Basket Case

Whenever I do any shopping, I tend to stick with the hand-held baskets over the huge shopping carts. First of all, I rarely need to buy that much stuff and even if I do find myself needing a lot of things I make it work. Secondly, you get a little workout with the baskets. If you push the limits of how much product you place in them you can do some curls while waiting in line and really feel the burn. But, the main reasons that baskets are the way to go instead of carts is they take up far less room. I like to have the maneuverability of the shopping basket, as you can slide in and out of tight spots easier and you don't have to worry about clogging up entire lanes of the store while you try and decided which item you want to purchase. At no time is the advantage of baskets more clear then during Christmas shopping time in a big department store.

I was in Target this morning trying to get a heap of shopping done in one swoop (I failed, but more on that some other time). Buoyed by the (misplaced) optimism that comes from knowing you are about to hit the proverbial present jackpot, I skipped the basket and went with the cart to carry all the treasures I was sure I was about to find. The signs that I should have stuck with my normal routine showed themselves pretty early. Now, I don't know when it happened, but at some point Target switched to a real heavy duty shopping cart. While that seems like a good idea, they are a good bit wider than the old carts. Like so wide that you can't fit two of them down an aisle at the same time. Or like so wide that when there was a pole in one aisle I couldn't go down it and instead had to leave the cart at the end, like a car waiting for a bank robber. Width of carts versus width of aisles seems like the kind of detail that someone should have checked out before the company bought hundreds of thousands of these carts.

But, I think the main reason the shopping carts were on my nerves this morning was the people standing behind them. All the worst kind of shoppers were out in force today: the people who block the entire aisle with their carts while texting instead of moving, the ones who come shooting out of the aisle without looking, hit you and expect you to say 'excuse me' to them and of course the ones who let their little kids push the carts, because that always ends well for the other shoppers' Achilles tendons. There was even one woman who left her cart in the center of the section and then walked every aisle before bringing toys to her cart through several individual trips. I couldn't tell if the wheels on her cart were screwed up or if she just didn't know how shopping actually works.

After two or three trips around the store with only two items to show for it I decided that not only did I not need a cart, I probably didn't even need a basket. My hopes of getting everything I needed for Christmas from one location (which, really, is every one's dream), I returned the cart to the front of the store and started just walking around with my few items under my arm. While that didn't suddenly change my mojo, allowing me to miraculously find the rest of the items on my list, it did get me into a couple aisles I couldn't go down with a cart and allowed me to notice a couple different gift ideas the next time I circled. I'm far from done with my holiday shopping, but I think no matter how many items I still have to pick up, they'll be put into baskets only from here on out.