By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston
Times
are tough. Mass shootings are happening more than daily. We had 4 shootings in
the last 24 hours. I believe the latest statistic shows more 253 mass shootings
in the last 216 days.
I
am scared.
I
want to cry.
I
want to scream
With
these incidences, we cannot deny that we are living in a divisive and violent
world. We are polarized by politics, racism, sexism, poverty, wealth, climate change and many other factors.
I
can’t help but feel that we are meaner, more judgmental and more isolated than
ever before. We cannot agree to disagree. Instead, we launch anonymous insults
over social media. We unfriend and unfollow each other. We say hateful things
with no regard to who we might be offending. We no longer talk and listen. We
make snap judgements based on sound bites and other people’s opinions. We
refuse to meet in the middle. We wave and wear symbols of hate
We
do virtually nothing to make the change we need.
Before
the world got so complicated, I allowed the little things in day to day life make
me angry. I would rail against the small injustices like line cutters or
mispriced merchandise. These minor infractions got my ire up sometimes to
boiling. It’s funny how just making it out of a store without being shot is the
current goal. Coupons and grabbing the last bargain off the shelf no longer
matter.
Before
gun violence distracted my shopping adventures, one of my biggest annoyances at
the grocery store revolved around shopping carts. I would pull into a parking
spot only to discover that some thoughtless patron had left his or her cart
smack dab in the middle of the diagonal lines marking the deceptively available
spot.
This
left me with some hard choices. A) I could put the car in park, get out and
move the cart. B) I could use my car to nudge the cart out of the way. C) I
could relocate hoping to find another truly free spot.
This
never failed to put me in a foul mood before I even exited my vehicle. No doubt
I would take my frustrations out on the other customers or staff (though never
with a gun). I would be impatient as I pushed past carts stopped a bit too far in
the aisle. I’d groan as that indecisive lady hemmed and hawed about which jarred
sauce she wanted. I would stand seething as I waited for my turn making the
same decision which, of course, I would make much more quickly. Next thing I
know I’m rudely reaching in front of her offering a curt and insincere, “excuse
me” or “sorry.”
Equally
annoying, after finding a truly free spot and walking the half mile to the
store, I would enter through the automatic glass doors to be greeted by the
cavernous area that was supposed to house the carts for the shoppers. The echo
of my sigh and grunts of frustration would fall on deaf ears as the staff was
busy stocking shelves with merchandise I had nowhere to store. They were oblivious
to the lack of ready carts for the customers.
A
simple look out of the plate glass window revealed a parking lot over flowing
with carts. Carts in corals. Carts in parking spots. Carts abandoned on the
small dirt islands that helped to divide the parking are into neat rows. Carts
everywhere but inside the store entrance where I needed one.
My aggravation, once again, would translate into anger as I stormed out into the
lot to push a rattling metal cart over the rough and uneven pavement. The loud
vibrations finally abated once we reached the smooth linoleum of the store. Safely inside, the front wheel revealed an annoying
squeak previously masked by the thunders trip inside and of course, a slight tug to the left.
ALDI grocery stores, with a stroke of simple genius, solved all of these problems, well
most of them, by simply tethering each cart to the one in front with a device
that requires a quarter to free a cart to be used in the store. The quarter is easily
retrieved once shopping is completed, the groceries are safely stored in the
car parked in the spot you pulled into the first time without incident and the
empty cart glides back across the seemingly glassy smooth terrain of the ALDI parking
lots.
With
this simplistic system no carts are left abandoned in strange and inconvenient
places. Plenty of carts wait in the coral (at least on the off-peak hours I
shop) ready for the customer to slide in the quarter before slipping easily into
the store. Freed from the frustrations and annoyances of traditional grocery
store cart usage, customers’ grasps their carts and shop with kind and joyful
hearts.
Shoppers,
overflowing with patience, gladly wait for that weird, indecisive lady to smell
each melon oblivious to dozens of others stacking up behind her as her cart
blocks the entire aisle.
The
staff smiles and practically sings as they checkout customers and stock shelves
knowing they do not have to tramp out of doors in all types of inclement
weather to wrangle carts left willy-nilly in the lot. Customers’ kindness rains
down on them making them smile and even like their job. They volunteer to get that
item you overlooked bringing an array of flavors or styles to let you choose never
asking the customer to reshelve it.
A
simple quarter, twenty-five little pennies, have made the world a better place.
A quarter is just enough money to motivate people to want the refund and return
the cart but not so much as to discourage shoppers from spending lots of money.
Even
better, a generous spirit overtakes some folks. These new philanthropists offer
up their carts to new arrivals waving away the quarter proffered to pay them
back. This simple act of kindness inspires a chain reaction of paying it
forward as that one cart gets handed off free of charge all day long.
People
help each other out by commandeering recently unloaded carts right at the trunk
of their fellow shopper’s car saving them from pushing it back to the coral. An
act rarely witnessed in traditional grocery store parking lots.
The
good mood of the customers often translates to other small gestures such as
helping a less abled body person wrangle that impulsively purchased bookshelf
into their too small car.
The
addition of a quarter to release a cart into the customers care is genius.
Twenty-five
cents might just be all we need to make our country unite and find compassion
for each other. The white supremacists hands the cart to the Mexican-American.
The misogynistic boss hands off a cart to the administrative assistant who
suffers with low pay and daily harassment. The climate change denier helps the
woman with cloth bags unload her cart of the organic, ethically sourced foods
she purchased so he can push it back into the store to load up with his
processed foods.
The mighty quarter may just lead the way to making us kinder, safer and happier.
Just in case that doesn’t work stop what you are doing and write or
call your congressional representatives and demand change so we can shop
without getting shot.
