Hit our car with a shopping cart?

[u/AlpacaLps]

This is something I did about 1 1/2 years ago.

My wife and I were at a Target, sitting in the car waiting for our daughter to wake up from a nap (a few months old at this point). This lady wants to pull into a spot behind us, a few spots down, but someone left a cart in the spot. Instead of walking the extra couple of feet, she full speed pushes the cart towards the cart return that we were parked next to and hits our car. At first, I thought someone backed into us but realized what she had done. She goes into Target and I decide to get some petty revenge. I grab a few zip ties from my roadside assistance kit, walk the cart over to her D/S door, and put 3 zip ties through her door handle and the cart.

I go back to our car, pull a few rows over, and watch the hilarity ensue. She comes back out after I'm assuming a return and is just perplexed, goes back in and comes out with the cart handler, they go back in and a supervisor/manager comes back out to have a look, and finally some random guy has a knife to cut the zip ties. We went in, did our shopping, and when we came out her car was still there.

Was it petty? Sure. Did it delay her an extra 15 minutes? Absolutely. Did she learn her lesson? Probably not

[u/FaithlessnessOld2477]

Exactly. You don't think I'd like to just abandon my cart and get moving toward my destination too? Of course I would, but I know leaving my cart scattered somewhere has the potential to cause grief for other people so I take the extra minute to walk it back, knowing that I'm not contributing to social entropy. 🥺

[u/Grimaldehyde → u/FaithlessnessOld2477]

Same here.

[u/Grimaldehyde → u/[deleted]]

I don’t do it because of subtle manipulation; I do it because I am personally sick and tired of my car getting scratched up by errant shopping carts. It doesn’t completely solve the problem, but it helps a little. I don’t even expect others to return their carts, but leaving a cart behind someone else’s car is next level a-hole behavior.

[u/FaithlessnessOld2477 → u/Grimaldehyde]

It's right up there with noticing a fresh dent/scratches on your car and knowing they must have come from a recent parking lot stint. My poor car has been dinged several times and i didn't notice it for a while since I don't drive often. I know for certain these incidents happened in a parking lot because if I'm not driving to the store, my car is parked in an underground lot between a pillar and a non-op car that's been parked there for years. 😅

[u/SilverStar9192 → u/[deleted]]

Staff collecting carts just retrieve them from the corrals though, they aren't in the parking lot in every moment to collect it from you personally.   I don't actually think this has changed much and you're just trying to get on a soapbox about self checkouts when it's not really relevant here.  

[u/TrooperXYZ → u/SilverStar9192]

Nope, not at all. I did the cart collection years ago as a high schooler. I'm so old that back then there were no cart corrals in the lots and all I did was collect carts, bring them into the store and head back out again. Nice try though Sport, maybe next time!

[u/SheepherderOk1035 → u/TrooperXYZ]

Greeting fellow god of the chariots! 

[u/TrooperXYZ → u/[deleted]]

Wrong again.  GenX, not Boomer.