Not if he grows up to be my husband 
.
(Okay, he doesn’t cut in front of people on purpose…he’s just a space cadet sometimes.)
I hate those carts for the size, but if they keep the kids quiet, by all means, use them. Just not in our tiny little local market where there’s barely enough room for a regular cart in the aisle, much less a monster-SUV-cart.
E.
Ha! Does anyone else have an image of this? Thanks for the laugh, Caricci. 
Not ours. They’re just regular carts with a large plastic thingy on the front, with regular wheels. (Oddly, although they are pink and have butterfly wings, my kids call them the dinosaur carts.) I have to push pretty hard to get them to turn.
Oh please. You don’t even know me.
The OP’s issue is not only with a woman blocking the aisle. It’s that she had the audacity to tend to her child’s needs.
As described:
Glop. Shoveling. Squats. All lovely descriptions, aren’t they? Why heap abuse on a parent for doing what she believed needed to be done–feed her kid. That she’s blocking the aisle–you’ll get no argument from me about that. She made a mistake there, it’s clear. It’s equally believeable to me that when you’re trying to get a lot of things done at the same time (buy groceries, remember things you’ve forgotten to put on the list, see to the safety of the child, keep track of the time, figure out which is cheapest between name brand sale price and store brand regular price) sometimes you can be distracted and make a mistake like this. As has been pointed out, the OP might have said “excuse me” and the whole problem would have been solved. With politeness and the recognition that each have equal right to be in the store.
I cannot understand why you think it’s acceptable to deride parents and children in these terms.
My “issues” come from subsequent posts like this one. Leave my kids at home? Why? Why are you preeminent, and somehow kids aren’t welcome when you come through the door?
Bullshit.
And that was precisely the fucking point. It wasn’t that she was feeding her kid; it was that she was feeding her kid in the middle of a fucking supermarket aisle, where people were trying to get by.
If someone decides to stop their car in the middle of the freeway to change a daiper, then that person deserves abuse. Not because they want to change the daiper, but because they think that stopping in the road to do it is appropriate.
Everyone recognizes that it can be hard to juggle a busy lifestyle. But we all have to cope with having a whole bunch of shit on our plate. It doesn’t mean that we should act without any consideration for other people.
No-one’s ever questioned her right to be in the store. People have merely questioned the wisdom of stopping in the middle of the store, and impeding other people, in order to perform a task that really should be done elsewhere.
No-one has derided the children. Nor have people derided parents in general. People have derided inconsiderate fools like the person under discussion.
The Safeway I go to doesn’t have the monster carts, but there are plenty of idiots blocking the aisles. Most of them don’t have their kids along. Some of it seems to be an instance of the “circle 20 times to get a parking spot 20 feet from the store” syndrome - even if there is another cart or a display right there, they have to block the aisle instead of parking their cart a few feet away and then walking back to the stuff they’re looking for. There is no reason for anyone not using a walker to block the aisle, and thus make someone else ask them to move.
As for self checkouts when you don’t want to talk to anyone - the Albertson’s near us has them, and my wife reports that there has never been a time that she hasn’t had to get the person in charge of them to come and fix something. You have to talk less to the checkers at Safeway - though I talk to them, because most of them are nice and friendly. Me, I don’t use the self checkouts, and don’t go to Albertsons either except under extreme duress. They’d be great if they actually worked.
One of life’s little blessings, I’m sure.
Yes, that’s precisely the issue. The OP is opposed to feeding children. That’s what he’s ranting about, giving food to hungry children.
Are you fucking deranged? What the hell is abusive about any of those terms? He described baby food as glop, and that’s somehow an insult to mothers everywhere? Shovelling? Squating? These are insults to you? These are abusive? What the hell is wrong with you?
And guess what? That’s what she’s being pitted for!
Which is precisely one more thing that she needs to keep track of than every single other shopper in the store, and “seeing to the safety of the child” is going to be pretty easy in this situation, as he’s strapped to the shopping cart. Personally, I don’t see that as any kind of an excuse, but considering how generally forgiving the OP was of the woman, I’m guessing he’d disagree with me.
Where did the OP say children didn’t deserve to be in the same store as him? Where did he behave with anything other than politness and respect to the woman in the store? Hell, where the fuck did he even insult her in this fucking thread?
He didn’t deride anyone, you lunatic, although he certainly would have been justified, because the woman was being inexcusably rude. Being a parent doesn’t recuse you from acting like a responsible adult, nor does it give you a pass from being criticized for your actions.
Those carts are the best thing that ever happened to shopping. I’ve discovered there are stupid people with and without them though. Of course I now feel like pitting the designers of those things for making them hernia inducing in their wieght and having the steering capabilities of a cruise ship. But they make shopping easier with a little one and I get one hell of a workout in the process.
And, really, it’s the carts that are being pitted. If that silly mama had dropped everything and fed the kid but the OP was able to get around it, we wouldn’t be here in this thread.
