Wobbly Grocery Carts

I discovered a new technique at the grocery store today.

It's always annoying to get the grocery cart that wobbles or drives rough in some way. So lately I've had this thing where I eye them down and try to intuit which one is my friend.

It's kind of futile tho, I don't really know what I'm looking for. Even if the cart is bent or beat up, it's probably just prejudiced to think this has a lot to do with the possibility that the wheels won't still drive fine. (Arguably it's even more likely to drive okay, since it looks like this and they're deciding to keep it in the rotation.)

Today I realized I should look at the handle!! Just pick the least worn out handle, and in general I should be picking the younger carts, which should be less likely to wobble.

The handle, rather than trying to spot occasional bumps and bruises, is the best way to tap into the age of the cart.

It's that simple!

It isn't a game changer or anything. Having the wobbling grocery cart once in a while isn't in the category of things that will crush you. And this will only loosely address the problem anyways. So not a ton of value at stake either way. But I'm glad I have something to grip onto now, so that I don't have to just feel lost for a few moments when I try to soul-read the carts.

My better supermarket parable is this:

When the lines are all long, when they're all several people deep and none seem obviously short, rather than try to measure the small differences between the amount of people and the items they have, just hone in on the cashiers. Look at them and try to pick the fastest one. (And if one of them is cute, it's rarely a mistake to pick that one.)

It's very approximate, sure. But so is "okay this guy has big water gallons and it won't actually take that long and over here there's 4 quick orders, over there there's 2 longer ones" and things like that. You're guessing either way. And it's easy to be unreasonably influenced by the way people are standing and stuff. If it's a store you'll shop at again, it helps long-term to figure out which cashiers you can trust. You want to do that anyways, so this is a good exercise.

If you've never been a cashier you may not realize that there can be a legit difference. It's my feeling that each store has their one or two ninjas, and if you can figure out who they are, it comes in handy and makes you a better shopper.

I probably override the blueprint when I see an old lady, tho. Especially if they're standing firm like they mean business. Most of them are fine, there's just some non-zero chance that they write a check.

And particularly if they don't have it written out in advance and start asking what store they're in and things like that, you do you, just it quickly becomes an atomic bomb in terms of which lane was better. I'd rather avoid it.