Lazy Hudson Valley Shoppers Stoop to New Lows, Enough is Enough

Just when you thought people couldn't get any worse, some lazy Hudson Valley shoppers have stooped to a whole new low.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, I have to call out the inconsiderate people I witnessed during a recent shopping trip in Poughkeepsie. On The Boris & Robyn Show, we have a feature called "Ticked Off Tuesday" where listeners chime in on some of the everyday annoyances that drive them nuts. This week I had to talk about my experience after being flabbergasted by some shoppers' laziness.

On Sunday our family needed to pick up a few things at Target. The parking lot was especially crowded so we wound up parking further away than usual. After doing some shopping we returned to the car to discover that someone had left their shopping cart directly behind our car. What made this especially infuriating was the fact that our car was parked only two spaces away from the cart return corral. Whoever was parked next to us was so lazy that they couldn't simply walk the cart back two spaces after unloading their items.

While walking their cart back to the corral I noticed an even more ridiculous shopper going out of their way not to return their cart. The man, who was parked directly across from the corral, actually lifted up his cart and placed it on the grass median next to his car. This defiant shopper was so adamant about not returning his cart that instead of easily rolling it back to its proper place just 15 feet away, he lifted it up and relocated it over the curb. It was like he was purposefully going out of his way to be inconsiderate.

Now, there may be some Karens out there who will respond to this by saying I have no idea what these people are dealing with or that I should just mind my own business. Maybe these "lazy shoppers" have small children to deal with or some sort of handicap that made them unable to return their cart. Honestly, those excuses don't seem to ring true. If you can use the cart throughout the store and walk it all the way back to your car, there's should be no physical reason why you also couldn't also walk it two spots back to where it belongs. And, as a father myself, I remember always unloading my packages into the car and then taking my young child with me to return the cart. Sure, it was a pain in the butt, but it was the right thing to do and taught my son a valuable lesson about personal responsibility.

Nicky in Wappingers wrote to us saying that they read that returning your shopping cart was "the baseline of being a decent human being" and I couldn't agree more. The next time you're faced with the decision of whether to return your cart or blow it off, I hope you decide to do the right thing. This simple bare minimum of effort could prevent someone else from being inconvenienced and passing that negativity along to someone else. And if you haven't noticed, we can certainly use a lot less negativity these days.