I’m not sure I’m following here. The only time I ever saw Hanna-Barbera pterodactyls, they were either being used as airliners or (small versions) hedge trimmers. And they never screamed, they just sort of whined about what a crappy job they had.
Wait a minute. These aren’t Land of the Lost pterodactyls, are they?
Hey, you dodged a real live crazy person. Count yourself fortunate it could have been much, much worse. Letting her have the cart was by far the best solution.
Sno-balls have a nice heft to them, as do Ho-hos. Stay away from individual fruit pies, because they have corners and can cause damage. You just want to drive the crazy person away, not hurt her. (Although, if the latter is your aim, so to speak, I recommend Brazilian corned beef. Those cans fit nicely in the palm, and you can get a good curveball working.)
I’m surprised no one else has mentioned this. If it was me, I would have followed her around the store. As long as you do that, she most likely won’t put anything back in an attempt to save face, I would have enjoyed watching her checking out with all my gorceries, and watching over her shoulder the whole time to get rid of my items when I wasn’t looking.
Try working retail when you have a cartful of crap to put back on the shelves, are called away for five minutes, and when you return the stuff you had in the cart is all on the floor and the cart is gone.
Waay back when Mrs. Nott worked in a supermarket, they had a rash of those, about once a week. They told the stockboys to watch for it, and they caught the guy. It turned out his wife would send him to the store with a list. He’d go to a bar and slug down rum & Cokes for about an hour, then rush to the store. He’d grab an unattended cart and go check out. His wife was always peeved that he seemed to pay no attention to the list.
This sounds like a new fun hobby. We’re always trying to decide on what to eat for dinner and end up eating the same old things. Now I could just go pot-luck at the grocery store, genius.
My brother used to pull that when we were kids (60’s & 70’s. Before the super mega grocery stores). When we were bored waiting for our parents shopping he’d put stuff in other peoples carts. I remember once he put some expensive candy in a ladies cart who had a kid with her. When she discovered the candy at the checkout she clouted the kid right then & there for trying to pull a fast one on her. (this was back when you could still smack your kid in public and get away with it). You could hear the kid bawling through out the store 'I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it" coupled with the woman yelling “don’t you lie to me you little sneak!”
We laughed so hard we almost choked on the candy we stole out of the pickamix bin.
For all those who say they would have taken the cart back: Really? You would have wrestled the grocery cart away from the crazy person? I hear they bite when threatened. I wouldn’t risk it.
What would have been really embarassing would have be to escalate the argument over the cart only to realize it wasn’t yours.
I did that at Walmart one time. Walked away from the cart for about 2 minutes, came back to where I thought it was to find a lady with mostly the same items as I had. I started to confront her about taking my cart and just before things got hot I spied my cart out of the corner of my eye about 2 aisles down … many apologies later I still felt like a total @ss.