In the good old days, when a shopping cart had completed its mission, it squeaked its way back to the store. But then the “Return Your Cart Here” areas started popping up and shopping carts have been getting lazier and lazier ever since.
I was in a store’s very large parking lot the other day and there were carts just chilling out everywhere as if they had nowhere to go. Some made a half-assed attempt and returned two of their wheels to one of those lot islands with a concrete beach. But most couldn’t be bothered to do that.
The Albertsons in Idaho Falls where I snapped these photos actually has relatively motivated shopping carts compared to Wal Mart for example. At this Albertson’s, the carts usually find their way back on their own or through the brute force of brave shoppers and heroic employees. I love the Idaho Falls Today website but this love is not unconditional . I’m just not willing to go onto the moron-infested active battlefield that is a Wal Mart parking lot just to take a photo of a slothful shopping cart.
Mothers with infants, the elderly, and handicapped aside, who are these people that refuse to teach these lazy carts a lesson by not forcing them back to where they belong?
It’s not a problem. It’s not something that usually incontinences me personally. It is something that makes my “The Things that Annoy me the Least” list. What some thing that makes your list?
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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When the new Fred Meyer opened in ‘97, I was hired as a Parcel. One of my jobs was to gather carts, and it took most of my working hours to do so, and I was happy to do it. After a while, my feet really started to hurt and had calluses on them and I could hardly walk, thanks partly to lazy shoppers not returning the carts to the appropriate place. I had to quit my job, as I couldn’t stand or walk for months due to my sore feet. But, some people will never return carts, no matter what. It is just something we have to live with, sadly enough.
What a sad story NE1. I hope your feet are better now. I was so excited to buy my first new car more than 3 years ago. I am careful about where I park so it doesn’t get door dinged. The only dent it has is from where some lazy ass shopper didn’t return their cart at Fred Meyer. The cart either got pushed or the wind blew it into my car real hard. You know what will make people think you are crazy? Don’t just take your cart back to the cart corral. Take it all the way back into the store. It freaks people out sometimes.
Snapper of Towels, you have been grossly misled. The sign on the cart jail clearly implies that your safety is at risk if the carts are not kept incarcerated. They pretend to be lazy, but they aren’t. They wait, patiently, for victims, as Guest_225 has so sadly discovered. They can move of their own accord; “pushed by someone”? “The wind” blew them? Oh puhleease! They are opportunists! Turn your back on them one of these days and one of them just MAY take a dislike to you enough to ram into you and you WILL experience that inconvenience of incontinence!
Yes, those crafty carts are many things, but don’t call them lazy. They know what you’re driving. Beware!
I don’t know how many of you have been to Lewiston but the carts in some of those parking lots are downright crazy. I was shopping at the Kmart there and I apparently made my cart mad because after I took my last bag out it bolted away from me. The parking lot is on a hill and the cart was gliding down that hill as fast as it could. It then took out its wrath at what appeared to be about 20 mph on an unsuspecting parked truck about 50 yards away.
Unlike the new and improved cart corrals which have directions and mechanical controls on them, Waremart’s corrals used to be open ended pipe constructions built with a logical design that any right thinking person would use properly if they had half a brain rattling around inside their skull.
If you push your cart into the right side of a partitioned corral that stretches from parking lane to parking lane, the corral becomes a useful collection device. Building corrals like these in a line accross the lot made mass collection a snap for Waremart employees. But, if everyone packs their carts in both sides it’s like putting the carts in a pile. Which is why Waremart had to put signs and mechanical controls on them making people use them in the way they were intended.
Or maybe they had to do that because it was possible to stand in the middle of one parking lane, and with the proper application of force, and a little guidance, you could shove an oversized Waremart cart into an empty corral fast enough to make it clear the first corral, shoot across the parking lane, enter the next cart corral, and depending on how cleanly the cart entered the first gate make it all the way across the next parking lane, nosing into the third corral.
I was never able to get a cart to do more than dribble out of the second corral, but I have heard or heroic shoves that put carts well into the third corral. Then there were unfortunate meetings of carts and cars between corrals, but we need not go there.
They put controls on Waremart’s corrals because their carts love to run!
In closing you’ll note that this isn’t a name that’s shown up on IFT before, although it’s not the first time I’ve written. I stopped writing awhile after finding there was a feature on the front page of the new format announcing the ten highest ranking community members.
This name will be around for awhile, but it won’t appear on that list.
Its a kindess to fellow shoppers to return carts. The truth is though, its not your responsibility. The store is the one who must maintain parking lots and keep clean safe floors inside and out. Winco is good at that. they have full time cart people who bring carts in all day long. Other stores arent so good it seems. Am I also the one who has to clean spaghetti sauce if it drops on the floor? I wonder how stores got us all trained so good. especially fast food. we all clean off our own tables and throw the trash away. If I just ate and left am I going to be shouted at? I do all these things but not for the stores behalf, just the people coming up after me.
What’s really unfortunate is that the stores have trained us so well, we even act as our own cashiers. I had one employee standing around at the end of the self-check register ask me if I had an employee discount. I said I should, since I was cashiering for myself. Where will it end?
I like the self check out lines, I wish more stores had them.
self check out lines are great for thieves and food stamps.
I like the self check out lines if I only have a few things which don’t include alcohol or produce. Has anyone tried to self-checkout when they have a jalapeno pepper? I could grow one faster than I could look it up! I just haven’t seen any information on how making me do my own check out, bagging (is stocking the shelves next?) is keeping the prices of my groceries down. Are the stores pocketing the profits? Times are tough now, I’m sure, but will we see a price reduction or an occasional checker when the economy improves?
Like I said, I don’t mind checking myself out under certain circumstances, but many stores around town don’t have a single checker on duty at certain times. When that happens, I don’t go back to that store – EVER! Hope a few grocery store managers are reading this.
What has happened is the people of Idaho Falls and the surrounding areas have become so lazy that they can not seem to understand the concept of returning the carts to a central area. Truly a sad state of affairs and a visual comment as to Idahos’ educational system. The people of our area have dumbed down to where they accept no responsibility for their discourteous actions and how they affect other patrons. Put your cart away the exercise may do you some good.
Man, isn’t that the truth! We have had several threads on here about downtown. Everyone wants us to do something about downtown. Guess why we can’t? They claim it’s the parking. NOT! There is parking downtown, it just isn’t possible for everyone to park three feet in front of the door of the shop they want to patronize. They have to walk. There are two problems downtown. One is lazy people won’t walk a block or two to patronize a store, no matter how good their products are. They circle the block, once maybe twice, and if a spot doesn’t open up in front of the door, they go to the mall – and for gawd sake, walk twice as far from the mall parking lot than they would have to the store downtown. Go figure! The second one is the rents downtown. Downtown would be the perfect place for entrepreneurs to set up shop with their novel ideas. But the rents are too high for them to afford for more than a few months without offset in gross receipts and our lazy shoppers won’t patronize them. So it’s the CPA’s and attorneys who are the only ones who can afford the rents and the retail shops go out of business. I absolutely loved downtown as a kid – Bon Marche had a great escalator. Penney’s, Woolworth’s (I think), and lots more. And we walked !!!!! Got everything we needed without walking any farther than we do today at the mall. If we could convince the couple of owners downtown to do graduated rents so the retail shops could get themselves established before the rent ate up their capital, we would have a stunning downtown with lots of outlets rather than just one or two. And some healthier citizens to boot. Sorry, went off topic there, but I agree we’re just lazy.