Pet Peeves: Shopping Carts

I don�t have many pet peeves, and the few that I have are pretty common. Now, I�m not going to get into all of them on this post because that would make for a very long piece of writing and I�m sure you all have better things to do than hang around here reading my silly rants. So I�ll just write about one of them today and get to the others some time in the future.

Okay.

One thing that annoys me is people not putting their shopping carts away after they�re done with them. Instead, they just dump them loose in the parking lot, wherever that may be. The worst offenders include individuals that dump their cart a few short feet away from a shopping cart corral because making that exhausting 10 � 15 second round trip to the corral and back to the car will kill them, and individuals that dump their carts in front of, against or behind someone else's car. Real nice.


I�m not sure why people behave in this manner. Is it a sense of entitlement? Do they believe that they�re somehow too important, too special for these mediocre chores, and because of their high-flying status, someone else should pick up after them?

Is it sheer laziness? And even if it is, no matter how lazy someone is, how much effort is required to walk a shopping cart over to the designated area with the big sign over it that reads �Please Deposit Your Shopping Carts Here�? It�s usually only a few steps away, anyway. And if these individuals can�t manage such a small amount of responsibility, which requires very little energy, how in the world do they handle the big things that require tons of effort?

Or is it simply bad manners? After all, not everyone cares about the fact that they share space with others, and that it�s common courtesy to pick up after one�s self, or that they should put whatever they�ve personally used away properly because the world is not there to pick up their slack.

I�d be curious to know what goes through this type of individual�s mind (if anything) when they dump their shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot despite the fact that there is a sign (clear as day with big letters) politely asking them to put away the cart in its proper place after they�re done with it.

The question to ask these individuals is:

�Why don�t you put away your shopping cart properly instead of dumping it in the middle of a parking lot where the wind might blow it into someone�s car?"

I imagine some possible answers would include:

1) �This mediocre chore doesn�t apply to me because I�m special. My mother told me so�
2) �I don�t care; the world is there to pick up after me�
3) �It�s not my car that might get hit, so who gives a diddly-squat�
4) �I�m illiterate; I can�t read�

Does this bother any of you? Or is it just me?

It�s probably just me. Sigh.