So a local radio station introduced a talking point this afternoon of “What is one thing you now hate because of your job?” Most people called in and answered with something that related to their jobs. For instance, a truck driver no longer wants to do road trips, or a school teacher now hates children. I had a few seconds to come up with my answer and I was surprised at what it was.

A number of years ago, while I was between jobs, I a took limited-time gig at Costco. I was hoping it would turn into something more but alas didn’t stick around long enough for it to pan out. My job was to collect the carts in the parking lot and bring them back up to the front of the store.

Costco has big carts, they have to, seeing how the place sells everything in bulk. Well, their carts are heavy as well. So going out into the heat of the parking lot and corralling them up and pulling them up to the front of the store wasn’t an easy job. What makes it even more difficult is the customers. You see when you have 25+ carts, even though they are wheeled, they tend to be heavy bastages. The story provided me a long rope that had a wooden handle on one end and a hook on the other. The idea was to take the hook and latch it onto the backside of the train of carts, and then pull with the wooden handle up at the front where you could also steer the mass by bumping into it with your hips.

People are idiots.

I’m sorry, did I not make myself clear?

PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS.

You see while I was struggling/straining/steering to get carts out from between the cars, various customers would come along and attempt to abscond with one. Never mind they are tethered together or that a mass in motion tends to stay in motion or anything logical. Nope. Forget that. They wanted a cart and they want that cart now.

Never mind that their selfishness is causing me to stop what I’m doing, which in turn is slowing down every other person looking to procure a cart from my herd, they need that cart NOW!

Oh wow. Looking back at knowing where I was trying to steer this story, I can see you thinking that the thing I hate is people. That, while true, isn’t actually where I was trying to go with this. No, where I was going to go is to say that after my experience with people and how they would sprawl their carts in between other cars and run them up onto the cement planter islands, that I would never again do that myself. It’s true. To this day I’ve returned my carts to the proper collection stalls or roll them back up to the front of the store.

Getting those carts out from between parked cars was a nightmare. I refuse to subject another person to have to get my cart out of one of those tight spaces.

Oh, and I do hate people. Not going to deny that.

Self-inflated righteousness?

Maybe.

Not trying to be a Dwight in a world full of idiots?

More likely.

Tootles all.

😛