The most valuable lesson.

I saw a lady at the store today, two parking spots away from the shopping cart return, aimlessly push her cart towards the cart return.  Instead of doing the right thing and pushing the cart into the front of the hopper she just heaved the cart to the side of the return. The cart now rested clearly on the parking spot next to the return. She then hurriedly jumped into her car, but did not speed off. Instead she took a minute to fix her makeup, which gave me just enough time to enact my plan.

I grabbed the cart and pushed it behind her car and knocked on the window pointing to the car "watch out for your cart". She jumped out of the car and looked puzzled realizing there was no way that her cart could have traveled uphill 20 feet to rest there. It hit her that I put it there (I was shocked she figured it out so quickly). "What the fuck did you do that for?" "Well I saw that you had trouble putting this away right the first time so I thought I would give you a second chance, yea!  Think of it like a shopping cart bonus round.  Double points."  "You're an asshole"  "Now that you got right the first time" A comment that for some reason I felt needed to be followed up with a double thumbs up.  I almost started laughing as she pushed the cart right back to the same place she had before and stomped back into her car.
 
Now you might be thinking that i accomplished nothing, but I disagree.  Consider this.  How much time did she save by not putting this away properly the first time?  Let’s say ten seconds.  How much time do you think she wasted yelling at me?  Forty seconds.  By my math I just got a free 30 seconds of entertainment and you got the five best minutes of your day reading this blog.  And something tells me she will get it right the next time...if nothing else for the bonus points.
 
Cheers!