Not your Personal Conveyance

You've seen it. Likely every day if you commute to and from work daily, anyway. A lone shopping cart, often on it's side, at the entrance to some apartment complex. Sometimes you'll even see the (apparently vehicle-less) individual or family pushing it along, full of their groceries.

This...irritates...me...to...no...end. I can understand needing to purchase groceries. I can understand not having a vehicle. I can even fathom being too weak to carry everything you need. But I cannot comprehend, condone or even conceive of "stealing" a shopping cart to take your purchased goods back to your dwelling.

Why do people do this? Pure laziness, in my opinion. If you don't have a car, then when you walk to and from the grocery store you need to buy less. Certainly no more than you can carry from point A to point B, whether that distance covers a quarter of a mile or three miles.

That shopping cart does not belong to you! It's not yours. That store paid good money for that cart and has to maintain it, clean it, repair it and replace it when it goes missing. What makes you think you can just run off with it?

Now, to my detractors who think to holler about "poor" and "indigent" or whatever words you want to synonimize with "lazy" -- don't, okay? I have been without transportation in the past and I have never STOLEN a grocery cart. And to be honest, I wouldn't have as much a problem with this concept if it was returned to the store! I'm not above borrowing, but you've got to return the thing. Now its missing from the store so that when I make a 5:00 pm run to the store to pick up a handful of things and the store is crowded -- I have nothing to use. Leaving it at a hotel parking lot, the entrance to your apartment complex or beside the road is an unsightly blot on my view. It makes everyone who lives in that area look like trailer trash.

Don't buy more than you can carry, get someone to give you a ride back home, grow your own food, whatever. Quit stealing the shopping carts! It's NOT your personal conveyance.

Will Belden
February 22, 2006