Poor Cart Parkers

I come from a land where the grocery store aisles allow the customers plenty of room to roam. There’s less people in my land, meaning more room to roam. My land is called New Hampshire, and though it is not the least densely populated state in the U.S. and is actually 29th, it’s still scarce with its population. Especially compared to where I live now. California. Los Angeles. A land with narrow aisles in the grocery store.

But this is no excuse for how customers behave in the aisles. This is no excuse for the Poor Cart Parkers.

I noticed the change in the size of the aisles immediately when I moved from my small-ish town of Merrimack, New Hampshire to big ol’ Los Angeles, California. I’ve been in plenty of grocery stores all over, but I’m used to the ones in my home town, in my home state, in the northeast of the country. And you have plenty of room in those states for a lot of things. More room for drive-thrus at various establishments, more room for parking lots for most businesses, and the grocery stores are just larger.

In Los Angeles, the grocery stores don’t feel smaller, but they are, by a bit. But they don’t cut down on aisles or products, they just cut down on space. In a New Hampshire grocery store, two carts driving on opposite sides of the aisle can easily pass by one another with extra room. You could probably fit a small child in between the two separate carts, but I wouldn't recommend it. In some of these Los Angeles aisles, you’ll find yourself in a high-stakes game of chicken. Both you and the cart coming towards you are pushed up against the shelves to your right, dragging the handle along the products, knocking cans of beans and boxes of pasta off the shelf, and still, your carts come dangerously close to colliding.

It’s not ideal. But we can make it work. You just have to be vigilant and courteous to your neighbors.

But there are still some people who don’t get it. They are the Poor Cart Parkers. They enter an aisle, move four feet into it, stop, nearly in the middle of the aisle, and begin slowly perusing items on the bottom shelf… even as I am coming right for them!

No, that’s not how you do it at all. When you enter an aisle and need to stop, if you are not immediately grabbing your item and tossing it into your cart, if you are going to be contemplating brands and prices and sodium levels, then you need to pull that damn cart all the way to one side and let that metal hug the shelf. You need to pull your ride out of the way of incoming traffic.

Yet, people do not do this. They leave their cart crossed over the proverbial double yellow line and take their sweet ass time picking out a tube of toothpaste, as if they won’t just be fine with any of the options available. It's mint, it's paste, just take it! And sometimes they leave the aisle, abandon the cart, and hunt for items in another aisle!

Full disclosure, I do that, but only after having left my cart far to the side of an aisle, or far to the side of the wider back aisle, parked in front of an end display of some stupid flavor of potato chips that no one needs. I do this because I know I can move quicker without the cart, or if I glance down an aisle where I need three items and I see several old people who have no better place to be, and I’d like to avoid the driving hazard of having to navigate the elderly. But I make sure my cart is out of the way! And I also move quickly, because I not only want to get out of everyone’s way quickly, I also want to get out of the store quickly.

Despite the pleasant air conditioning and wonderful 80’s music that I constantly Shazam, I don’t want to spend my whole day there. I want to leave and go home, doing anything other than continuing to shop. And this is the part that confuses me the most.

Most of these Poor Cart Parkers, they’re leaving their carts in the middle of everyone’s way, and they are taking an excruciatingly long time to scrutinize all the items, and even after choosing items, moving slower than the sands in an hourglass as they get back to their shopping. You are rudely getting in everyone’s way AND taking a long time doing it?? At least be that asshole that’s in a rush and gets in your way and says some stupid half-ass apology about how he has to rush because of work and then quickly gets out of your way. That guy sucks, but at least he only sucks for three seconds. You… you specific people that I am addressing… you suck for several minutes.

What is your deal? Don’t be a Poor Cart Parker. Or be a Poor Cart Parker, but hurry the hell up! Also, how difficult is it to just slide your cart over to the side of the aisle and remove it from the other motorists trying to get by while you take minutes… plural… deciding whether you’re going to choose the sweet basil or spicy basil pasta sauce? Tip: If you are considering two different adjectives for the same flavor for longer than three seconds, you’ve already wasted too much of your own time. Pick the jar in your left hand, whatever it is, and move on.

We need to start a driving school for pushing a shopping cart in stores. We need to withhold carts from people unless they present a valid license. I think it would be a pain in the ass initially, but in the end, it would benefit us all. For those that can’t pass the test, you are limited to the basket with handles. Yes, you’ll only be able to get roughly 12 to 18 items per trip, but that’s the penance you pay for not learning how to drive the cart.

The shopping cart in your grip, it is a privilege, not a right. You must earn it.

Tuesday of next week, class at 3:30 P.M. Lesson Plan: Returning your cart to the carriage corral and not leaving it in a parking spot that I might want to park in. Ass.

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