Guest Blog "Cart Rage"

The following is a rant from one of my oldest and dearest and most pregnantest friends. Enjoy.

I am the Wife and the Mommy, and somewhere along the way a part of these titles also translated into "primary grocery shopper for the family." In fact, my husband will tell you that one of the reasons that he got married was to never, ever, have to set foot into a grocery store again. Fortunately for our relationship, I hate to perform any kind of car maintenance (from oil changes to putting on the winter tires) beyond updating my bumper sticker(s), and he's quite fastidious about it. Anyways. I do the grocery shopping.

As "just" the wife, I had the luxury of using a relatively small cart to zip through the aisles and to whirl circles about slower shoppers or those who were stuck, mid-aisle, while they compared prices. Now as the Mommy, I have two children who diligently (that is: "have no choice") accompany me on the weekly outing, and I've gone from the two-tiered zippy cart to the ultra two-seated cart with the "car" attachment on the front (which seats a total of 4 kids).

First of all, have you ever tried to steer one of those things? They're as long as a Cadillac and have a strange center of gravity that makes it kindof impossible to take sharp corners or to stay in your "lane" when cruising an aisle.

Secondly, with a very active 3-year old sitting in the car attachment, it is not wise to stay in my "lane" in every aisle unless I'd like him to collect food items from the bottom shelves as we're going through the store (usually, I try to get him to sit on the left-side of the car, and I say a small "thanks!" to whomever designed the car with belts to clip my kid in).

Lastly, trying to empty the cart onto the checkout belt by reaching over the car and into the cart all the while jammed between gum and the latest tabloid splattered with Britney Spears just makes my back hurt. But my main gripe with grocery shopping is this: who in the heck has put all of the cardboard "displays" in the aisles? Are you kidding me? They're always staggered down the aisle on alternating sides and they're usually in front of something that I am reaching for, so I end up trying to move the "display" which is usually flimsy and in danger of falling apart at the slightest touch.

They also jam up the flow of shoppers in the aisle, even if I'm shopping early in the day and practically no one else is there. How many times is someone parked with their cart across the aisle from one of these senseless displays of food seasoning (or whatever), causing both "lanes" of cart traffic to stop?

Or that I encounter another Mommy with the uber-cart coming the other way and we end up in a stand-off until one of us takes the open lane to get by? Pushing that behemoth of a kiddy-cart around, there is no way that I can squeeze between another shopper and a display, so I have to sit there and wait for traffic to clear up, while my kid is taking things from the bottom shelves, until someone moves along. The best situation is when someone positions one of these extra aisle-advertisements at the end of an aisle so when I am blindly maneuvering my cart into that aisle, I run into it. I just LOVE that.

Honestly, I don't understand road-rage but am thinking that I'm going to be acting out some kind of cart-rage the next time that I encounter a crowded aisle of displays or run one over by accident taking a blind turn. I can't wait to be banned from my regular shopping store for bad manners when all I'm asking for is for the stuff to be put on the shelves where it belongs!!

(sigh)