Looks like 2023 is going to be quite a year for Val! Only three days in, and she's on her second weirdo! Who woulda thunk it?
I stopped by Country Mart on my way to pick up The Pony's house payment check. The only thing I was there for was my $3 scratchers. All the best parking spots were taken, so I ended up way down at the left side of the building. It's where the front wall ends, and there's a section of the store set back, with a bench for the workers to have a smoke break.
Somebody had left a cart back there. Being the giver that I am, I grabbed the cart to take inside. I figure it's only fair. When I bring my groceries out, I park my used cart up against the building. So I always push one in whether I plan to shop or not. At least I park mine by the front wall, where the workers gathering carts are sure to see it.
Anyhoo... I was pushing that abandoned cart, wearing my sunglasses against the late-afternoon sun, holding two scratcher winners in my hand. No purse. No list. Just pushing back an abandoned cart on my way inside to buy scratchers from the machine. I was almost to the front door when an old man came across the parking lot. He was not making a beeline for the door, but a beeline for VAL!
"Are you returning your cart?"
It took me a minute to understand what he was getting at. He had to repeat himself.
"Oh. Uh. I'm just pushing it in. I'm not doing any shopping. I don't need it. Just returning it. I'm only going to the lottery machines."
"I'll take that for you."
Huh. Just like that. I gave up my cart/walker to the old weirdo who could not walk himself five more feet to the door, and get his own cart.
I suppose he thought he was doing me a favor. I would have preferred to continue on my merry way, and get full credit on my permanent record for returning a cart from way down at the end of the building...
Some people don't get it. Others try too hard.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been different way out in the parking lot, where he might actually have been doing me a favor. But not a few steps from the door!
DeleteAt least he ASSUMED I was doing a good deed by taking "my" cart back!
I don't think that's weird. He may be one of those who aren't strong enough to pull a cart from the line easily, so seeing an available cart, he asks for it.
ReplyDeleteIt's not like they're super-glued together. Even I don't have trouble pulling out a cart. If he's that weak, he should have saved himself the extra steps to get MY cart, and hopped on one of the motorized carts just inside the front doors.
DeleteSometimes here they do get jammed together pretty tightly, I've seen older people struggle and a few times I've been unable to separate them myself.
DeleteI've only had that problem at Aldi's when people didn't put the chain thingy back in the slot to get their quarter back, and the chain got tangled. Or maybe the Walmart child seatbelt, which is more like a puzzle to solve, and not a matter of brute strength.
DeleteI guess he thought he was saving you the trip all the way in to return the cart. Not a total weirdo, but borderline.
ReplyDeleteHe would have been less of a weirdo if he offered to take it the full 75 feet down the sidewalk, rather than the five feet where he met me!
DeleteI've had people offer to take it right after I unload the groceries, or way out in the parking lot as I'm headed for the cart return. They don't seem weird at all. Location, location, location!
Maybe he was flirting with you? He probably fancies himself to be very gallant.
ReplyDeleteHe DID seem like a mannerly old man. But once he had that cart, he left me in a cloud of dust!
DeleteIt didn't help that just the day before, I saw a mugshot of an old man in the local online paper. He had forced a naked woman out of his truck, and left her to die in the state park. So perhaps I was experiencing a hair-trigger weirdo episode.