To the crotchety fellow who got out of his Subaru wagon with the UC Berkeley sticker and walked across the parking lot to pick a fight with my wife this morning at Folsom Blvd. Save Mart, for parking her cart inside an empty parking space instead of turning her back on the three small children in the car and walking across the parking lot to the cart dropoff, even though you were behind her in line at Save Mart so you knew she had the kids with her, and everybody does the cart-in-the-parking spot thing when the situation calls for it, such as having three kids in your car and it being 8 a.m. and the parking lot being empty…
When your father was your age, I’m sure he would have done what my wife suggested you could have done, and offered, being a gentleman, to help a young mother out. Not you. You’re probably quite enlightened, in your Subaru wagon with your UC Berkeley sticker. Everybody is fair game to you: terrorists, people who put too much mayo on your sandwich, sassy robots, cart-non returners. So many reasons to get out of your car and walk across the parking lot to unload a heaping pile of rage on.
You wondered aloud “why do people take up a whole spot for the cart instead of just returning it.” Why indeed. It really is a slap in the face to all the servicemen and -women who have died to give us the freedom to have parking lots. I know that is just the sort of thing that gets me fired up at 8:00 in the morning on a Wednesday, enough to get out of my Subaru wagon with the UC Berkeley sticker and pick a fight with a young mother who just secured her 3 small children in the car.
Maybe you were in a hurry to get home to sacbee.com and post some comments. Those crime victims aren’t going to offend themselves!
***
It’s not just us, right? There is an overabundance of jerks walking around with enough rage that they’d go out of their way to confront a young mom in front of her children. Road rage is going to get so bad that it’s going to make “Death Race” look like a trip to the Save Mart. If he had offered politely to move the cart for her, it probably would have deserved a post too, since it would have been a rare beacon in a sea of Subaru jerks. She did actually manage to tell the guy off, telling him he needed to “reassess” and that “another way to do it would have been to offer to help.”
Before you ask why didn’t she let a courtesy clerk take the cart, she didn’t need any help with the bags. And they have “cart roundup duty” for clearing carts from the lot. I worked at this place when it was still Lucky’s, in the summer of 1995. Worst job I have ever had, bar none. (And as it happened, about 2 minutes after jerk store left the lot, while she was venting to me about this on the phone, a courtesy clerk came out on cart duty and cleared her cart.)
There’s a whole website about… well, everything, but there is a whole website about not turning your back on your kids in the car. (And keep in mind there was an armed robbery at that location last year.)
Also, no offense to any UC Berkeley grads out there. If you profiled a person in a Subaru wagon with a UC Berkeley sticker, you’d expect the driver to be a little more toward Gandhi on the aggressiveness scale.
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36 Comments | Leave a comment
Yeah- Berkeley grads know: Mothers with young children think they can get away with anything. Time to crack down and start treating them like the overpopulating, global warming contributing, natural resource depleating people that they are. Outta’ ban the practice of having kids period, and really clear up the parking problems of 2039.
posted 8/13/08 at 11:00 am #
Oh my gosh, what was she supposed to do, leave her small children unattended in the car and walk back to the store? How ridiculous. I hope that guy really made himself feel important by being so aggressive, because he clearly needs to make up for some insecurities! How pathetic to pick a fight with someone like that.
posted 8/13/08 at 11:31 am #
Turty: You know, in the back of my mind I can’t help but thinking that is part of it. But I know plenty of clear-headed Berkeley folks… emoticon
posted 8/13/08 at 11:40 am #
Hey, I drive a Subaru wagon, and I’m not a jerk! Perhaps it’s the homebrewing stickers instead of UCB ones that make me unjerky :).
posted 8/13/08 at 12:32 pm #
This is the same woman who was having a mild altercation with the the checker at Save Mart over an ad for free soda they were promoting. This was happening in clear view (or not view) of her kids mind you.
posted 8/13/08 at 12:36 pm #
Shopper: what woman are you referring to? Because that was definitely not me.
