More news from our entitlement culture

I always put biggies in the corral, except one time a couple of weeks ago, I was coming out of the grocery store, pushed the buggie up against the back of my truck to keep it from rolling, and proceeded to load the groceries. There was a lady doing the same at a car parked right next to mine. I noticed no one was parked in front of me, so I figured I'd pull straight out so I don't have to worry about the lady next to me.

Just as I was pulling forward, I realized that I'd forgotten all about the buggie I'd left against my bumper. I looked in the rear view mirror in time to see the lady lunging for it as it rolled towards her car.

I was like, "Oh Crap! Shoes you idiot! I should get out and app..." Then I saw the look she was giving me. "ABORT! ABORT! NNNNNEEEEEEEEEOWWWWWWW"

In a wonderfully hippie-dippy SoCal synchronicity between respect for the disabled and pragmatism, the supermarkets in my area not only employ at least one mentally handicapped kid whose sole purpose is to help folks load their groceries in their cars and then collect the carts afterward, but many of them also allow folks who've walked to the supermarket to take the carts out of the parking lot -!

There's a guy with a flatbed truck whose livelihood depends on cruising the neighborhood collecting the carts that people generally leave in front of their houses and returning them to the supermarkets/chain pharmacies for a small fee-per-cart.

Everybody wins.

Except the fucking loudmouth I once saw yelling at an elderly woman for leaving her cart in front of her apartment building...across the street from his house. Apparently the mere sight of an empty shopping cart in front of someone else's property was enough to give him the vapors. Worse, his kids were in the yard watching all this, probably thinking, Jeez, why does Dad always have to act like an asshole?

He quit yelling and stalked away when I stopped to watch, though. Smarmy sumbitch...

You either wheel it back to the corral, or are an asshole who should expect random strangers to berate you and pelt you with rotten fruit.

But I'm a civilized, peaceful being, living in enlightened modern times. So what I usually do is either grab one of those stray carts on the way in or offer to take one from someone who just finished loading their car, then use it for my own shopping. People are surprisingly grateful for that.

Around here, people aren't supposed to take the shopping carts away from the stores, but some do. Then they leave them at the bus stop, or on the sidewalk or someplace else. It happens at the grocery near my home, too. There's an interstate between my house and the grocery store, but I've found their shopping carts outside the entrance to my subdivision.

Occasionally, when I have time, I'll load up any lost carts I see and haul them back to the grocery. I figure a lost cart may ultimately cost me more at the store at some point, so I figure why not...

The store people are usually appreciative, but a lot of times they're pretty "meh" when I pull up and ask where they want me to put the carts (some of the ones I've rescued have been off brushy areas and need a good cleaning).

The last time the manager on duty was actually a little dismissive, so I haven't rounded up any strays for a while.

My thinking is that if you walk home with a cart, you should walk back with it or another in your complex next time you go.

One cart in front of an apartment building doesn't really bother me, it's the three or four in front of the same unit that pisses me off. How hard is it to not know you're going to need a cart before you leave the house to go to the grocery store?!?!

I'm guessing that if it weren't for the understanding that the guy with the flatbed would be coming around eventually, people in my neighborhood would do exactly that. As it is, it's a nice little ecosystem...except for the loudmouth. But there's always one...

Wheel a shopping cart home? Do you people live in hobo communes or something? For fuck's sake, if you can't carry it home without stealing a shopping cart, consider driving to the store. Or attaching a trailer to your bicycle.

Meh, in the area of the city I'm talking about while the block with the grocery store does have a small underground parking garage, most people just walk. Space is a premium so I guess it's cheaper to buy some extra carts than pay for more parking.

Also the carts are the little small half ones... gotta be able to fit them on the escalator to get between the floors of the grocery store.

Sorry to be a buzz kill, but I'm betting that's not at all what they were thinking...unfortunately.

I remember seeing multiple carts around the apartment complexes I lived in as a kid, in neighborhoods where few people had vehicle access. My mom not being inconsiderate or a hoodrat would plan ahead before shopping and save ten bucks for a cab if the three of us couldn't carry all the bags.

Nowaday, I've seen a lot of places put systems in place so that once the cart goes beyond a certain point, it'll stop moving automatically.

Oooh. I like it.

Yeah, Smart & Final does that. They're the only ones around here who can't get with the local ecosystem. Some of the local "entrepreneurs" have figured out where along the parking lot wall the system is weakest and simply heave the carts over the wall and run like hell.

S&F's out new carts at $200-500 a pop, whereas the smarter merchants just pay the guy with the flatbed a buck to return the carts.

And Uncle Albert wants to put him out of business.

With Garamet, when Paulie shows up for the weekly "protection money", that isn't racketeering, that is "the local ecosystem."

Nah, Paulie's never been further west than Vegas. And he only ended up there because the Dominicans drove him out of the Bronx.

They're officers aren't they?

I need the handicapped space, because Zel needs the extra room they provide to deal with my wheelchair and oxygen tanks. It's a real chore when we are forced to park in a regular space and try to organize without touching the car next to us.

It's extra irritating when it's some able-bodied pregnant woman who took the "van space" who is perfectly fine and just spent 6 hours walking miles and miles around a mall no problem but cries blue murder at the idea of parking a few more feet away.

Healthy people in the handicapped bathroom stalls are also a pain in the arse. Managing an oxygen tank in a tiny stall sucks.

Back when I was married, my then wife didn't drive. Didn't even have a license. We lived in a townhouse that was only one block away from a grocery store. She almost always did the grocery shopping, usually right after she got home from work (she got home about an hour before I did). She had her own personal shopping cart that we basically just kept in our fenced in back yard. She took it when she did her shopping, returned with the goodies, put the cart behind the fence, and usually threw a tarp over it to keep it dry . We had that same cart for the entire 18 months I lived there...

So we have Uncle ["Cyclists Should DIAF"] Albert suggesting that people who don't have cars "attach a trailer to their bicycles." To make them easier targets, obviously.

He's also decided that people are "stealing" shopping carts, even though the supermarkets, at least in SoCal, where he does not live, have ruled otherwise, and he'd rather the supermarkets pay thousands of dollars to install security systems to lock the cart wheels (and pass those costs on to the consumer) than encourage individuals to solve the problem themselves.

Why does UA hate free enterprise?

Because he's the only working class hero in America... DUH!

That and if he keeps up the refrains of "Napoleon is always right." and "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." then he may get his (justifiable) little bit more than the rest of the proles for keeping them in line.

Around here it is usually illegal Mexican immigrants and recent southeast Asian immigrants (mostly Vietnamese or Laotians) who can be seen wheeling those shopping carts for miles with a couple of kids in tow. Typically they dump them in the street in front of their house and you just know they used food stamps to buy all that junk food.

sometimes you don't have a choice ---- when you gotta go you gotta go. if I really have to go and if all that is available is a handicapped stall, i'm going to use it