Carriage collectors

[draggar]

You see them, busting their rears out in the parking lots, rain, show, shine, whatever, pushing lines of shopping carts into the store so people don't have to search for them. I did it for 5 years when I worked in a grocerey store up north, so I also had to seal with the snow, sluch, and sand.

This isn't for the kids who just go out to smoke, bring in a carriage or two just enough so their boss sees them working, doing the bare minimum, though (but the hard workers might look like this once in a while if they stop for a second to say hi to a friend).

This is a quick rundown on how to act around them and treat them.

• Don't push a carriage full speed to them. They do not have lightning fast reflexes and it is annoying as anything. If you're going to give the carriage to them walk it over and don't let go until they have it . Feel free to also say things like "thank you".
• Don't make stupid comments like "working hard?" or "boy it's hot out today".
• Don't stand in front of them while they're pushing a line of carriages towards you (or even jump in front of them). These do not stop on a dine nor do they turn well.
• Unless you are letting someone out of your car who has some sort of disability, DO NOT PARK IN THE FIRE LANE or park blocking the ramp up.
• Don't think that you can just fling your car in front of the line that they're pushing to grab a parking space. Don't worry, he isn't going to take it and it will still be there 20 seconds from now.
• Don't put one carriage in front of the line he is pusing. It will not get scooped up nicely (it's physics, people) like the line he has, it will get pushed and eventually go off to the side.
• If he is away and you see a line, feel free to push your carriage into the line, don't worry, they won't bite.
• If you're pulling out and he is coming up, remember that he normally has to run to the front of the line (unless he's lucky enough to have a hook and a long leash) to stop them and a long line has the breaking power of a train. Wait for him to go by.
  [8]If he hits your car because you were stupid, it's your own damn fault, don't go crying to the manager because of your ignorance.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And throw your fucking trash away in the garbage cans provided! Don't leave it in the cart when you're finished with it!

This is now yellow-jacket season in Wisconsin. Yellow-jackets are mean-spirited stinging insects who sting people just for shits and giggles, and their stings can provoke potentially fatal allergic reactions in people such as my grandmother, for instance.

If my Grandpa hadn't been around to drive her to the hospital, she wouldn't be here today.

And soda cans and bottles and food wrappers attract them. So unless you want to see a cart pusher writhing on the ground in convulsions, you will please put your damn garbage where it belongs.

Actually, you'd probably just complain he was holding up traffic.

[PepperElf]

and... my own pet peeve...
The proper place for the carts is the CART LANE. NOT just anywhere you feel like leaving it!

[Hyndis]

People invariably pass by literally dozens of carts in the parking lot, and head right up to the cart corral to grab one. STOP THAT! Doing so simply makes a hard job already harder. Why wouldn't you grab one of the first carts you see and instead grab one of the last carts you see?

Its extremely aggravating, partcularly when the person walks up to me while I'm pushing 15-20 carts and wants to have one from the line. A few times I've flat out told them they don't want a cart from the parking lot. If they actually wanted one, they would have grabbed one of the dozens they've passed.

(Yes, I've put in my two weeks' notice, so I don't care anymore.)

Also, I actually do my job. I work my arse off to clear the carts on my watch, and to clean up the mess left by all the previous slackers who apparently didn't do anything. The weather has been in the triple digits lately. I'm wearing heavy black clothing and a heavy, thick, black apron thing with my stupid nametag on it. I'm pushing very heavy objects around a parking lot full of hot engines and black asphalt. Yes, I'm sweating. No, you do not need to talk about the weather. I assure you you're only the hundredth person to do that merely that day.

And why oh why is it so incredibly difficult to put your cart into a stack of carts? I can literally count the number of customer who can do this on one hand. Almost every customer just pushes their cart in the general vicinity of either me or the cart corral, then thinks they're being helpful. YOU'RE NOT. Since it would be more work for me to have to backtrack for the cart, I have to go stop what I'm going and properly push the cart onto the back of the stack. If I don't its going to roll and hit someone's car, thus resulting in that person having an aneurysm. Those people throwing loose carts haphazardly into the cart corral also make my job more difficult. I have to stop the line of 15-20 carts, go and sort out the mess near the corral, then get those carts moving again to push them into the pile.

Another major pet peeve of mine is customers with fewer problem solving skills than chimps, gorillas, crows, and parrots. Two carts stuck together? Durr...I keep pulling on this cart, but its still stuck to the other one...durr...I should pull harder! Eventually they give up and fling the pair of "stuck" carts into an inconvenient spot such that I have to more and reattach it to the pile before depositing my stack of carts.

Whats the solution to solve this mystical, arcane problem of conjoined carts? The back of the rear cart often times gets lodged into the basket of the first cart. Lift that piece of plastic up half an inch, and the carts slide apart. No Herculean strength involved. Just a tiny bit of cleverness and the most basic, rudimentary understanding of machines that lesser animals have mastered yet customers are confounded by.

And then there's the lazy customers. These customers are perfectly able to carry their own groceries. They just don't want to. So now I have to do their work for them while they stand by, don't lift a finger, and talk about the weather at me. Meanwhile, I'm still hot from doing carts, now I have to load groceries, then push a cart, then brave the furnace-like heat from the interior of their car and load the groceries in, all while barely maintaining the slimmest illusion of being happy to serve. And then they wonder why I'm sweating.

I don't mind helping out customers who actually need it, such as those with broken limbs, those people confined to wheelchairs, and the elderly. Having a cell phone welded to the side of your head doesn't count as a disability.

