Life is SO hard!

I have never considered myself a lazy person. I have also never considered myself an exceptionally ambitious and productive person. I am probably like most people and fall somewhere in the middle of the resourceful scale. Assuming that I am in no way being a hypocrite by making these statements, I would like to take a moment to ream on the American people, or rather the American patrons of Target and other such grocery-cart-wielding establishments.

Jericho and I were at Target last night doing some food shopping. We saw some open parking spots from afar as we pulled into the lot. As we approached we realized why they were open - people had left their carts in the middle of an empty spot. We were forced to park in the next spot over which was not a big deal. But not only were the carts filling one spot, but there were at least another half a dozen carts on the little grassy section between rows. Ladies and gentlemen, would you like to take a guess at how far away we were from the front door or any cart returns? Less than 10 spaces from the door and one row over on either side from a cart return. As we pulled up, we even saw one lady walk her cart over to the masses, like it was some make-shift cart return for the lazy, walk back to her car and there was a cart return ON HER ROW! In her defense, it was only one sided and it was facing the other direction from her car. You can see how this would throw her senses out of whack.

Is this how lazy we are? Or are we so consumed with our own self-importance and "I'm so much busier than you could possibly imagine" attitudes that we can't walk 20 feet to 1 of 3 possible ways to return a cart to its proper place? You have 3 options all within a very reasonable distance from where you're standing. What else do you need, princess? A cart valet? Directional arrows?

This is not the first time I have seen this, as I'm sure most of you have also encountered similar experiences. Once at Wal-Mart someone left their cart in the FIRST spot therefore preventing anyone else from parking there, which at Wal-Mart is only second to shoplifting. The FIRST sticking spot! (Not a handicap spot though. I'm not that unforgiving.) They could probably have given the cart a good solid push and it could have rolled right back in the store. I try to be an open-minded citizen and give people the benefit of the doubt but I do wonder what could be going on in someone's life at that moment that is so important that it prevents them from having enough consideration for other shoppers as well as the employees to put their frikkin cart back.

I think Aldi is on the right track with their cart method. You have to deposit a quarter in a little slot to release the cart and then when you click it back in when you're done, you get your quarter back. Now a quarter really isn't that big of a deal, but I'm sure the uber-lazy have walked their groceries out to the car and subsequently had a serious internal debate on whether or not walking 20 feet was worth getting your 25 cent piece back. Really, life is not that hard. 20 feet will not kill you or mess up your shoes or make you late to your mani-pedi. We're all in this little world together. And Karma is real.