Tag Shopping Cart

The Not Quite So Bad Smelling Pot

Michael Leave a comment

My last post was the bad side of a potpourri of encounters at the local retailers. This post is the better smelling side of that pot. It’s still a bit rotten but it has a less pungent odor about it.

On top of this list of things that don’t smell quite right (or if you prefer, things that make you go hmm) are shopping carts. Shopping carts themselves are not new fodder for the RRSB. Type “shopping cart” into my search bar and you can relive tales of shoppers with carts, carts without shoppers, crazy people with carts and crazy carts out to maim me. (My personal favorite that one. Relive it specifically at “Handicap Hate Crime,” (June 19, 2014)). But what put shopping carts on this particular list is that they officially are now everywhere, and some of it is intentional.

An intentional, yet questionable placement of shopping carts is now at the greeting card store. I’m ambivalent about greeting cards. I like them well enough. I like the idea of sending and getting real mail even if some far afield professional has written the sentiment. They fill a void that mere mortals like me could not and I for one feel accomplished just putting my name after somebody else’s perfectly chosen words. But I’m not so enamored with greeting cards that I feel the need to greet every occasion with a professional acknowledgement. Apparently the greeting card store people feel differently. So differently that they believe so many people will be buying so many of their cards in a single transaction that they have taken the step to make one’s shopping experience less physically exhausting and are now providing shopping cards in which to haul about your selection of selections as you go about selecting their cards. It is clearly just another overstated case of exaggerated hyperbole. Indubitably.

On the other hand, at stores where shopping with carts is advisable and often indeed a necessity, we are now faced with a decision as we pass through the doors that open automatically (and just in case you were unsure of that they are clearly so labeled but that’s a post for a different day). Of course I am talking about our basic supermarkets. At my closest go-to store the vestibule has 6 differently sized wheeled carts (one motorized) and two carry basket variants. For some reason the sporty compact models seem to be the most popular and never about when I need to pick up a dozen or so articles. Thus I am forced to wobble about poorly balanced (as if I wasn’t to be begin with) with a too small basket held in the crook of my arm or to reach deep into the void at the checkout line as I rummage for those 12 items in the bottom of the cart sized suitably to carry a month’s worth of groceries for a family of 4 (plus 2 pets). Where are all the cute little carts? They are being wheeled about by the family of four (pets safely locked in the over-sized SUV idling at the end of parking row 3) sagging under the weight of the soon to be purchased vittles and the pair of matching mini-monsters (aka 3 year olds who prefer to be at home in bed). It is clearly a case of bad choices. Several.

The last petal in our pot comes at the consideration of the local home improvement store. Today my needs that can be satisfied at a lumber, hardware, plumbing, electrical, lighting, appliance, paint, paper, carpet, and appliance store and nursery (the plant version, not the refuge for 3 year olds taking a break from mom and dad) can be met at that very nursery (the plant version). My biggest takeaways from the lawn and garden department begin at the garden half and end on my patio in the forms of plants, pots, and potting soil. Plants or seeds that will someday grow up to be young strapping plants and pots with a simple stand for the pots after the plants have been therein potted are light enough that a supermarket style shopping cart handles them with ease. But then there is that bag of potting soil. First I shouldn’t be lifting anything heavier than a five pound bag of donut holes and second I don’t want to be lifting anything heavier than a five pound bag of donut wholes. A flat bed cart that I can drag the bag of soil onto from the stack o’ bags would be ideal. But no, even though there is an entire store of wood, concrete, and refrigerator-freezers that have their own special carts, in the garden center you have only the extra-large version of the supermarket shopping cart that just ate my twelve items (no waiting) in the preceding paragraph.  It is clearly a choice of too many choices inside and not enough outside. By design.

At here you have it, today’s mélange just this side of rotten.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Handicap Hate Crime

Michael 2 Comments

We’ve never actually said who we are, where we are, what we do, and other such identifying characteristics.  It wasn’t necessarily intentional.  It just never came up.  After a few years and a few hundred posts it became something just not said.  This week something happened so heinous we may change that just so we can make sure nobody ever, never, never, ever patronizes a particular store.  But first, a story.  And with apologies, a somewhat longish story.