FWIW, my son, when he could use them, grew tired of sitting there halfway through and start walking around and I’d be like, dude, what the HELL am I pushing this cruise ship (thanks, Dr. LoveGun, it’s a good description) around if you aren’t sitting in it.
I fucking hate shopping with my kid.
Oh brother. Before I had kids I had quite a few “I will never …” Most came back to bite me on the arse.
As far as I’m concerned that’s perfectly acceptable behavior in a 5 year old. She’s probably a million miles away - and that’s really kind of her job, right? Even the kids running around playing don’t really bother me that much (I wish I still had that kind of energy). Although those kid sized carts are a menace and were put on this Earth by the devil himself, I’m just sure of it.
It’s the adult (parent or not) acting like they are the only one in the store that ticks me off to no end.
I’ve taken to ditching the cart in a quiet corner of the store and making trips back and forth. I get my exercise AND lower my frustration level
Thank you, Miller, and those others who defended me. There are a few things I regret. One is using the term “shovelling.” In restrospect, to me, that sounds a bit strong. But this is the Pit, after all, and I felt I should spice it up a little. Since I’m not much for cussing, I chose a few descriptive words. Heck, I can think of at least one thread just this week that was moved because it was so mild the mods felt it wasn’t pitworthy. I thought mine would be next.
Imagine having a Pit where one wasn’t allowed to vent about this or that or the other segment of the population or a single person in one of those segments. You can’t because, under those circumstances the Pit would not exist. If one has such a problem with what is said here then he or she may want to stay away.
Another thing I regret is the clapping, but, as I said, it was lightly and just one single clap. By the time the woman had pulled up to the abandoned cart and stopped, I had finished selecting my relish and was ready to go. The woman never made eye contact with me the entire time we were there. If she had looked up when I clapped, I would have politely said, “Excuse me, I’d like to get through.” She didn’t, so I just let it go and waited. If I had this to do over again, I wouldn’t have clapped at all.
And yeah, I should have made the title about inconsiderate and/or unthinking people. Or about them and carts both. Those Monstro-carts just push my buttons, though, and they managed to get themselves star billing.
As hard as it may be for my detractors to believe, I was a kid once and I fondly remember the experience. That’s why I get along so well with them today and why I can smile indulgently upon them when their behavior may make other adults cringe.
My parents, who made my childhood possible, taught us when we were young to be considerate of other people. One of those considerations was to not get in the way of others. It’s not hard to keep in mind. If many people drove like they shop then traffic would be infinitely worse than it is today. Which brings me to:
That’s a great analogy! Thanks!
We were just at the store a couple hours ago, and sure enough mommy was there pushing the cart-SUV around. Without her kid in it. WTH? The cart doesn’t hold as much as a regular cart and you’re not even putting Running Around Brat Girl in it? So the rest of us have to navigate around Behemoth Cart while also dodging run-back-and-forth-and-grab-everything-off-the-shelf-Girl? Arrgh.
And can I get a witness about the hippo-shaped strollers they have for tots at zoos? Same problem, different place.
Another vote for “it’s not the cart, it’s the driver.”
I recently witnessed the single most entertaining version of this I’ve ever seen. I’m sitting at the back of the store watching this woman as she pushes her cart out of the back end of an aisle and stops before hitting the back wall (thus blocking all sideways traffic along the wall). She sat there with her cart extended before her looking at the shelves. Then she left her cart (still blocking all sideways traffic along the wall), and kind of wandered around, apparently killing time as she waited for something in the pharmacy, which was a few feet away. People had to move her cart as stood by, completely oblivious.
I’ve seen people leave their carts along the milk wall so that they block damned near every fridge door except the one that they are getting into. That’s special.
Have you ever seen this? : people who don’t buy much and therefore don’t need the cart to go to their cars and so they leave it right there at the register. People who do this are generally not, you know, from around here and so they have a different view of courtesy and personal space I think. It’s GOT to be something like that or I just don’t think I can go on.
In NYC, Manhattan anyway, you typically leave the cart at the register or thereabouts and walk out of the store with just your bags. I imagine other cities are the same way. So yeah, the people who do that probably aren’t from around there.
I mean right in the checkout line - they’d pull it into the line and then just walk away with it between the check out counter and the candy rack like they were the only people in the store . Surely that can’t be the norm or every person who shops would have to push a cart out of the way, walk back the way they came or be trapped. I should have been more clear. Actually, I was a New Yorker at one time and am pretty sure you and I are not thinking of the same thing.
Of course , dear. This is exactly how your world will work.
Your children will be carefully packaged units who get from the nursery, to the carseat, to the daycare, to the classroom through a complex system of pnuematic tubes, ensuring that they never come into contact with people not trained to handle their childish ways or facilities not designed specifically for child-centric activities. At all costs, you must keep your short ones safely at home or in an institution where professionals know how to properly deal with them. I mean, why would anyone want to take their children out into the real world?