Ok, so there I was, snaking through the Sobeys parking lot, looking for my coveted, prized parking space like a python after its prey and lo' and behold, there it was.
Only steps away from the entrance, right next to the handicapped spot - wait, was it the handicapped spot?
No, it wasn't.
It felt like I was in a commercial airliner, airport ground crews waving me through with their wands.
This spot was made for me.
It was too good to be true.
And then I remembered that old adage:
"If it seems like it's too good to be true, it probably is."
Just as I was slowing down and turning my wheel, easing into the space, sneering at jealous onlookers, there it was.
A freakin' grocery cart.
Right in the middle of the spot, left by some radish-brained doofus who seriously couldn't be bothered to bring their empty cart back to the store, or to the drop-off pad in the middle of the parking lot.
Yes, I know, maybe the person was lazy blah blah but no. For people who have difficulty pushing carts, all the grocery stores offer to help the person out to their car and I'm sure they'd take no issue bringing the cart back in.
After all, it's less work for them.
No, this was the doing of typical moronic dingbats with their heads shoved so far up their you-know-whats that they have no concern, no regard, no courtesy for other people.
I see it all the time, grocery carts littered throughout parking spaces because people can't be bothered to bring them back.
Are you seriously in that much of a rush to get home to your night of Doritos and the CMAs that you can't take 5.763 seconds to bring a cart back?
It's something that has always irked me about humanity; that privileges we're given, we abuse.
Yes, it's not your paid occupation to bring your cart back in. I understand that there is some awkward, gangly teenage boy whose job it is to do that.
But that doesn't mean you as a decent human being don't have a moral job to do and that is to make life a little easier for someone else.
Same thing when I was at Red Lobster for dinner a few months ago.
We had just sat down at our table and next to us, at a large, stretching main table, were what I could have sworn was a family of cave men from the Geico commercials and their troglodyte children, just finishing up their meal the way a lion finishes up an antelope carcass. The kids were swatting food off the table onto the floor, the baby was throwing pieces of shrimp off its highchair all over the place.
Food chunks smeared across the table, the carpet, each other's faces, sauce staining the linen, actually bits of lobster tail littered all over the floor, the way needles and garbage litter a park in South Central.
It was disgusting. Not just a little mess of crumbs, which is to be expected when you have kids, especially limb-flailing babies.
No, this was appalling and everyone around them, including us, looked on in repulsive horror as the parents got up, packed up their kids and left, leaving the apocalyptic food disaster on the table for us to get queasy over as we ordered our appetizers.
"It's ok, they'll clean it up," I heard the husband say to his wife as they walked past our table.
Yes, the staff will; it's their job.
They'll do it, giving eyes of 'Can you seriously believe this?' to each other, wearing gloves and picking up the food like delicate evidence at a crime scene. They'll probably gag a bit and bemoan later on how annoying that was to have to clean up such a mess, and cause a delay for other people waiting to be seated because the cave dwellers couldn't be bothered to tidy it up as best as they could, or at least issue an apology of some sorts to the bus boy.
And I'd feel the exact same way, except I sometimes don't have the professional restraint like the staff at that restaurant has.
I'm pretty sure I would have grabbed the dad's arm, looked him square in his furrowed brow and said "Are you $&%$# kidding me?"
The only thing that makes me sicker than restaurant messes, or the amount of grocery carts sprinkled throughout lots, is the insensitive jerks who cause this to happen.
Do us all a favour: Have some respect for the people around you, or just stay in your basement all day.
CM