Recent events have slowed He of We from his usual vibrant self.  There are days when his vibrancy is right up there but none so up there that he can vibe without the help of a cane, and not for more than a couple hundred feet at a time.  Thus he has entered the ranks of the temporary handicapped placard people.

All of We (He, She, Sons and Daughter) have always respected the wheel-chaired icon.  So much respect goes to those who are somewhat diminished but still find it in themselves to continue to work, shop, and play that even now, if He of We finds himself in a particularly good day and there is only one spot outlined in blue, he will leave it for someone else and find a relatively close general parking place.  So much respect goes to those in need that when He sees someone in obvious violation of the perk (for example, the youngster who drops a handicapped person off at the door, tells him or her that he’ll come back to the door for pick-up when he sees him or her emerge from the store, and then goes off to take a handicapped spot to wait at), He of We offers to put said violator in compliance with the rules if he doesn’t move.

But we digress.

Earlier this very week on a particularly trying day, he needed to stop at a local grocery store for a handful of items.  This was not the store he usually patronizes but it was one whose weekly ads he scans for that phenomenal loss leader that makes stopping after work worth the few minutes to wander along the dingy aisles.  This particular store has their handicapped spots around the corner from the main entrance.  Those immediately in front of the store doors are general parking.  Fortunately this store is so poorly patronized that at least one of those spots is always available.  Not that day.  So for the first time he parked in one of the three designated spots around the corner, displayed his placard, struggled out of the driver’s seat, crossed the parking lot, and snatched a buggy on the way in.

He noticed the shopping carts were new from his last visit there.  He also noticed that at the inside of the front of the cart, in the place where most supermarkets would make hay with advertisements, these carried a warning.  Yes, a warning.  “Warning,” it said, “the wheels on this state of the art shopping cart are designed to lock and render the cart immobile if the cart is removed from the security perimeter of [name of store]’s  parking lot.”  He supposed it made some sense.  The store is in an area just as urban as sub and he imagined that many very local shoppers push their laden carts all the way to their apartments and return with them on some future shopping day.  But not his problem.  He had specials to exploit.

He proceeded through the dingy aisles, made his few purchases, paid his bill, and because of the weight of the items purchased, elected to leave the now bagged products in the cart and wheel it to his designated parking spot.  You can see where this is going, can’t you?  He got about five feet from his car, absolutely right in the middle of the travel lane, and the wheels locked.  And boy, did they lock.  That cart was not going anywhere!

It would not budge forward.  It would not budge backward.  There appeared to be no obvious switches.  Worse, there was no audible alarm so no one came running to help (or to prosecute).  Not even the buggy boy who at about 20 feet away was apparently far enough not to hear the plea for help.  So he, in his not fully capacitated state, did what he could do.  He removed his bags, one by one, trekked them to his car, and left the disabled cart right in the middle of the travel lane.

As he pulled away he checked his rear view mirror and saw that the buggy boy had finally noticed the unattended shopping cart and was attempting to corral it back with the rest of the herd.  Actually what he was doing was dragging it, kicking it, slapping its handle, and probably swearing at it but since it was at least 20 feet away from anyone, nobody heard his calls for help.

We think we’ll continue to leave our location a bit of mystery.  Actually, it’s not that much of mystery but in fairness to the store we’ll just stay “those reality blog people” and give the store owners more benefit of a greater doubt than they undoubtedly deserve.  Perhaps the store owners didn’t know that the lot designer had a thing against handicapped people or that the security system installer didn’t realize that those blue spaces around the corner from the entrance would ever actually be used, or that the shopping cart salesperson hadn’t might have bamboozled them with carts that randomly proved their mettle.

We’ll just say that if you are anyplace where the handicapped spots are some 30 to 40 feet from the door and you have to cross the path of 6 to 8 general parking spaces, including 4 that are immediately in front of the entrance, go shop somewhere else.  The $4 savings on 12 K-Cups just isn’t worth it.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Walk This Way

Michael Leave a comment

This is it.  Today is the last shopping day before Christmas.   We know tomorrow is only Christmas Eve but you can hardly count that as a shopping day.  Christmas Eve we’re going to relax.  Even if it kills us.  And don’t forget, Christmas Eve is a Saturday this year so every clueless male in America, maybe in the world, (as opposed to almost every clueless male) will be at the mall still unsure of what to get for his wife, mother, girlfriend, daughter, secretary, AA, paramour, clerk, grandmother, personal assistant, or Aunt Whatshername in Mineola. 

