Park it right there!

Last week I made an offhand comment about 2013 being a good year for charm school. I was just being glib at the time, but the more I think about it the more I want to do it. Then again, maybe I just want to vent about the many reasons I find myself annoyed with people.

For what I guess is my second charm school lesson I want to talk about shopping carts.

Photograph originally available through dingaling

Silly as it may sounds I cannot stand rogue shopping carts in a parking lot. Seriously, people, there a parking spaces designed specifically to hold your shopping cart when you are finished with it. They look something like this.

via

No wait, they more often look like this.

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The cart corral stands empty while shopping carts fill the spaces in which I would like to park. Or maybe they've been pushed onto a grass-covered median poised to roll off the curb like some car door-denting ninja.

Shopping cart in parking lot by Charker

Why, you may be wondering, does this bother me so much? Really, it comes down to the butterfly effect. If someone (or several someones) leaves his cart where it doesn't belong a store employee has to go retrieve it. That means there is one less person in the store to answer someone's question or - horror of horror - check people out! Then the check out lines get backed up and people grumble about how there are never enough cashiers, and they leave in a bad mood because they had to wait five precious minutes in line. And we all know people spread bad moods like an emotional influenza.

ARGH!

As bad as all that is it pales in comparison to what happens when people decide to leave their shopping carts in the lines next to a handicap spot.

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I have no idea how people can be so inconsiderate. Those rectangles with the diagonal lines are there to help ensure disabled people have enough room to get out of their cars. They are there so a wheelchair can be pulled up to the car door; so an extra person or two can stand there to assist someone out of the vehicle; so a disabled person can get out of her car at her own pace relatively sure she won't whanged by some poop head who pulls in too close to the line.

Please, please, please be considerate, charming even, and put your cart in one of the racks designed to hold it so nicely. Even better, do the unthinkable and walk your cart back into the store. If everybody did this one simple thing I am positive the world would be a better place.

via Pinterest (grateful for an original URL)

Have a tip on being charming? Or maybe you just need to get an annoyance out in the open. 'Fess up in the comments!