Take back your dignity. Take back your cart.

Imagine you were an executive at let's say, Kroger, and you and your team were faced with a challenge:

Customers at your stores are too lazy to bring their carts back inside. That means there are grocery carts scattered all over the parking lot. This is even happening at the upscale, more expensive Signature stores! Kroger employees are spending time gathering the carts rather than bagging groceries or swatting flies out of the organic section. You're losing productivity! What do you do?

You probably would have said, "Hey, where's that damn Jason's Deli tray we ordered for this meeting?"

And then you would have said, "I've got it. What if we replace a few of our parking spots with "cart corrals" so that customers don't have to go all the way back into the store? They can just walk a few steps and leave their carts in these designated areas! Surely they're not too lazy to do that!"

Yes, Ms. Kroger Executive, your customers are indeed too lazy. And it's not just at Kroger. It's at Tom Thumb (Randall's for you Austin/Houston readers), Albertson's, H.E.B., Piggly Wiggly (hey, it's a national blog) and Wal-Mart. Poor Wal-Mart. They may just have the laziest shoppers of all.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?? What goes through your head when you unpack your groceries and then just casually push your cart to the side? Do you know the grief you're causing? First of all, it will likely scratch a fellow customer's car (because of course you pushed it just far enough away from your own car). Also, it just makes the parking lot look ghetto. And do you want your grocery store to look ghetto? Then there's the lost productivity we discussed earlier. And to give you a reason that may actually resonate with you: If the grocery store has to hire more people to shepherd the carts, they have to increase their prices.

How do ya like them pricey apples?

So save our grocery store prices! Save our cars! Save our parking lots! Save our humanity! Walk a few extra steps and place your cart nicely in the designated cart corral. Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially saintly, I walk my cart all the way back to the store. Right back up to the elderly greeter. He gets a little confused but that's okay.

And if you don't care about any of my compelling reasons, at least you'll get a little exercise.

Now I'm sure most of my blog readers are good, cart corralling people. But if you're not, I beg you not to confess this in my comments section. I'll have to assume that if you're blasé with your buggies, you're also that person who leaves their trash in the movie theater. And then all the Jason's Deli trays in the world couldn't save our friendship.