My Shopping Carriage Conundrum

I do most of our grocery shopping. I do not hate this task. It is something that simply must be done. I do have the luxury of shopping at the greatest grocery store chain, Market Basket! Not only are the groceries affordable, it's like stepping back in time. From the pink checkered floor, all the employees wearing white shirts and ties, and the crepe paper hanging displays. Visiting Market Basket is nostalgic. It’s always busy too. I won't go on Saturday unless I have to, because it’s so busy.

Not everything, however, is nostalgic and charming. One trend I have noticed in New England more than anywhere else I've lived is the propensity to leave shopping carts randomly in the parking lot (side note New England folks call shopping carts carriages). It really bothers me when people don't put their carts away. I don't know why, but it does. I always take mine back to the cart corral. Sometimes there are so many stray carts it causes me a moral dilemma: Do I take back just mine or others? I will often take back one or two if they are near me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there are often as many as 10 or 20 stray carts in just my section of the parking lot!

At this point, you gotta ask yourself, what does me taking my cart back really matter? Should I just leave it with the others? I guess I could take them all back, but then aren't I just a de facto employee enabling this? I understand my quandary is not that big of a deal, but it still causes me angst every time I go to the grocery store!

So what do I do when I see a half a dozen or more carts floating around the parking lot just waiting to be blown by the wind into some poor unsuspecting car to ding and scratch the paint? I am not only annoyed but feel a sense of duty. I admit on more than one occasion I have run around putting away several carts. But seriously I don't have time for this! I guess I could let it make me bitter and yell at everybody, “Why don't you put your cart away!” I could just add it to my ever increasing list of things that make me grumpy but then I run the very real risk of becoming one more old man with a list of grievances.

So in my frustration I come back to this hard truth: I cannot control everybody's actions. I have to live in the world the way it is, stray shopping carts at all. I cannot “fix” them, I can only control me. So I return my cart and sometimes others and I move on with my life, dealing the best I can, one imperfect shopping trip at a time. On the bright side, the groceries are affordable.

Enjoy these videos taken by yours truly of an actual amazing Market Basket store.