As far as I know, there is always someone paid to bus the tables (even mall food courts), but I was raised better than to just leave my garbage if there are garbage cans provided. Fast food/mall food courts often get very busy, and the table bussers get behind at times. It is virtually no effort for me to clean up after myself, so I do. But that’s probably my ancient upbringing asserting itself. I was raised to occasionally think of other people.
As for the cart thing, last week I got a little payback on that.
So this kid, clearly in college, popped collar and khakis, is finishing unloading his cart into his trunk as I’m walking through the parking lot. He’s maybe 15’ from the cart corral. So he grabs the cart, takes a step, and shoves it randomly in the opposite direction from the corral, missing me by about six inches because he wasn’t looking. It stops by slamming into a van with handicap placard and blocks the other handicap spot. I yell something to the effect of “what the hell was that?”, and then it’s revenge time.
He’s taking his sweet time adjusting his hair in the mirror, and eventually after about 30 seconds or so his backup lights come on. He checks the mirror…
to see me, pushing his cart back to the corral with a friendly smile and upraised middle finger. Six inches behind his pristine painted bumper. Taking a small step maybe every ten seconds.
Glad he was in such a flaming hurry, he waited an extra five minutes to leave that day because, well, I had nothing better to do.
I put the cart in the corral when I was done, too. =P
This was your mistake. You should have left the cart behind his car.
I have done this. I came out of the store one day carrying a single bag, no cart, and saw a lady finish unloading her cart into her trunk. Close her trunk lid and then push the cart over behind my car and walk around to get in and drive away. :eek:
I calmly pushed it back behind her car, flipped it upside down, got in my car and left.
What was her reaction? Or did you leave before she had one?
I hope she noticed because I might not, and run over the cart. But I guess that would be my stupid fault? *
I agree with you in general, but placing the cart at the intersection of spaces doesn’t obstruct them. I almost always go to the cart corral but I don’t get as angry at people who leave the carts at the intersections rather than right out in a space.
*This would never happen because no one would have a reason to get back at me. I hope.
I don’t quite get this. Why not unload groceries, then take child and cart back, and then walk back with child? Yeah, I know it is a lot of walking, but no more than before. Is there a reason the kid has to be unloaded first?
Depending on the age and activity level of the kid, it may not be safe to leave him alone in the front of the cart while you load the groceries from the back. I couldn’t have done that with my son when he was between 9 months and 2 1/2 or so. He’d have been up and out of the cart in no time, unless I was right there in front of him to prevent it. I had to get him out of the cart and stowed in the car seat (which he couldn’t unfasten) before I could unload the groceries.
So I would have had to fasten him into the car seat, unload the groceries, take him out of the car seat, put him back into the cart, move the cart to the corral, carry him back to the car, and fasten him back into the carseat. And I had 2 kids, less than a year apart in age (and one was/is disabled and can’t walk.)
Personally, I always just parked as close to the cart corral as I could, stowed the kids in their car seats, unloaded the groceries and returned the cart to the corral while the kids sat in the car. Even if the corral was 10 - 15 cars away it only took a moment… Don’t know what I’d have done if some Nosey Parker had called the cops on me for this. Laughed in their faces, probably.
Of course, my kids are now 20 and 21 – maybe there were fewer Nosey Parkers around when they were babies.
If you leave them alone in the car for half a minute while you take the cart back, that is hardly child endangerment – though on a hot day I’d be leaving doors or windows open, just for their comfort.
This is why I offer to take the cart from mothers struggling with a couple of toddlers. I usually do this when I arrive at the store but sometimes I offer to take it back to the cart rack when I take mine.
Not even that long…lock them in the car, get to the cart corral, go back, hop in and go. Unless you drop dead of a heart attack in between, we’re talking max 10-15 seconds.
Or, you can do what we did when the kids got older…they took the cart back to the store/cart corral. Something about being a Big Kid and all.
Gotta laugh at that one. Seriously, what the fuck lady!?
Or, someone with a dying husband might roll in to pick up his meds, and this bitch’s cart has rolled into the spot, so that Saintly Wife starts to pull in, then has to pull back out when she sees the obstruction. Or the rogue cart might roll into Saintly Wife’s car while she’s in buying the medication.
Besides, it’s not like I blew a whistle and said, “Hey, cunt, put your cart back!” I did my best to play act like she must not have seen the cart return, and I was just being helpful.
For the record, I don’t think I’ve ever left a cart out in a lot. Just right now, I have a four-year-old in tow, I’m pregnant, and I have a stress fracture in my foot, and I put the damn cart back. If I don’t think I can do it, I will go to the nice store where they offer to help you to your car, and take them up on it. People who say they are too handicapped to put a cart away, but are just fine to go shopping and wheel the cart out to the car, strike me much as the people who decide to go out to eat, but say they can’t afford a tip.
As for having kids, yeah, Brynda, I always take the child with me to return the cart, then put her in the carseat after. In any case, I don’t think it’s child abuse to leave the kid in the car, within eyesight for a minute, but it is true that sometimes in NC summers, it would be dangerous to put a child in the car without turning the car on and leaving the doors open for a minute or two.
Seriously.
I think her concept of manners was “Make room for me me me.”