Parking Lot musings

I was a box boy for a grocery store in Bishop when I just reached the age of 14, and could go get a workers permit. For the summer I bagged and sold ice for the concessionaires at the Rodeo and at Mule Days. I spent much of the summer caged in the "beer box" with all the various items that need to be chilled, stocking and restocking the shelves.

Manor Market had a few shopping carts, and I had the distinction of being the lowest on the totem pole and the step-and-fetch-it for a variety of items. This included the shopping carts as they made their travels around the parking lot, and into the street, and across the street.

We are not talking long distances here folks. For the 12 or so carts we had, I probably had to fetch about 8 through the course of the day, which included myriad runs through the store and out to cars and most of the carts made it back.

We did not have any nice storage areas in the parking lot as so many of the grocery stores today have, due to the shortage of parking spaces on the lot and across the street. This meant that if a cart was in a parking space, it definitely needed to be rounded up and brought back to the store.

Which may explain my bothered behavior when I encounter so many shopping carts strewn through the lots of so many of our local grocery stores with boatloads of parking. I hate the shopping carts left in the center of a parking space so that no one can use the space, without getting out of the car to move the adrift cart.

I noticed a few that had been stacked into the medians of the parking lot, and several that had just been left around this morning in my grocery run, and thought back to my time moving carts back at home.

I value those parking spaces, and I plead with you, return your cart, and please if you can handle it go ahead and pick up a stray on your way back to the cart storage area.

Peace,