Carts: Caught on Camera

“Writinggal, are you whining about those damn carts again?”

Yes. Yes, I am. And I have good reasons. They are three-fold:

1. Since the introduction of my campaign “Do your part. Take back your cart,” shopping cart abandonment at my Kroger has gone down 20%*.

2. Shopping cart discarding in my neighborhood has gone down 50%

3. Today, Cul de Sac Carrie took this picture of me on our walk and I had to work it into a blog:

So we were on our walk and CC said, “Look!” and pointed to this cart just hanging out on the sidewalk. Mind you, we were not in OUR neighborhood. We were in the one across the street which I call the “swamp” neighborhood. Residents here think they’re so cool because they have this lake and they even go fishing in it. But really, it’s not a lake. It’s a swamp. But it’s the closest thing we have to a lake so we like to walk around it.

Anyway, we’re heading towards the swamp and we see this dang cart and I say, “I wish we had a camera” and CC says she has one on her phone and voila! We have the evidence now. The only problem is this was an unidentified cart so we’re not even sure where it came from. And how did it get so deep into the swamp neighborhood? We may never know.

But this we do know: I won’t give up my cart crusade. And CC is doing her part, glaring at people in the Target parking lot until they are shamed into returning carts. I heard Tips from Thea has been doing some good glaring as well. Me, I prefer to verbally chastise them but you do whatever works for you.

And if you were thinking of behaving like a restaurant weeker and abandoning your grocery cart this holiday weekend, think again. My team and I will be out in full force, snapping pictures of all the perpetrators. You never know where I’ll pop up: behind your car, next to the hot dog vendor man, perched atop the cart corral. Who knows?

I may even be swimming in your own swamp.

*All data are approximate and quite unscientific.