So I stopped off at a local shopping center yesterday to get some caffeine at Starbucks. I had my laptop with me and started plugging away at some emails while I drank said coffee. I walked back to my car, and noticed that a bunch of people had made an interim shopping cart storage in the spot next to me. I always felt like where I grew up people were pretty responsible about putting their carts away. Here I feel like it’s part of the culture not to. These lazy people stacked the carts up so close to my passenger door, I couldn’t get in. I moved one cart out of the way, and opened the door. All of a sudden, the carts (about 6-7) start to roll. It was an avalanche of shopping carts all rolling and picking up speed to a certian crash in someone’s fender. I scrambled. I caught two runaways, then one more. But it was too late, the other carts had gotten away and banged into other things in the lot, and blocked the drive aisle.
There’s a couple of morals to this story. Designers need to keep their lots at a minimum percentage slope. There are plenty of times that the ground doesn’t allow it. But in this case it was a parking deck, and there was no excuse to have such drastic slopes. Also, there really needs to be designated shopping carts storage areas. No matter how many parking stalls it may take up. I looked around in the lot around me, and noticed that there really wasn’t anywhere to put these carts. I can’t really fault the people if the designer and operator don’t do their job. The final moral here? Next time I’m getting in the passenger door.
Lazy people = Dinged Cars. Photo credit: Put me in Charge Blog – http://put-me-in-charge.blogspot.com/
