SHOPPING CARTS

"There is no dire emergency. Do you accept your duty to return the cart even though you gain nothing?" - Unknown

Watching what people do with their shopping carts can tell you a lot about who they are.

For example, have you ever watched a person just leave their shopping cart in an empty parking spot rather than return the cart to the rack?

I have. And I hate to say it but in my younger years, I was that person.

Watching people do that now makes my blood fucking boil. But what is more important than getting pissed off is trying to understand why someone would do that.

Are they in a hurry?

Do they not care?

Do they believe that it’s someone else’s responsibility to return the cart to the provided racks?

Or are they just an asshole?

After having worked as a parking lot associate (or as I call it a "Shopping Cart Cowboy"), I watched a lot of people handle shopping carts. Many of them were courteous enough to return their carts to the racks. Some would leave a cart next to a rack for whatever reason. Others would just leave the cart where they unloaded it and carry on with their day.

Regardless of how a person handles the situation, I think we all can agree that returning the cart to the rack is the right move. But there are a lot of people who still do not give a fuck. If it doesn’t affect their life then who cares right?

The truth is, it affects somebody. Sure, there are people who get paid to gather carts and return them to the front of the store. But until you have worked in a situation like that, I doubt that thought even occurs to a lot of people.

Another example of this is a restaurant. If you have bussed tables before in a restaurant, chances are you will organize the plates and trash so that the busser can do his/her job more easily. Yeah, we are paying (tipping) that person to clean our table but to let someone know that we appreciate them by helping them out a little bit is never a bad thing.

Or what about the ramrod at the gym who doesn't re-rack his/her weights? The amount of times I've watched a tiny woman trying to use a machine or rack and having to unload all of the weights some lunk left behind is sickening. So as a gym patron, what do you do? Maybe you convince yourself that it's not your problem. But you also have the capability to help put the weights away before some elderly man or lady has to do it.

The fact of the matter is that we as people should try to leave things better than how we found them.

If there’s another shopping cart on your way to returning your own cart, grab it and take it with you.

Do you have to do that? No. But do you feel worse about yourself for helping someone else out? Definitely not.

There are always small opportunities to serve others and set an example. And these small opportunities not only make us feel better, but also get us closer to becoming the person that we know we can be.

So moral of the story is this, don’t be an asshole and put your shopping cart back!