posted 8/13/08 at 12:48 pm #
It wasn’t today but it was you.
posted 8/13/08 at 12:52 pm #
Shopper: and I know what you did last summer…
posted 8/13/08 at 12:56 pm #
This is the type of situation I often find myself in, where in retrospect, I could have come up with something so Zen to say - but I end up getting pissed off instead. Zen response idea #1: You’re right, I am so sorry sir, it looks like you need a cart for your shopping today, may I offer you this one?
posted 8/13/08 at 1:00 pm #
wait wait wait, WTF is going on here? shopper, if this is a joke please indicate so by making a wacky reference to something.
so we’re clear: this person did not see my wife at Save Mart this morning. i have never known my wife to a) start an altercation, or b) purchase soda, with or without a coupon.
posted 8/13/08 at 1:05 pm #
Shopper: either you’re trying to be funny and we aren’t getting it or you are a complete whacko that stalks women at grocery stores, and you’re not even good at it from the fact that you’ve confused two of them. Please clarify.
posted 8/13/08 at 1:28 pm #
Careful, Subaru UCB Sticker Guy. Don’t you know how close to the ghetto you are?
(Sorry, I just can’t seem to let it go.)
posted 8/13/08 at 1:51 pm #
CSI: My usual response for a situation like that is less zen and more snarky. I’ll say, “Aw! Someone needs a hug!”
“Hi. My name is RunnerGirl, and I have many Cal/Berkeley accoutrements on my vehicle.”
posted 8/13/08 at 2:32 pm #
This post has been nominated as funniest SacRag post of the day.
posted 8/13/08 at 3:38 pm #
Funny, ha-ha, or funny, creepy?
posted 8/13/08 at 3:53 pm #
All I know is, this kinda shizzle don’t happen at the Nugget.
posted 8/13/08 at 3:58 pm #
You’re right SinghCity, it is totally hilarious!
posted 8/13/08 at 4:19 pm #
I agree with the dude. Your wife sucks and so does every sensless a-hole like her. She could have parked the thing outside of a space and not in the middle of it.
posted 8/13/08 at 5:38 pm #
Josh, does it make you feel like more of a man to be so crass and hostile toward strangers on an anonymous website? Or is your life just so lacking in meaning that you have to cling this vehemently to such worthless opinions? Just wondering.
posted 8/13/08 at 7:04 pm #
In my wife’s defense, she’d recently been on the losing end of an altercation and didn’t get her soda. And nothing turns my wife into a senseless a-hole like not getting her soda on.
posted 8/13/08 at 7:11 pm #
Ahhh, there’s nothing like righteous indignation to boil the blood and cloud the mind.
Basically, it appears that your wife was too lazy to walk an extra 10 seconds to the Kart Koral, instead dumping her responsibilities under the Unspoken Social Code onto others.
Linking Berkeley and Subaru into your rantitude only exposes your biases, making your arguments merely laughable.
posted 8/13/08 at 7:43 pm #
Overall I think this is going pretty well. We now know we have a stalker, and that they call it a Kart Koral back in D.C., that’s cute.
I guess I didn’t sell it strongly enough, but the moral of the story was supposed to be that jerks are among us, waiting for their chance to dump their rage on a stranger. Wait, I’m pretty sure I said that exact thing.
It’s a strange day when Turty Squip is the voice of reason!
posted 8/13/08 at 8:11 pm #
Anyone who gets that enraged over wanting a total stranger to put her shopping cart in a different location really needs to Google “the world; actual problems” and find something actually worth being so incensed about. Almost anything would be more worthwhile.
posted 8/13/08 at 9:40 pm #
I know it’s just anecdotal evidence, but I seem to see a rise in local assheadedness lately. So, leaving the situation with the kids aside, this dude got more than minorly annoyed that Mrs. Cool improperly stashed her shopping cart, so much so that he had to actually get out of his car and confront her? Sheesh.
