I made the mistake of visiting Wal*Mart on the weekend before school started. I had picked up some things for the kids, and Hubby motioned to me to come see a video he wanted to buy. The aisles around the school supplies were so blocked that I could not move in any direction. It literally took five minutes to walk four feet. That HAS to be a fire hazard.
(I’m sorry, hit submit too soon. I forgot to mention that about a third of the baskets blocking my way were not being used by a customer. For some reason Wal*Mart has this absurd policy of placing baskets full of random crap in the middle of their insanely narrow aisles. I assume these are for collecting items that asshole customers pick up and don’t put back in the right place, but all they do is make it impossible to get through!)
I’m sorry. 
I went shopping at Cub today, and at least 3 times, I realized I was being an aisle blocker. I may have done it more often without realizing it. The thing is, I, too, hate the aisle blockers. It just felt natural to stand in that position. I think I moved out of the way before I held anyone up, though.
Aargh. I just got back from the grocery store, where I was blocked 3 or 4 times by the same group of 4 girls. THey had no cart, only a handbasket apiece. The problem was that, being as it is move-in time at all the nearby colleges, they were doing their first grocery-shopping together as roommates. So they kept pausing everywhere and standing a semi-circle, blcoking the entire aisle, in order to discuss such pressing issues as : Did they need a Brita pitcher? If so, what size? Should they get the replacement filters now or later? Would they all drink skim milk? What kind of cereal did they all like?
Forgive me, but these are all things you could’ve decided at your place of residence, while making a shopping list. Then, you wouldn’t all have needed to come to the grocery store, and you wouldn’t all be blocking the fucking aisle.
Special Bonus Rant: To the woman ahead of me in line to pay, who insisted on placing all her groceries on the belt in a one-item line, thus wasting belt space and ensuring that I had to spend extra time holding my handbasket, waiting for space on the belt.
It’s okay to despise aisle blockers, but how about those using motorized handicarts? You know, those huge, sit-down motorized shopping carts that the disabled, elderly and morbidly obese drive. At the local Super Target, handicarts are rare. A couple of kilometers away at the Wal-Mart Super Center, though, there’s a disproportionately large amount of shoppers navigating handicarts … about one in 20 to one in 30.
Ler’s say a handicart driver is blocking the aisle in a manner that makes it impossible to get around them, even when there’s plenty of room to park the cart to allow others easy passage down an aisle. Is it politically incorrect to despise handi-cart users, when they’re engaged in the same acts of aisle blockage as a non-motirized shopping cart user, with the same lack of consideration to other shoppers?
The latest fashion in aisle blocking is the sport utility stroller. Yesterday, every aisle I went down, I was blocked by this huge, dark green, plastic, shopping cart-cum-stroller that was as big as a damn compact car. It didn’t help matters that mommy had given overweight little Bubba in the “driver’s” seat a package of jawbreakers with which he amused himself by dropping them on the floor & I almost broke my neck on one of them. You couldn’t even get around this thing; you had to turn around & go back if you wanted to get out of the aisle.
Wow. I’ve been shopping regularly for almost 30 years, and I have never had the problems you guys seem to run into regularly.
Oh sure, there are other people in the store, taking up space, doing their shopping, just like me. And sometimes they are doing so in a manner which impedes my progress. But I find that a smile will almost always work at getting them to move, and when I need to actually get their attention, I say “pardon me”, and again, a nice smile. And voila! The way is clear.
In 30 years, it has never failed.
I guess I’m just lucky.
You might want to cut them a little more slack, as those handicarts are a little harder to maneuver than a standard shopping cart, and the person using it might have other problems which are not as apparent.
On the rare occasions when my wife does any shopping, she is either using her own motorized scooter of one of those handicarts (depending on whether she’s shopping at the nearby Dominicks or got a ride to someplace further). Allowing for the fact that she’s also legally blind and therefore has a little trouble finding what she’s looking for, she does her best to leave room for people to get by while doing so, but sometimes she can’t help but block traffic briefly.
I actually was going to post to this thread earlier to mention the problems that my wife has had with aisle-blockers because of her cart. It’s amazing how many people swing their carts in front of her and get upset because she can’t swerve or brake instantly.
If you find an unattended cart blocking your way in the aisle, and you think a stealthy version of a ‘screw you’ would be appropriate, you could take a random item off the shelf and add it to the cart before moving it aside and carrying on.
Result: Inconsiderate shopper may well end up wondering why they bought some burgundy shoe polish, and resolve to keep an eye on their cart next time they shop.
