or two plastic steering wheels so junior or juniors can pretend they’re driving while Mommy shops. They’re wider than a regular cart too and, turn on a dime, they don’t! They and their designers should be banned from this planet, as well as the parents who think their little Pookie-Ookums will just die if he can’t ride in one!

The other day, I was in the condiment aisle with my regular cart. Mommy and Pookie-Ookums are coming at me with one of those behemoths from the other end of the aisle. I stopped to look at some relish and a woman with another regular cart passes me from behind. But wait, she forgot something back there somewhere! So she parks her cart ahead of mine and walks back from whence she came. (She might have disappeared into a space-time rift for all I know. I never did see her again.)

Meanwhile, the dreaded monstosity kiddie car/shopping cart thing pulls abreast of the abandoned cart and just at that exact moment Mommy decides Pookie Must Be Fed Right This Second! He wasn’t making a sound in his little red plastic cab and, in fact, seemed quite content, but Mommy knew better. Pookie Must Be Fed. NOW!

So, she pulls out a plastic spoon and some purple glop in a little container and squats down in the foot of space between the monstrosity and regular cart and started shoveling glop into Pookie’s compliant mouth.

Perhaps I was somehow affected by the space-time rift that made the other shopper disappear because Mommy certainly didn’t see me standing right there. Heck, I was so close I could have given my cart a good shove and sent her sprawling on that pert little heiney of hers. But that might have upset Pookie and I had no grudge against him. Honestly, I had no grudge against her either. I’m just saying I could have.

So, anyway, I waited. I wasn’t in any big hurry really. Just for the heck of it though, I clapped my hands lightly once to see if she’d notice. She didn’t. Pookie’s feeding commanded all her attention. So I waited some more.

Finally, a woman who wasn’t as patient as I pushed her cart right up to the monstrosity. Mommy finally looked up. Oh, I guess I’m blocking the aisle. My apologies. Give me just a sec while I back the behemoth up so you may pass.

And pass that woman did. I was right on her heels.

In this particular store, there’s tons of open space the front and back. I know several places in there that could have accomodated a real SUV. So I have no idea why did Mommy decided to park her pseudo-SUV in the middle of an aisle already partially blocked by an apparently abandoned cart. Just one of those little mysteries, I suppose. OK, I could have just asked but then I wouldn’t have had any fodder for my first Pit, lame as it is.

So there you are.

2

Noo, don’t blame the carts. As the mother of 3, those things are a godsend. However, I do my best not to be an oblivious jerk, and you have every right to be annoyed with that particular woman.

Unfortunately, the same exact thing happens with regular, run of the mill carts. I can’t count how many times I’ve been shopping with mother/daughter duos who push their carts side by side, stop at the same places, and chat happily while they decide which brand of Cheeze in a Can to buy. I’ll wait a few moments, try to to catch their eye and smile hopefully, but if that doesn’t work, I’ve taken to just nudging their carts out of the way.

But the kiddie carts, while longer, usually aren’t much wider, and if a non-idiot is using them, don’t cause any more inconvenience than a regular one.

3

Yup, those things are huge. My somewhat-related peeve is, although I have no problem with asking people politely to get the hell out of my way, why do I HAVE to? You’re looking right at me - I’m walking in a straight line. It doesn’t take an engineer to figure out where I’m going to be in two seconds. Are you so starved for attention that you feel the need to stop right in front of me so you can get a little human interaction? The same goes for people who stand right in front of doors, watch you walk up to them, then wait for you to say, “Excuse me.” before sauntering off to the side. I swear I’m going to kick someone some day.

And people with the shopping carts that they leave right in the middle of the aisle - what are you, new? “Oh, tee hee, I’m sorry.” Yeah, you are. It saddens me how many people there are who can’t get their mind off the state of Brad and Angelina’s relationship long enough to realize that they’re blocking an aisle without being told.

Hmm, apparently I needed to vent a little about my shopping experiences.

4

The absolute WORST thing about those carts: at 6’4", I simply cannot fit behind the wheel without my legs sticking out either side… and my stupid wife refuses to push me around anyways. :mad:

I hate shopping.

5

It would appear that inconsiderate shoppers are the problem, not the giant carts.

I’m not incredibly fond of pushing my kids around in those things, since they steer like Mack trucks and weigh a ton. OTOH, the kids are thrilled with the things, and it keeps them from running down aisles and even from asking for every other junk food item they see.

I would say that if you were in a store with me, you would be far more likely to have your path blocked by my un-carted 5-yo daughter than by her when she’s in the thing. Like most 5-yo’s, she’s off in la-la land and remarkably bad at noticing when other people are coming. I spend a lot of time telling her to get out of people’s way and let them through. Usually she doesn’t hear me until I grab her arm and drag her out of the way, apologizing to whoever she has failed to see.

