@cassite said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
...I mean, I guess? I've got a whole slew of chronic illnesses, and if I'm well enough to push that cart around the store, I'm well enough to push it the ten-to-fifteen feet from my car to the return.
The intent of that copy/pasta isn't for your one-offs that you haven't done it, it's measuring the fact that you're capable of empathy for the person whose job it is to clean up after you. I have certainly not had enough spoons on given days to return the cart, but on those days, I felt like an asshole about it. Because it was an unspoken rule, because I was breaking it, and because I was making more work for someone.
As far as I can tell, that silly copy/paste isn't saying "If you ever see a shopping cart out of place, you know an asshole did it." It's saying, "Know the ramifications that your actions have on other people."
Or maybe this just pisses me off extra because the tiny grocery store I shop at has a cart-returner who's friendly as hell and in his seventies, and imagining him roaming through the rain in 2c weather for stragglers makes my heart literally break.
Anyhow.
^^This^^
Having worked at Wal-Mart and having to chase down carts, sometimes halfway across the parking lot, while being horrifically underpaid for any part of that job, AND dealing with my own issues? Sucks. More often than not, the people working AT Walmart? Also suffer from things like chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, etc. and we still have to schlepp our asses around and gather up the carts. It sucks. It sucks all around. I'm also a single mother. I've absolutely had to put my son into his car seat, load the groceries... and then I locked the car with my son securely fastened in his seat, so I could push the cart down to the return so I wasn't being 'that guy'. Because I've worked that job and had to deal with that hassle. The problem with 'but my X' is that everyone wants to be the exception. So whose 'X' is more important? Is your depression rating higher than my own? Is my fatigue worse than yours? We have to be willing to be decent people and allow that everyone has an 'X' and acknowledge that we need to be willing to push past it to do the right thing.