Tuesday, August 17, 2010

WalMart Shopping Carts on a Food Blog?

Uh, I decided that every once in a while my "creative license" allows for a non-food post.  Here's one about "shopping cart culture" at WalMart.  I had big dreams for this, like I'm some kind of cultural studies whack-job in graduate school somewhere.  Anyway, here is the post (re-posted from my collage blog).   


What Should I Do with My Shopping Cart Now that I Am Done with It?


Went to WalMart the other day and took these pictures of shopping carts.  Made some observations about customer behavior, basically about how lazy people are about putting their carts back into the cart corrals properly.  On hot days especially.
   






This cart was abandoned way out on the outskirts of the parking lot.  The lot must have been full when the asshole who pushed this cart around parked his car in the "remote parking."



Just in case you think that people with multiple children that need to be strapped into the custom shopping cart attachment don't abandon their shopping carts on the outskirts of the lot, this picture proves you wrong.  Shopping cart negligence knows no race, creed or color.



Even those customers that make the effort to bring their shopping cart back to the corral cannot be bothered to slide their cart into the next cart.  This behavior reminds me of those people who, when building a piece of IKEA furniture or something, decide that three screws will do just fine when the instructions clearly indicate four.  Just put the fourth screw in, buddy.  It's not that hard.    




This is my favorite lazy bastard technique.  This technique (like many other similar techniques) shows that the butt-wad who left this cart knows, deep in his heart, that it's slightly despicable to leave a cart in the lot, and thus, to keep it from rolling around the lot in aimless abandon, he pops the front wheels onto one of the dry, mulched islands.  This kind of person is the kind of person that will throw up on your rug at a party and then, to make amends, will find an empty pizza box and hide the puke under it. 
  



This person is a post abuser.  These concrete posts exist only around the best spots, the spots closest to the store, and the customer that parks in them is among the laziest of WalMart customers.  She guns for the best spot because it's closest to the doors, and then, when she's done with it, she abandons the cart right there, probably in the exact location she finishes using it.  Putting it between two posts is the only concession to being unobtrusive.  I would not date this person. 
 




Finally, a very pretty picture of a cart corral that seems to be working somewhat properly, at least at this point.  There is no telling what happened after I snapped this pic, and in all likelihood, the situation only worsened.  Parking lot shopping cart systems are subject to the law of entropy, just like all other systems.  Probably ten minutes after I took this pic, some numb-nuts rammed a cart into the corral sideways and permanently blocked all other shoppers from housing their carts in the proper and respectable manner.  

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It's really sad to see shopping carts abandoned in the parking lots! :(

Jenna said...

Great to see an article about shopping cart corrals! My company is the manufacturer of that cart corral and we love to see people using them properly! Thanks for the support!