Shopping in a cart (2)

Well, while I'm on a rant about shopping with an electric cart, I may as well add a few more little annoyances that make for less than a helpful experience.  Shopping this way can actually be exhausting and stressful.  Were it not for the pain and (greater) exhaustion from the alternative (pushing a regular cart), riding an electric cart in a big store would not be my choice.

Let's start with height.  Collecting groceries from shelves that are higher and lower than your reach means getting out of the cart to get the items.  This is a lot of standing up and sitting down, which can be tiring as well as stressful for inflamed joints.  Using a cane to bat boxes down from a high shelf sometimes works, but that's a definite non-starter for anything liquid, even if it is in a plastic container. 

I don't particularly see a solution to this, since stores have to place items as high as they can to maximize display and storage.  Perhaps I'm just making the point that shopping in a cart is not as easy and relaxing as it looks.  I hate to ask for help and am a little embarrassed when help is offered, but, when I do ask for help, I wish I knew that the help was gladly given.  The looks I get sometimes . . .

It's certainly not relaxing when dodging pedestrians.  In the first place, people (adults and children alike) stepping in front of the cart run the risk of being hit.  To avoid hitting them, I just have to stop pressing the accelerator, and braking is automatic--and very abrupt.  I don't hit the pedestrian, but I am flung forward every single time I have to try to avoid them.  Try riding in your car in heavy traffic without a seat belt or holding onto anything and see how it feels.  It's sometimes painful, but always tiring and stressful.

What's so hard about watching where you are going?  What's so hard about giving the carts the right of way?  If one's fellow customers must be allowed to be careless, might we not at least expect that the employees would show better sense than to consciously and deliberately walk in front of a moving cart, forcing that brutal braking maneuver.  "Oh, excuse me" just isn't the same as pausing a second to let me pass, not when you keep going while I'm thrown around like a sack of potatoes.