![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/cartreturn.jpg\")
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I came across this story about this California mom who apparently enraged The Internet because she proclaimed to rarely return shopping carts<\/a> when she went shopping.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My knee-jerk reaction was like, what a lazy Karen-ey bitch, but when I actually read a little bit about the context to the whole story, my stance softened, and I began to empathize a little bit of where she was coming from, because it\u2019s come from the place of her being a parent, and if there\u2019s one thing I\u2019m observing in the world this day and age, is that at a glance, it feels like fewer people are having kids these days, therefore there are fewer parents as the generations move on, and therefore there are fewer people who can relate and understand to where this California mom is coming from.<\/span><\/p>\n Basically, her defense of her decisions to not always return carts to a designated area stems from the fact that when she\u2019s out and about with her kids on her own, she doesn\u2019t want to leave her kids unattended, even for 20-30 seconds, while she takes the cart back to a designated spot.\u00a0 And as a parent, who definitely understands the abject horror of the reality that the world is full of a bunch of sick fucks out there whom you never know are ready to strike at any given point, I wholeheartedly understand where this mom is coming from.<\/span><\/p>\n Even with modern cars that auto-lock when the RFID chips in the keys or phone signals stray, there\u2019s still a few second delay, and in this day and age all it takes is a few seconds for some twisted psycho to try to kidnap a kid, inflict harm or just be a plain sick fuck, and it\u2019s my duty as a parent to protect my children from that kind of stuff, no matter how unlikely or one-in-a-million chances it might be.<\/span><\/p>\n Now personally, I\u2019ve done both things, where I have not returned a cart to a designated spot, as well as returned my cart, while my kid(s) were in the car unattended.\u00a0 When I didn\u2019t return it, it\u2019s not like I left it in the middle of the parking lot or have it cockblocking an entire parking space, I\u2019ve typically moved it onto a curb or onto an island, out of the way as best as possible, and perhaps I\u2019ve had been having a bad day or the weather is ass for why I didn\u2019t return it, on top of the fact that my kids were secured in their seats and I didn\u2019t want to leave them unattended.<\/span><\/p>\n And when I did return my cart while the kids were unattended, I would always be looking back ever two seconds keeping my eyes peeled for any prowling psychos, and I would only take my cart back as far as to where I could then heave it forward and make it into the galley before walking briskly back to my car to be with my kids again.<\/span><\/p>\n But the reality is that whether I\u2019m at Costco, Publix, Target, or anywhere where I might need a shopping cart, I deliberately park away from other people, as well as often times, as close to a cart return as possible, so that I can return my cart conveniently close to my vehicle to where I don\u2019t have to deal with the fear of leaving my kids unattended while I do something honorable.<\/span><\/p>\n Back to the point though, I have this feeling that all the white knights of the internet who are in defense of retailers and attacking this mom for her choice to not always return her cart, probably aren\u2019t parents, specifically to kids of very young ages, like car seats and diapers or younger.<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t imagine that it\u2019s not just Korea and Japan that are having falling birthrates, when I look at my own circles of people, and seeing people getting older, passing traditionally prime child-bearing ages, and making the choice to live on the rest of their lives without experiencing the journey of raising another generation of human beings.\u00a0 I don\u2019t fault anyone for making that choice, and I would appreciate the same courtesy for my own choice to have children.<\/span><\/p>\n But let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s people who don\u2019t have kids who probably have more time than people who do have kids, to be on the internet and judging a mom who admits to committing the worst offense of history 1B, not returning shopping carts, because she\u2019s afraid of the psycho world we live in, and doesn\u2019t want to be the rare exception statistic where her kids get snatched because she\u2019s trying to make some store employee\u2019s life a little bit easier.<\/span><\/p>\n Her life could become a little bit easier by deciding to be more like me, and doing what I do, but sometimes that\u2019s not always going to be the case.\u00a0 Especially in a high-density region like California, and depending on when she goes to cart-utilizing stores, such parking options might not always be available.\u00a0 But I for one am never going to judge a parent for doing something that might offend others, but stems from a place of being protective parent.<\/span><\/p>\n Now if she were to continue this behavior on excursions where she\u2019s alone, then she\u2019s being a lazy Karen-ey bitch, but as long as her mom hat is on, I\u2019m not going to blow her up for it; I\u2019d suggest she be more like me, but wanting to protect her kids isn\u2019t something I will get up in arms over.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I came across this story about this California mom who apparently enraged The Internet because she proclaimed to rarely return shopping carts when she went shopping.\u00a0 My knee-jerk reaction was like, what a lazy Karen-ey bitch, but when I actually read a little bit about the context to the whole story, my stance softened, and … Continue reading Those who are quick to judge the shopping cart mom probably aren\u2019t parents<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,45,192,83,52,156,190,49],"class_list":["post-50011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-dad","tag-fail","tag-kids","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-social-media","tag-white-people","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50013,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50011\/revisions\/50013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}