[nomorecarts]

I was looking around for stories from cart pushers and stumbled across this

http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ht=parking+lot

[Gawdzillers]

I accidentally hit a guy with a line once, right in the stomach.
Thanks for jumping in front of me, dick breath.

[the_std]

Having a cell phone welded to the side of your head doesn't count as a disability.

A-freaking-men!

[Andrew B.]

Its extremely aggravating, partcularly when the person walks up to me while I'm pushing 15-20 carts and wants to have one from the line. A few times I've flat out told them they don't want a cart from the parking lot. If they actually wanted one, they would have grabbed one of the dozens they've passed.

I've done this before, but only when I haven't seen any loose carts in the lot. I didn't know that annoyed people.

[ADoyle90815]

Many carts now have wheels that lock when you get to the boundary of the parking lot, usually marked by a painted line, usually yellow. That means that you have to take your bags out of the cart and walk the rest of the way. There are also cart corrals near those boundaries, but most of those carts are left by those lines.

[Hyndis]

I've done this before, but only when I haven't seen any loose carts in the lot. I didn't know that annoyed people.

Its different if there aren't any loose carts in the parking lot. That means that there isn't a ton of work to get caught up on so the cart pusher can relax a bit. In the case that there are a ton of carts scattered about the parking lot, the cart pusher needs to get moving to clear them out, in which case asking for a cart from the stack being pushed just slows down the entire process. Depending on the design of the carts and the geography of the parking lot, it can take quite a bit of effort to start or stop a stack of carts.

[draggar]

And then there's the lazy customers. These customers are perfectly able to carry their own groceries. They just don't want to. So now I have to do their work for them while they stand by, don't lift a finger, and talk about the weather at me. Meanwhile, I'm still hot from doing carts, now I have to load groceries, then push a cart, then brave the furnace-like heat from the interior of their car and load the groceries in, all while barely maintaining the slimmest illusion of being happy to serve. And then they wonder why I'm sweating.

I don't mind helping out customers who actually need it, such as those with broken limbs, those people confined to wheelchairs, and the elderly. Having a cell phone welded to the side of your head doesn't count as a disability.

I felt the same way when I worked in a grocery store. We had very few cell phones back then but people were just as lazy and they'd be the first to bitch and moan because you didn't put the bags in the right order and would NEVER say "thank you".

I get offered all the time but I always politely refuse. I don't need help and I'm sure there are many other customers who do.

One exception, though, they're not "lazy" if it's late at night and it is dark in the parking lot - sometimes (mostly younger ladies) would prefer to walk out with someone else for a deterrent (and the same with many of the cashiers I worked with).

[repsac]

When I worked for Lowe's, G and myself would often go out and round up all the carts in one swing. It tended to work better that way and we had it down to a science. Here's how we did it.


R----------------------------------------------G

That's Myself pushing, and G steering and providing braking power. Most of the time, we were talking back and forth about how we were going to go. When a customer neared, the usual result was an authoritative "On your Right!" or "On your Left!" "Watch out!"

Management never once gave us grief over it, even though numerous times we nearly hit people. I think, and I could be wrong here, our record number of carts was something like fifty or sixty. Once we got them moving, there was no WAY we could get them stopped.

[rerant]

Many carts now have wheels that lock when you get to the boundary of the parking lot, usually marked by a painted line, usually yellow. That means that you have to take your bags out of the cart and walk the rest of the way. There are also cart corrals near those boundaries, but most of those carts are left by those lines.

The grocery store nearest me has these wheel "locks" on their carts.
Funny that I still see their carts strewn about the neighbourhood.

[powerboy]

Oh man, I hear you on this thread. I was a cart guy for Walmart for 9 months. I actually hit a car that was not looking when backing out. She was on her cell phone. Even the SM that hated me, stuck up for me.

1. Those carts does not stop on a dime. If you want to act like dicks and stand in the way. Do not get pissed when I cannot stop in time.
   
2. Do not try to run over us. We will remember you the next time you show up.
   
3. If you see a bunch of carts in the parking lot. Chances are, there is none inside, except for the ones that I am pushing in. So take from outside.
   
4. Telling us that its how out or asking about the weather, will not get a laugh from us. You will get daggers shot from our eyes.
   
5. If you car gets a scratch on it, it is not our fault. It is the fault of other customers. We simply remove the carts from that spot, while they push the carts as hard as they can or just leave them there like that.

On a side note, when you are good at pushing carts professionally, you can make it look like you only pushed a few carts every hour. Also you get to learn how to unstack the carts that got stuck together


Repsac, I have done the same thing so many times. Pushing up to 20-30 carts at a time. All because our electronic cart pusher broke down & Walmart was too cheap to buy a new one or get it fixed.

[PepperElf]

One exception, though, they're not "lazy" if it's late at night and it is dark in the parking lot - sometimes (mostly younger ladies) would prefer to walk out with someone else for a deterrent (and the same with many of the cashiers I worked with).

one grocery store i went to actually gave me an escort without me even asking. i thought it was sweet, though I wasn't nervous about the lot.

I did take one from the guy pushing the line in jsut recently... but i did at least ask politely.

mom was super sweet the other day too. waking in, we passed a woman parked in the handicapped spot with a cane, who had *just* finished unloading her cart. Mom asked her for it and the lady was happy about not having to worry about walking it back

and ... something i forgot to mention earlier... another reason about my pet peeve on loose carts left in lots - when it's windy it'll blow them into things like cars.