Beware of grocery store aisle rage

by Denny Banister

What we need in America are more food cops. No, not the kind who like to tell us what we should and should not eat, and not those who actually want authority to tell us what we legally can and cannot eat. What we need are uniformed food cops pushing grocery carts with flashing red lights, sirens and radar detectors to ticket careless and reckless grocery cart pushers in our supermarkets.

Many people push grocery carts with the same inconsiderate, me-first attitude they have driving their cars. Always in a hurry, they are aisle hogs who pull into our path without signaling, forcing us into the shelves so they can dodge a stalled grocery cart or dart around a couple of shoppers who illegally parked their carts in order to chat. Aisle hogs whip their carts around traffic jams and into oncoming traffic without regard of carts coming the other way.

Grocery aisles are lawless. Should we push our carts on the right side of the aisle? Do carts on the wide, main aisles running the length of the store have the right of way over cartists speeding along secondary aisles? Should we limit the load of a cart like we do heavy 18-wheelers on our highways? Neither stops on a dime, you know. It is only a matter of time before we face the tragic consequences of an overloaded grocery cart unable to stop, hitting a cart of innocent children on a field trip to the dairy case.

While on the subject of children, have you seen the carts with front ends designed like race cars? Kids sit and steer, pretending they are in the Indy 500 – and from the way their parents accelerate these pretend Porsches through the store, the kids may be closer to reality than they realize.

Soon we will have cart education teachers in our schools telling us to cart defensively; cart pushing licenses; grocery cart insurance; and lawyers whose carts are filled with Velcro-strapped neck braces looking for grocery cart accident victims.

Can customized carts be far behind? They will have large rear wheels, spoilers, bumper stickers proclaiming “Like your import? Eat your cart,” and no space for groceries. Instead they will be filled with powerful amplifiers and super bass woofers loud enough for their cart-rattling excuse for music to blow your bread right out of your basket.

As for me, I always get the cart supposedly driven only on weekends by a little old lady Sunday School teacher, but the rattling front wheels and inability to keep the cart moving in a straight line tell me the cart was in a front end accident. I rattle my way all over the aisles, my ability to steer further disabled by the missing plastic handle grip.

It is enough to make me take the exit ramp at the liquor aisle for a bracer, but that is when I would discover the innocent looking lady pushing the unmarked grocery cart was really a plainclothes food cop, and I would be pulled over and issued a g.c.u.i. – grocery carting under the influence.

If this trend continues, I may be the first person arrested for aisle rage. If you see me while grocery shopping, pushing a cart filled with those heavy, family-sized canned goods, and my left eyebrow is twitching – whatever you do, yield and give me the right of way.

(Denny Banister, of Jefferson City, Mo., is the assistant director of public affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)