6

See, in those situations, I no longer say excuse me. If they haven’t moved by the time I get to them, I look at them and say “excuse you”. Hopefully they play that back in their mind and realize that maybe it’s rude of them to be blocking the way.

7

I must apologize for my husband. When we shop together, he’ll pull his cart up beside mine, every single time. And every single time I’ll tell him to LEAVE HIS CART BEHIND MINE and come up to talk to me, so we DON’T BLOCK THE AISLE. I’ve been doing this for nearly three decades. He persists in unconsciously blocking the damn aisle. He’ll move his cart when I call his attention to it, but he honestly does not consider that he might be blocking someone. I think I need to start using a cattle prod or something on him. Obviously words don’t work.

8

I hate them too, but I’d rather have the little tyke safely ensconced in something I can at least see coming and avoid. Today, I got clipped from behind by a toddler pushing a toddler-size shopping cart that Mommy had apparently brought from home. Mommy didn’t understand why I wasn’t amused - must have had something to do with the two runs in my $19.50 Donna Karan pantyhose (Valentine’s dinner date.) :rolleyes:

VCNJ~

9

My supermarket is always full of people who block the aisle no matter what carriage they’re using. They also walk up and down the aisles with approximately the vivacity of Romero zombies circa 1968.

When I go shopping, I want to get my stuff and go. But I’m always surrounded by people for whom this appears to be their big outing for the day, and they’re in absolutely no hurry. Then I always wind up in line behind the person who wants to haggle over the price of orange juice. Dude, howsabout I give you the dollar, and you get the hell out of my way?

I hate grocery shopping.

10

Yeah, but the giant carts give people a better chance to be giant jerks.

11

I’m sorry, you stood very still behind her as if you were looking at a shelf and somehow expected this woman to magically guess based on you clapping your hands - which is not, to the best of my knowledge, a universally known symbol for ‘excuse me, please’ - that you wanted to go past her? Do you belong to some secret society of telepaths where that sort of thing is normal?

This isn’t about you being ‘patient’. It’s about you being passive.

‘Excuse me, please.’ They’re magic words. They almost certainly would have got you exactly what you wanted, exactly when you wanted it.

12

A while back there was a thread about self-checkout machines. One poster said that he hated them, because he craved the human interaction that he got from going to a live clerk. Not me, baby. Five minutes of grocery shopping and I’m convinced that 90% of humanity needs to be shot. Or at least have cans of pie filling winged at their heads.

13

Lynn, I’ll send you the cattle prod. I hate people who block the aisles! :slight_smile:

As for those carts, I don’t even have any kids and I love them. We’ve gone from having kids running around, screaming, and being underfoot, to quietly sitting in those carts and pretending to drive and making beeping noises…in other words, cute.

And I also agree the OP should have said something. Clapping your hands is reminiscient of snapping your fingers at me…not very polite, that’s all. And I would never guess that meant “Please move”.

14

This is why I do most of my grocery shopping at 11:00pm through a self checkout lane.

15

Dammit. I was going to say the same thing. As far as the OP, I think it’s the cart operator, rather than the cart itself. However, I avoid that frustration by doing my grocery shopping at 6am, where the ratio of inconsierate jerk shoppers to normal shoppers is much lower.

16

On a side note, if and when I have kids, I will never bring them to the grocery store. Their father will watch them while I shop. Bringing kids to the store is a BAD IDEA for everyone. I can understand that some single parents must do it, but for those who have a spouse, why take the kids to the store? I don’t get it.

17

Because I don’t want to go to the grocery store on weekends or after the kids are in bed? I like to get it done when I have time; during the day, with the kids along. The best time is 9am on a Thursday, but I usually have to compromise and go at 3pm. I have better things to do when my husband is around. :wink:

Now, lest you think that my kid is running wild, knocking into you and blocking your way, she is actually pretty good. I get her out of people’s way before they arrive, and she is a good kid.

And when it comes to kids, never say never. The universe will exact its revenge by making sure that you wind up having to take your child to the store twice a week, and he will make as much trouble as possible. That’s how parenthood works.

18

What I don’t get is why exactly they have to be so huge. I hate that blown plastic crap. Make the things out of sheet metal and they’ll be strong enough to hold six kids and small enough to corner!

19

The worst things are the kiddie size carts that some stores have. Yep, let the kids run wild with those things slamming into other shoppers.

20

Having met the two of you in person, this image amuses me greatly.