I, too, know the feeling all too well of guests just generally acting like their IQ is their age.
Had an easy 3 hour cart shift tonight, easy!! But my god, people seriously just.. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! People seriously can't DRIVE for shit in a parking lot. It's not that hard. It's not, you drive up and down the aisles slowly, making sure you aren't gonna mow anyone down or clip someone trying to reverse out. No, instead, people absolutely LOVE to cause clusterfucks in the lot, going 20mph down an aisle, cutting through the lot indiscriminately, texting on their phones and blowing stop signs, backing out with little to no regard that a HUGE LINE OF CARTS IS THERE.
The regard CUSTOMERS seem to have for the Cart Attendant on duty is legitimately zero. Today in particular was just horrible for this kind of stuff. Busy, cars everywhere, no space to work. The one thing that particularly irks me every time is people who are stopped at the stop sign, I'm entering the area to push in carts to the building, but they see me and instantly have to fucking beat me and speed past. Every. Single. Person. Does. This.
I was hauling a huge line of carts down an aisle when a mom and her 2 year old baby are putting their cart away, innocent and cute enough. Nope, I thought they'd see and hear me and wait for me to pass before going back to their car, but she decided to run out in front of me with her kid, and of course I have this huge line of carts suddenly stop getting pushed so they 30-35 carts are rolling down the hill at a pretty fast speed, and I'm using all my might just to hold the carts there. The bittersweet thing about this is... she saw me. We made eye contact, but still ran out in front of me. She's lucky, just to think I would of been the one in trouble if I couldn't of stopped those carts lol.
I absolutely HATE the people that cut through the spaces and the lot itself at 20mph. This usually happens when I'm steering the carts into the next aisle and someone blows right past me or slams their brakes because I'm RIGHT THERE and they couldn't see me past the cars to their sides. This is where I've had quite a few people actually hit my line of carts, and not me thankfully.
For the most part, the work I do as a Cart Attendant isn't hard work at all. It's pretty easy, you're alone, independent to do your job. You get exercise and listen to music. All you really have to make sure of is that the store has carts, and bathrooms are clean. Carry outs whenever someone needs one, or a spill to cleanup. But the trade off with guest interaction in the lot is just horribly stressing. I've gotten into one real verbal altercation, where a lady was texting on her phone and she was in a big Suburban and kind of just blew past me and a bunch of other people. I thought "Oh, this is probably where I should stick up for everyone" because people were now complaining to me "oh did you see that!? She just blew past all of us and she's on her phone!"
So I follow where she parks and I'm lowkey kind of done with it all, I say "Hey, you shouldn't be on your phone you just blew past me and all these people." and she's all "What the fuck???? I'm not on my phone, why does it matter to you what I do? I don't see your name on the title of the car! Im gonna report you to corporate!" and I regret the whole thing. Fuck it, she can mow people down if she wants lol.
I know some people here aren't too fond of Cart Attendants for whatever reasons, but the work we do is pretty legitimate, at least in my situation. Sometimes you're trying to get carts in and you've got this passive aggressive team member speaking 1/4 of an inch from the walkie mic requesting spill clean up and "it's been 5 minutes"
Well, lets just say we have jobs to do too, much like you. But ya know. Just a Cart Attendant lmao. Just a 5am rant.
