I drove to the grocery store today for a few essential items, no more than I could carry in one hand. On days like this, I opt for the hand baskets that are usually located somewhere near the door into the grocery store rather than use a four-wheeled shopping cart. I did my shopping, went to the checkout aisle, emptied my basket onto the conveyor.
When I went to put my basket in the area below the conveyor where the baskets normally go, I was disturbed (but hardly surprised) to see a massive jumble of these baskets, some with their handles folded inward, some stuck in sideways. It was a mess, and would need to be dismantled and reassembled. I took the time to do this so that I could put my basket in properly.
Would it have required any greater effort for those who came before me to have put their baskets down properly? These are the little things that happen when we, as society, stop giving a crap. A person who puts the basket down there haphazardly doesn't care about the customer coming to that checkout aisle after him. He doesn't care about the employees who will have to later go fix the problem he created. He doesn't care that the baskets become damaged from being smashed into jumbled piles, rather than stacked neatly. He doesn't care that you might get the damaged basket, but I am pretty sure that he will be the first person to complain about how poorly the store is run when he gets a damaged basket!
When I was walking out to my car, I noticed another interesting phenomenon of human grocery behavior. A person will usually walk past a dozen shopping carts on his way to the grocery store's door. At that door, he will usually take a "fresh" shopping cart from the long row of carts that have been gathered by the cart gathering folk. But why is that? Why will they walk past all those other carts, only to take one from a different location? Do people feel that the carts in the parking lot are "used" and therefore inferior? Do they not realize that the stacks of carts near the door are just as used?
Further, why are those carts in the parking lot? Are we so lazy, or in such a hurry, that we can't return the carts to where they belong? When those carts are left in the parking lot, they present hazards to the other cars that are parked there. They can cause dents in other peoples cars. They can roll into a roadway. They can take up valuable parking spaces (like handicapped spaces) without reason.
In your efforts to reduce your burden upon humanity, do the following things:
1) Put your basket NEATLY into the stack of baskets at the end of the conveyor.
2) If the stack is a jumble, don't just throw yours onto the jumbled pile. Fix it.
3) If you bring your groceries to your car in a shopping cart, bring the cart back where it belongs after you've unloaded your groceries. Don't just leave it in the parking lot and drive away.
4) If someone else has left a shopping cart in the parking lot, and you happen to need one, use it! Don't walk past a bunch of functional carts!
5) Even if you DON'T happen to need a shopping cart, if there is one in the parking lot that someone else left there (because they are inconsiderate), bring it with you, and put it back where it belongs.
Really, is it that hard to just be considerate in this small way? We want the world to change and we want everyone to be better to each other, but we can't even stack freakin' grocery baskets.
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"We must become the change we want to see" Mahatma Gandhi
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I deleted the abc pid file.
Waiting for your reply.
Thanks, Sacs
In November of 1979 my family moved from the suburbs out to the boondocks. I was eight years old. I was unhappy to be moving away from my friends, but my parents told me how I was going to make a lot of new friends and that I was going to like my new school.
My old school had been K-5 and had over a thousand students. My new school was K-6 and had about 175 students. There was a total of about 25 students in my entire new third grade class.
When I was escorted to the third graders' classroom, class had already started. I remember we had to write something, and when I turned in my paper the teacher commented on how I already could write in cursive, something we'd started learning the previous year at my previous school. They hadn't begun learning cursive at the new school yet.
When we went to lunch the first conversation I had consisted of a couple of kids making fun of me for already knowing cursive. I also knew how to do multiplication, and a couple other things they hadn't learned yet, but I learned to hide things like that.
I finished my lunch in the cafeteria that was also the gym and auditorium for the school. I was a little confused about what to do with my lunch tray, because at my old school we just dropped our used trays off at a window near the dishwashing area. At the new school there was just a cart with a plastic tub sitting on top of it.
The lunch lady showed me how to empty my tray into the trash, put my dishes and utensils in the plastic tub, and then put my empty tray on the middle shelf of the cart.
As we were getting ready for recess the principal of the school came in.
Someone had put their lunch tray, dishes, and utensils into the trash and he wanted to know who did it. Several students in the cafeteria/gym/auditorium pointed at me.
At this point the lunch lady said something to the principal. He then asked who had seen me throw my dishes in the trash. Nearly everyone raised their hands. The principal then told everyone that the lunch lady was with me when
I properly disposed of my dishes, and that everyone was having detention instead of recess for lying about it. I was never going to win any popularity contests at this school.
After spending recess by myself, the lunch lady brought me back to the class.
Everyone was in line waiting by the door for the teacher to arrive. She stood me by the door to the classroom and told me to wait there. While I was
waiting, the girl that was at the front of the line noticed me standing there and accused me of cutting in line. I tried to tell her that the lunch lady told me to stand there, but she just stabbed me in the arm with her pencil.
I didn't cry or tell anyone, I just went to the back of the line. I still have the little gray graphite scar on my arm as a souvenir of my first day at Frelinghuysen Elementary.
When I got home I begged my parents to let me go back to my old school. I tried to convince them to let me live with one of my friends and come home to visit on the weekends. Needless to say, that didn't work.
For that first year I was literally treated like a leper by my classmates.
Anything I touched they would pretend to spray for cooties. They called me "corroded." I was the most hated kid in my class that year. It would stay that way until I learned how to be mean and direct their hatred towards others that were unwilling or unable to defend themselves.
Yet there was one kid who befriended me right from the start. He didn't seem to think I was contagious, and didn't seem to care that I was so unpopular. He was well-liked so it wasn't as if he needed to be friends with someone that was so universally despised. He was a good student; smart, and
amazingly creative as well. I think he was the only real friend I had that first year at the new school.
Three days from now is the eighth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine, and yesterday over 30 people were killed in shootings at Virginia Tech. I can't help but think that these events stem from how poorly we treat each other. When people are marginalized and humilated on a regular basis, the hatred grows. When there isn't someone there to let people know that they are valuable, that they are worth something, I think it becomes easy for them to think of the rest of the human race as one big faceless enemy.
A simple act of kindness at the right time may very well have diverted these people from their respective paths of destruction. I may have done some mean things to others as a kid, and I bet most of us have. These days, however, I try to think about what little actions I can take to improve others' lives.
Letting someone cut in during traffic, holding a door, stacking my plates for a waitress, or perhaps even stowing my basket properly at the grocery store...
Andy, thanks for being there for me when I was alone. I have not forgotten, nor will I.
Todd
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