I blame it on the election season.
posted 8/14/08 at 7:32 am #
As a mom of three small ones I understand the actions of said mom who needed her corn syrup (!). You either lock the car with the kids in it and all windows up because of the world that we live in these days and prepare yourself for the hell you will pay from a stranger who walks by and sees all three kids in there and draws the conclusion that you have left them in these conditions while you’re off doing what you need to do. (Yes I’m aware of the run-on.) OR - you just leave your cart there for the employess to round up, doing your best to set the wheels so the cart doesn’t hit any cars and being sure that you are not using up a much needed spot. Hmmmmm, such a tough decision for a mom to make. Oh you and your Su-bah-roo. For Shame.
posted 8/14/08 at 10:09 am #
We are missing two key pieces of information here:
1. We need to hear from the other person involved (i.e. the guy with the Subaru with the UC Berkeley sticker) to get his side of the story and to explain why he hates America.
2. I need to see a verified picture (or reasonable representation that is agreed upon by both parties) of precisely where the shopping cart was left, how it was left in the parking space.
Until then, we have only heard one side of the story and I believe it is premature to pass judgement or to condemn either party.
posted 8/14/08 at 11:06 am #
that sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach to take toward a total stranger that you haven’t been working with on a website for like 4 years. thanks for the input!!
posted 8/14/08 at 11:19 am #
Wait a second: what was the free soda that SaveMart was giving away?
And really, what person has the audacity to bring her three kids to a supermarket at 8am on a Wednesday? I mean, that’s what daycare is for.
(boom)
posted 8/14/08 at 12:18 pm #
SC, good point. You really need to interview all parties and inspect visual evidence before deciding if it is appropriate to pick a screaming match with a young mother trying to safely load her 3 small children and a family’s worth of groceries in the car.
posted 8/14/08 at 1:48 pm #
This is why I am leaving Sacramento. A whole a lot of jerks who are unhappy with their lot in life. I like Sac for many reasons, but most people will say the best thing about Sac is the proximity to Tahoe and SF. Yet most(not all) people only go to those places once a year. Next time you hear someone talking about the good things Sac has ask when was the last time they took part in the activity. I have a theory that if I move to a destination city like San Diego or San Louis Obispo, the residents will not be so pissy from the effects of living in a town simply because their job moved here, or they were born here.
posted 8/14/08 at 2:17 pm #
You said it Nick: there’s no more better destination city like San Louis Obispo. Ever since I was a little boy, I always dreamed that one day I would pack my bags, and head out to make my mark in the city of San Louis Obispo.
posted 8/14/08 at 2:32 pm #
A courtesy clerk isn’t just there to help with the bags, sometimes they clear the carts. It looks to me that she indeed needed help since she had three kids and wasn’t able put the kids in the car, unload the groceries and return the cart. A courtesy clerk could have taken care of two out of those three things.
I realize it’s not her job to return the cart, but since you stated that working there sucked, wouldn’t it be nice if she made the courtesy clerks job a little easier and returned the cart to the cart corral.
Oh yeah, I’m not sure the guy needed to get out of his car and confront the mother, but maybe he was once a courtesy clerk and he remembered how much it sucked to clear the carts from parking spaces.
posted 8/14/08 at 2:39 pm #
Well I meant the Pismo/Morro Bay area.
posted 8/14/08 at 2:52 pm #
HeyMeg, I’m glad we finally agree on something on this website.
posted 8/14/08 at 2:58 pm #
Nick: I’m sorry you feel that way. I think there are plenty of nice people in town, and if I don’t mention them enough on this website it’s because they are not as hilarious.
posted 8/14/08 at 3:13 pm #
One of the “real problems of the world” (or whatever you said that I’m too lazy to scroll back up to) is Americans and their entitlement.
And I guess the other problem, now that I think about it, is Americans and their laziness.
posted 8/15/08 at 9:02 pm #
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