[Hijack]
On another cart-related note… am I the only one who seems to find car parking spots that some inconsiderate cunt has left a shopping trolley in? My car is hard enough to get into some of those tight car spots (I have a '98 AU Falcon stationwagon - yes, it has powersteering, but it still steers like a pig cos it’s so long) without some bastiferous trolley sitting there, sneering at me with its lifeless metal mesh face… laughing at me almost!
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to get out of my car, get rid of some dodgy trolley, then get back into my car to park it, meanwhile MYSELF causing others to have their path blocked while I futz around ridding myself of the abandoned trolley…
Bonus points to trolley-abandoners for:
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Wedging the shopping trolley between a wall and the cement blocks against which car tyres might normally rest, making the trolley difficult to remove - many times I’ve had to lift the entire bloody thing over the cement block… how the hell did you get it in there in the first place???
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Having more than one wobbly wheel on the aforementioned trolley
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A rotting piece of … something… at the bottom of the trolley, resulting in a godawful smell.
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All of the above, leaving the trolley in a car park spot RIGHT NEXT TO THE GODDAM TROLLEY RETURN!!! You lazy fucks, just wheel the fucker to the bloody trolley return!!! How much of your life are you losing by doing this simple thing?
[/hijack]
Please return to your rants on aisle-blockers. For the record, I make nasty faces and curse under my breath, occasionally muttering stuff such as “if ONLY I could get past this stupid fuckin’ trolley maybe I could get to the stuff I came here to buy, you inconsiderate, ignorant mongrel!!!”. Occasionally. 
Max.
I employ this same tatic myself, and can suggest an enchancement: get a Meandering Spouse. My husband likes to look at things, which is the part of shopping I dispise. He is also mildly disabled and prefers to have a cart to lean on as he makes his slow, winding way through the store. I think of him as a sort of “home base” and then dart all over the place getting the things we need, swooping back down on him peridoically when my arms get full. The only drawback to this system is that eventually I get finished and he still has half the store to wander through.
The way I deal with it is, I say “excuse me”, give them a chance to repsond, couple of seconds, if no response, I start to move their cart.
If they are still oblivious to that fact that I’m moving them out of the way, I push the cart down the ailse a bit.
If it still appears that they have the lights on but nobody’s home, I’ll check out what they got, if they have stuff that I was gonna get, and haven’t yet, I’ll put it my cart and save me the time of going down every ailse.
If I have my son with me, I’ll have him ram their cart, and say “Oh! I’m sorry, kids nowadays, always in a hurry”. The collision usually knocks them out of their stupor, and most then realise that they are in the way and act accordingly.
And of course, I never block an ailse.
I love it! Stealing from somebody else’s cart. Never thought of it myself. It even makes them go back to get the item again. And if they block the aisle again and somebody else steals a bit more…
Do you wait near the tills with your empty cart, launching raids on other peoples’ to stock your own? Like a frigate bird harrassing terns? Is there the potential for an evolutionary arms race between supermarket gatherers and hunters? Will one or other side evolve camoflage, armour or maybe high speed carts? 
It’s not stealing if they haven’t paid for it yet.
It’s just opportunistic shopping.
I’ve never had problems like this. I do meet aisle blockers, however. Usually they come out of their blinders about the time I just reach out and move the flipping buggy out of the way. Saves time, and I do so hate to lose my temper.
I do love Ferris’ idea, though.
<hijack>
** CART WARS!! **
SDI, the supermarket defense initiative!
Carts using stealth technology, to appear as small as a handbasket!
Carts set to hover above the aisles, out of the range of other shopper’s predations! Recalled by 256-bit encrypted laser transmission! Vertical takeoff ability taken from Harrier jets!
All these available from your local ACME website! Tell 'em Wile E. sent you!
</hijack>
[sub] Sorry, stuck at work with little to do and an overactive imagination. [/sub]
This is one of my all time biggest pet peeves. I rarely go shopping, but when I do I usually run into these aisle blockers. And its almost always big fat women without makeup who look like they havent bathed in couple days and who are wearing sweatclothes to cover up their huge basketball size asses. And then they usually have kids who look inbred and are running around like a bunch of wild indians(with an apology to indians).
I was reading this thread, when I came up with this brilliant idea! Why not dump extra things in the AH’s cart! And then Ferrous had to come along and show me that I’m a slow thinker. And I just love imthjckaz’s idea. If you combine the two, you eventually end up with the Ah having an entire cart full of goods they never purchased.
My pet peeve is almost the exact opposite of this. Whenever I go to the supermarket, whatever I want, there will
always be someone standing in front of the display I want with their shopping cart parked lengthways against the display, blocking an area about six feet long so no-one else can get anything off the shelf!
If I find an aisle blocker, I note which position they’re facing, run around to the other side of the aisle and block their way out. I’ll do it throughout the store. Damn them for pissing me off in the first place.
I have too much time on my hands.