Shopping Cart Courtesy

When I was a little boy, I loved to tag-along with my mom on trips to the grocery store. After we loaded the groceries into the car it was my job to take the cart back into the store and push it into the designated location. I always felt a sense of pride in fulfilling that duty.

A few years later, grocery stores made it more convenient for the customers by placing cart-return locations in various locations in the parking lots. Wow! The stores really wanted to make things nice for us.

Over the last few years I have noticed that customers are too lazy to even push the cart over to the returns, usually within ten parking spaces distance. They just leave them next to their car or push them to the curb, or pile them up with all the other lazy customers in an empty parking spot. It's Ridiculous!

Grocery stores aren't able or willing to keep the parking lots cart-free. Sure, they could staff the parking lot with twenty illegal aliens who will be there the second your groceries are securly placed in the back for your minivan, but the price of your Capitan Crunch just went up 50 cents!

I call upon all grocery store owners everywhere to remove their cart returns and let's go back to the customer duty of returning your cart to the inside of the store. I'd like to ask the American Heart Association to support this, just like they encourage us to take the 34 flights of stairs at work instead of the elevator.

Unfortunately, this lack of shopping cart courtesy is a symptom of a worse illness.

I call upon all people everywhere to simply care about other people!