However you want to count, there are only two days until Christmas.  And each is going to be filled with people filling sidewalks, and stores, and restaurants, and bars.  Probably especially bars the later it gets but that’s a different post.

All those people out there and sometimes it seems not a single one of them schooled in the pedestrian law of walking in public.  Even He of We sometimes gets a little distracted when allowed to push the shopping cart and wanders down a different aisle than She of We.  But what we’re talking about here is different.  Many people are distracted in stores but add the glitz and the shimmer of the holiday decorations and even those never distracted lose focus.  And the extra traffic isn’t helping.  We think part of the problem is that nobody ever puts that cell phone away.  It wouldn’t be so bad if people were talking on the phone while trying to wind their way through the cosmetics counters at the department store.  No, they are texting while trying to wind their way through that maze.  Add three shopping bags, two trailing children, and a clerk spraying fragrance samples on passersby and oncoming traffic doesn’t stand a chance.  But we digress.

As long as we brought it up, what it is with people and their shopping carts.  First of all, a shopping cart is not a suitable substitute for a wheeled walker, particularly if you don’t use one with which to walk under normal circumstances.  Both of We have informed our children that if any of them sees either of us hunched over a shopping cart, arms resting on the handle about the elbows, propelling it forward at a pace a that would cause a snail to die of boredom, we are to be shot and/or sent directly to the nursing home at the bottom of their lists.  If you are one of those please leave our blog now and nobody will get hurt. 

A shopping carts are proliferating.  Once found only in supermarkets these little wheeled obstructions are now in almost every store across the globe.  Clearly someone is making a killing in the shopping cart market.  Hopefully whoever that someone is has gotten a killer Christmas bonus this year.  But given that shopping carts are flourishing so, we’d think people would be able to drive them better.  We find carts left at the end of aisles, in the middle of aisles, with children left to guard the last of the boxed fruitcake, blocking the animated Christmas hats (sorry, we’ll probably not get to that topic this year but we have it on our list for next year’s holiday posts), and left in the line to the checkout counter with a note that the driver has made a quick trip to housewares and will return at 1:30.  Those actually pushing carts often have their eyes either glued to the top shelf as they pass by at warp speed or on their latest text.

Once shopping is done at Store #1 it is traditional to leave their cart in their custody.  Clearly we must be unaware of some “winter rules” that allow people to keep that cart for their entire shopping day.  He or We was out just yesterday in a local mall and he noticed someone pushing a cart from a store in the shopping center two miles away.  Curious, most curious.   

Eventually even those people will finish up for the day and head to the car with their holiday haul.  Our advice to everybody who ever pushed a shopping cart through a parking lot is to please remember that most cars are bigger and heavier than your shopping cart.  One should not consider playing chicken with a family of four in a minivan loaded with Christmas presents on Christmas Eve Eve.  Not a good idea.  Our second piece of advice is once you empty your packages into your vehicle, please return you cart all the way to the cart corral.  Parking is already at a premium this time of year (we know, we already did that post).  Don’t make it worse by just leaving your cart in the spot that used to be your car.  Walk the extra 50 paces there and back and put it where it belongs.

As long as we’re walking out in the parking lot please watch where you are going.  Every mall and shopping center, every mega-mart and restaurant now have those striped lines from parking land to sidewalk land urging drivers to stop for walkers but not saying anything to the walkers.  It’s true every state now has a law that drivers must yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk.  That’s in a crosswalk, not approaching a crosswalk, close to the crosswalk, or anywhere in the same parking lot as a crosswalk.  It’s still a good idea to look both ways before crossing.  We understand looking both ways may mean not finishing the text but the life you save may be your own.  Make it worth the effort.

Two more days, each an adventure in negotiating through the aisles of the Christmas sale remnants, fighting your way to the checkout counter, and dragging it all across the parking lot to your car, if you can find it on the first try.  

We suggest you relax on Christmas Eve.  Even if it kills you.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?