Hello everyone,
Well here I am in the long slumber of a Maine winter. It has been bone chilling, sub-zero cold this year and I've spent lots of time by the fire. I have however been lucky enough to get outside daily at my job. I've been working at the local grocery store since October and it's been eye opening in many respects. I've learned a lot about myself, my patience threshold, and about the public in general. You wouldn't think being a cashier would be all that challenging and from a physical perspective it's not. From a relational one it can be mind boggling. Someone once told me, as we labored together at a restaurant, "Never over-estimate the general public". I remember her comment daily. Overall our customers are pretty good. They seem to be able to handle themselves in the store, most are pretty polite and congenial....then they go outside. Something happens in the vestibule between the store and the parking lot that seems to make them loose their minds and their manners. It is some twilight zone type phenomenon I have yet to figure out but it does lessen my optimism about people sometimes. Prepare yourselves for my grocery cart rant. Any of you who have worked where you have to collect grocery carts will feel me here. Please understand that I know it's my job to collect carts and that there are some of our customers who have disabilities and are not able to do more than they do. I have no problem with either of those things. What I do have a problem with are the following. If you do any of these I still love you but here's the world from the collectors perspective.
1. We have 2 sizes of carts, large and walker style short ones. They look nothing alike and there is no alternate universe I am aware of where they would fit together. Every day people try to jam them together anyway. I find them jumbled together in the corral (the ones that make it to the corral) like a cyclone deposited them there where I must then wade through, re-order, pull apart, push together correctly and then separate and tether them in order to bring them back to the store to start the cycle all over again. Needless to say this takes a lot more time than if people put them in the corral by size and actually pushed their cart into the one in front of it.
2. People who are unable to locate the apparently invisible carriage return corral 12 feet from their parking space. This baffles me. They are enormous, covered in signage and available to the public. No special training is required for use yet people seem to prefer leaving their cart next to their car where during the next soft breeze it will careen into the closest available parked car or, God forbid, me.
3. Snowbanks are not authorized carriage return areas. Ok, just work with me here. Is it really easier to heave your cart up into a snowbank than to roll it across the flat parking area and into the corral? Really?
4. Hanging your cart off the rail of the carriage corral. Ok, I'm pretty strong and agile for a chick my age but come on. It's not a coat rack.
5. Parking at the far reaches of the parking lot and not returning your cart to a corral. Yup, I get that you want the exercise, or maybe you don't want to park near lots of other people but hey, I'm getting plenty of exercise already so I don't need you to strategically plan my next workout routine, okay?
6. I'm pushing a huge line of carts that took me 20 minutes to collect from all non-corral areas of the lot. It's freezing out. The lot is slippery. I'm on a roll. You make me stop on the incline so you can pass and I have to practically get a running start to get them going again on the hill. Thank you.
7. Your cart is not a trash receptacle. Please use designated cans for your trash. I really don't want or have the means to collect your beer cans, fast-food lunch leftovers, shopping lists, used sanitary wipes, leftover bakery cookies half slimed by your toddler or your wet shopping flyers. Nope, I'm good.
8. You're done shopping at our store. You spot the mall next door. You think, hey, I'll go over there. Hey, I think I'll bring my cart with me. No. The cart is not available for road trips, especially since no one ever brings them back and I get to go to said mall to rescue them. It's still freezing (or raining, or snowing) and I'm too busy with 1 through 7 anyway.
9. Motorized scooters. These are available for in the store for customers who have a hard time walking. They have a huge sign on them, facing the rider that says IN STORE USE ONLY in red. This is apparently indecipherable because they always take them out to the parking lot and leave them there where the battery dies and I have to manually haul them in backwards to charge them up. FYI, they are not light. They also will not run without sitting on them so if it's raining or snowing I get a nice wet seat for a couple of hours. Also it takes forever (think Dr. Nefario from Despicable Me).
10. Leaving your cart right outside the entrance or exit door. No. Ok, last week I was going out to get carts and the woman in front of me with her service dog could not leave the store because some stooge decided to leave their cart in front of the door as they were leaving. Really? You couldn't have left it in the hall 5 feet behind you?
11. I hadn't planned to go to 11 but I just remembered this and it didn't fit anywhere else. Scenario: you have a shopping cart. You have one light to medium weight bag in it. You're not disabled. You're not carrying anything else. Do you really need to wheel the bag to your car half-way to timbucktwo and leave it there? Could you not just take the bag and leave the cart in the store? Seriously.
Ok, For anyone I have offended I am sorry. I will not say I have never left my cart near my car during horrific weather or when I had an infant in the car and the corral was out of sight of said babe. I have been guilty for reasons of my own. But now that I've been on the other side I am much more aware and try to do what the store is silently but politely asking of me by putting the corrals and signs there for me to use.
And please, no one write to me and tell me that if people didn't leave their carts teens all over the land would be out of work. That's just not true. Collecting them from the corrals and the handicapped spaces takes plenty of time, especially when the store is busy. 1-11 is just telling us you don't care. Also, there are plenty of us older women out there as well, so if you're way younger than me and just being lazy, I'm gonna notice.
OK, that was a big rant. Next time maybe I will give you a cashier perspective just for fun. I like my job and like I said most people are nice. It's nice to know the regular customers and I've had a lot of good laughs with them as well. Also, I've had a lot of laughs without them, which is part of the ongoing charm and mystery of people everywhere. I am grateful to have my job and to have great co-workers.
Happy grocery shopping!
