Objects of My Annoyance

I really hate the shopping cart + kid carriers at Publix. They’re the ones that are designed to look like a race car or some such nonsense. Basically they take a shopping cart and add a big plastic addition to the back for kids to sit in….and ostensibly pretend to drive. I hate them because they are larger than normal carts and take up more room in already cramped aisles, thusly, being more inconvenient to fellow shoppers. The fact that they are sometime populated with loud children does not help further endear them to me.

I say they are only sometimes populated with loud children for two reasons. Occasionally they are occupied with good children being quiet. In which case, I only find the uber-carts to be just mildly annoying. I’ll concede in this instance the child carts are doing their job, which is to keep small children from being underfoot, even if the massive cart is blocking the particular area of shelf space I’m interested in.

However, for every ginormous cart filled with a good quiet child, there appears to be three ginormous carts filled with no children at all. That’s because the little brats complained about being stuck in the cart so the parents set the little hellions loose on the public at large. This is the worst of both worlds. The parents are taking up an inordinate about of aisle space with their shopping monstrosity and their noisy little brats are underfoot. I dare not type the dark intentions I wish upon such parents.

Reflecting upon the Publix child-car shopping carts I am reminded that there is still a worse option which gratefully has not taken root in this area (yet). In Indiana some grocery stores provided separate miniature shopping carts for children to push while the parents pushed normal sized carts. I can only assume the desired effect was for children underfoot to be even more of a nuisance than they already are. Yes, reflecting back on the visceral reactions this little chaos buggies evoked I’m almost grateful for the child-car-barges. Almost.