Monday, February 4, 2013

Park It!


This week’s blogs are going to beg for some input from you, the reader.  I wanted to take an opportunity to air some of my pet peeves as well as offer a forum wherein you can air yours as well.  I have learned that to rant on and on about my own personal pet peeves have done little in the past to relieve or change situations.  However, when I have taken a moment to recognize the root of why something “gets on my nerves”, I can then try to figure out something that I can do constructively and pro-actively to change the situation, and in that way I won’t have to rage on feeling powerless to it.

For example, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people don’t bother taking their shopping carts a few feet to the cart park and then just leave their shopping carts anywhere in the parking lot, often blocking another parking spot or in a place where the cart can easily hit another car.  I have often seen people push their unloaded cart to an area that is actually further away from the cart park just because they appeared too lazy to take a moment to look for the nearest cart park area.  I have often wondered if they felt the hot, sharp daggers of my gaze, but I doubt it.

Recently, I figured out why it bothered me so.  It is because to me, it shows a lack of accountability.  Here’s how I see it, the storekeeper has provided a nice parking lot and a shopping cart for my convenience (for free, I might add), the least I can do to repay the favor is to return to them their carat in the proper designated area so that I can allow another customer to enjoy the convenience that store has bestowed on me.  I guess an argument can be made that the store offers a parking lot and cart so that I, the consumer, will find it convenient to shop there and therefore get my repeat business, but so what?  And I supposed it can be rationalized that the store owner probably pays staff to gather shopping carts from the parking lot and so therefore, returning the cart is “not my job”, but I think I’d rather have that staff member in the store actually helping me or someone else.  Besides, I was always taught (and have taught my own boys) the “leave it better than you found it” concept.

Next, my “buddy”, “Rage” and I have decided to be pro-active and have harnessed our power for good and not evil, and we take our cart, along with all the others we find “misplaced” along the way, and return them to their happy home.  I’m hoping someone notices us and pays it forward.  I admit I still get peeved every time I see “rogue” shopping carts in a parking lot, but I’m trying people!

So, now here’s an invitation for you to air your pet peeve(s) and what you’re doing (or planning on doing) pro-actively.  I know you have great ideas to help all of us use our power for good.

-Tessa L. Charles

3 comments:

  1. My pet peeve is when people don't flush the toilet in the public restroom.

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  2. Eww! Yuk, right?! I don't like that either. So I end up cleaning up after them, and honestly, it's not necessarily because I'm being pro-active or "paying it forward". It's because I don't want the person who comes in after me to think I made the mess!!!

    Thanks for the response! Anyone else?

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  3. I am commenting for a friend of mine who is finding herself unable to comment on this blog directly. It's a "technical" difficulty I'm trying to find out how to resolve (I'm so not techno-savvy!):

    She has two small children and admitted that she is one of those who from time to time leaves her cart somewhere other than the cart park because if she can't find parking space near a cart park when she comes into a parking lot, by the time she unloads her cart and puts her children into their car seats she doesn't feel safe leaving them alone in the car to put the cart in the cart park.

    I'm so glad she responded and called me on that because I should have remembered that I, myself, had done the same thing from time to time when my children were small. Sometimes, in that situation I used to unload the cart, then have my oldest put himself into his car seat while the youngest one stayed in the cart and went with me to the cart park (quickly), and then parked the cart and carried the younger one with me back to the car all the while keeping my eye on the oldest one in the car. Whew! Bu-u-u-u-t half the time, I'd park the cart where I could.

    I guess what I really should have done was state the exceptions, even though I have actually witnessed with my own eyes, perfectly capable people (ok, seemingly capable people) just not giving a second thought about any one else's convenience but their own. THEY are the ones that really irk me.

    Thanks again, my friend, for encouraging me that my first response should be to think the best of people....hmmm sounds like a segue to another blog.....stay tuned!

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