I don't know if you've seen $#!7 like this before when you go to the grocery store, Walmart, Target, or anywhere else that has shopping carts available for you to use inside the store, but if your parking lot looks anything like this:
then your area is suffering from the same sort of problems I've seen around Central Florida. People displaying a total lack of respect for others. And most of these pictures were taken in areas that were what some may consider more "ghetto" than where they would like to be. So maybe there is a correlation, maybe not, but let's first get into what I mean by this obvious lack of respect for others I've decided to go as far as to take pictures and write a blog about it.
Thinking psychologically, why would someone just decide not to return their carts to the front of the store or at least a place designated for cart return? Too busy? Maybe, I can see that - you are rushing to get groceries after leaving work to cook dinner for the family and just don't have the time to deposit your cart back where it belongs. Hell, while we're at it, let's throw in some inclement weather, rain, hail, sleet, or snow, and that walk just seems way too far to go.... But I think it is more than that. It has more to do with the fact that some people find themselves entitled to doing less and letting someone else take care of the problem they have caused for others. I see you shaking your head, no seriously, I'm not joking here, this is what it boils down to. Entitlement for whatever reason they see fit. "I don't have to do that cart jockey job, let someone making minimum wage come out here and deal with it, I've got places to be and things to do." Oh is that so?
And what happens when that poor kid making minimum wage at the grocery or big box store doesn't want to get off his @$$ to get your cart out of the hot sun or cold snow? Cars get damaged, parking spots get consumed, and general havok is caused in parking lots. I can't tell you how many times I've walked into a store to find an empty cart storage area since all the carts are scattered all over the parking lots. Then there are the times where a cart has been left dangerously close to my parked car, just waiting for the perfect breeze to give it the strength to ram right down the side of my properly loved vehicle, like this guy's Mercedes:
I know what you're thinking again - you're just pissed off because someone hit your car, it has to be about your car.... or at least this is a parking spot issue, someone jammed up a coveted parking spot one day and you were pissed off about it.... Couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, I wouldn't ever park my nice car in a parking lot like this - the car I do take to parking lots that have a much greater chance of a door opening into it isn't something I would get upset about if it did get hit by a runaway cart. It is all based on the principle of the matter. The fact that more and more people these days could really care less about their fellow man is what I'm talking about. The issue over the lengths people went to in past years, often times before I was born as I've seen from movies or learned from older relatives, to make sure they weren't offensive to or offending others is the true subject of this blog.
Is this an income issue? Possibly, as I don't find this as common at higher-end, ritzy grocery stores as I do in low-income, dirty, discount stores. I don't think the focus of this is as much where it happens as it is that it happens. I don't care if a "busy" businessman does it any more or less than if some unemployed Welfare case does it in as much as the thought process was entertained enough for someone to just not give a damn about that cart. The fact that it does occur in both places leads me to believe that it happens, and that's the important part - regarding it happening more in "the ghetto" than it does in "the rich part of town," it simply means more people feel they are entitled to making their negligence become someone else's problem.
I find such parallelism in this that I felt compelled to write this blog. Call me crazy, and a lot of people do, but psychoanalyzing it like this is important to me - I don't want to go through life and say "damn, people left a bunch of carts in a parking lot, that sucks." I want to break it down and determine WHY they did that, and what that means for them as people who have inconvenienced other people. This is the same type of parallelism that comes from believing men who drive Corvettes have small.... appendages. I can't comment on that much, I know some girls who used to date my Corvette-loving roommate in college who had 3 of them at different times that can, but I can analyze this situation based on real world knowledge. Your opinion may be different than mine on this subject, and I'd like to see what you have to say about it, but if you just think I've gone too far with my analysis, then please, stick to your reality TV shows and leaving comments on YouTube videos because you quite honestly don't have the mental capacity to subjectively report on humanity's effects on humanity.
Oh yeah, and if you are from South Carolina reading this and can't follow the topic at all, just substitute "shopping cart" and "cart" with your crazy term "buggy." It isn't a buggy, it is a shopping cart, just like it isn't "pop," it is "soda." But everyone is different, and I guess that's why I am who I am.....
