Dear Editor;
On Saturday, July 26, I saw an attractive young lady returning Co-op shopping carts to the Co-op property. She was struggling to push it on the grassy, side hill at the west end of the Co-op lumberyard.
Once, in late June I rescued a Co-op shopping cart that had been left lying on its side on 49th Avenue just west of the former Elaine’s Beauty Salon. Frank Schneider came along in his truck and with a smile; he asked me if I was lost? I told him I was doing my ‘good deed’ for the day to save someone from being charged with theft over $200. By the time I reached the Co-op I was in a self-righteous snit. I spouted off at the checkout girls, told them where I found the cart and asked for the manager.
I proceeded to the Co-op office and regaled the manager about how the Co-op should control their shopping carts with the idea of chaining them together in a process that requires a Loonie to get a cart free. When the cart was returned, the customer would get their Loonie back. Or better still; don’t let the carts outside the store.
The manager listened graciously and then advised me that the Co-op had a Board of Directors who were responsible for policy decisions and that the Co-op membership did not want to pay to use a cart for shopping.
Too bad.
I then informed the manager that I had to get out of my car and move some carts out of a parking space before I could park and that I did not appreciate people leaving carts between my parked car and the next parked car which I would have to move before departing. Almost any policy concerning the shopping carts would be better than the, ‘leave them anywhere’, that is the present problem that I have made clear.
Well, do we assume that the young lady was doing her, ‘good deed for the day’? Maybe she was doing it for a senior citizen who could not push the cart home loaded with groceries but was too old and tired to push it back.
Oh, and yes, I am a member of the Co-op.
Hugh Bayne
Rimbey, Alta.