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Parking Lot Attendant

77 Comments

Since I am open to any new idea that could lead to gainful employment, my attention was caught by an online article from CNBC about a relatively new business that predicts the performance of big box retailers by analyzing on satellite photos of their parking lots.

Yes, people look at parking lots from space. This is good news for me, since my “skill set” includes basic counting and the ability to recognize cars from overhead.

It’s not the planet finder job I was hoping for, but if I could break into this just-getting-off-the-ground profession, I’d be working with extra terrestrial equipment! And what better use is there for our off-planet photographic capabilities? We’ve already seen enough depressing images of melting glaciers and toppled forests.

Let’s find out who’s shopping at Wal-Mart!

According to Eamon Javers’ CNBC report, today is an important day for this new technique, as the second quarter profits are going to be announced and the satellite analysts have parted company with some of the other experts regarding Wal-Mart’s performance. Conventional methods say Wal-Mart will be down from the second quarter one year ago. The parking lot surveillance data from Remote Sensing Metrics says Wal-Mart will be up a bit, based on a surge of cars in June. If the space camera is vindicated, you can expect more off-planet surveillance and new ways to analyze the data. We could look at parking lot trash patterns, vehicle slot alignment trends, handicapped spot pilfering rates and trunk loading vs. back seat stuffing matrices.

I would be interested in working out a Cart Corral Correlation.

By counting the carts inside the cart corral and comparing that to the carts cast aside at curbside, could we concoct some conclusions concerning community spirit as it correlates with carelessness around cars? I bet we could!

Give me a magnifying glass, and I’ll get to work!

Do you always return your shopping cart to the corral, or are you an abandoner?
Tell the truth!

77 thoughts on “Parking Lot Attendant”

  1. On those few occasions when I buy enough of anything to merit using a cart, I always return the thing to the corral. Of late, I haven’t even been in a store that has cart corrals. Most locally owned businesses don’t have them.

    I wonder if these days you really can correlate cars in the lot to sales? Just because people are strolling the store does not necessarily mean they are there to buy, buy buy!

    Perhaps I underestimate the American public’s need to consume, whether they can afford it (or need it) or not.

    If believe this technology is also being used in monitoring grazing patterns of pastures, if you think you would like this sort of work, but would like to avoid working for Wal-Mart, et al.

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    1. Catherine . . . there is reason to hope. Research is turning up evidence that people are actually changing their consumption patterns in ways that will last. Spending less. Saving more. Looking for more value. Those-who-claim-to-know say that a return to a healthy economy will bring back some of the old bad habits, but not as bad as before.

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  2. Maybe you could combine the parking lot technique with the role of political tracker. Taking pictures of Messrs Dayton and Emmer from the stratosphere may not prove to be all that objectionable yet will keep us all “informed.”

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons:

    My internet connection is hinkey again so until I get to work, this is my only comment. I’ve done both. When they locate one corral across the parking lot I don’t return it. Most of the time I do take it to the corral. More later!

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  4. They recently moved the cart corral at one of our regular grocery stores, so I changed where I try to park, too. I’d rather walk longer to get into the store and be closer to the cart corral when I’m done, because I am a cart corral user.

    That said, my local grocery store does not have cart corrals. Real human beings help you out with your groceries. I only live a block away, so I’m a walker with my groceries (which perplexes the carry out people until they start to recognize me). Once while shopping with Darling Daughter when she was a toddler, the carry out person asked if I needed help, and I said I was just walking a block, so I’d be fine. He took one look at Daughter and another at what had to be carried home and pronounced that he’d walk my groceries home for me so I could herd Daughter without carrying heavy bags. Does making sure the carry out help returns to the store count as returning him to the cart corral?

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    1. I guess it depends on if he was young, cute and helped you with household chores for a while before going back to store!

      In college, I lived in the West Bank area of U of MN, so I shopped at the co-op and walked. I had this nifty woven basket that strapped to my back to carry groceries and my French glass containers for bulk items — I miss that.

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      1. Nah, I released him back to his natural habitat (the grocery store) without further chores. Besides, one or more of us in the store there almost daily, so I didn’t want to abuse the privilege – we like the staff there too much for that.

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  5. I always return the cart to the corral, plus ‘stack them together’ so they aren’t hanging out past the end of the corral. Once in a while I’ll retrieve another cart that is on my way to the cart corral.

    Why am I so generous, you ask? My secret is not to park as near to the store doors as possible, but to park as close to a cart corral as I can. Saves a lot of time. Pretty sneaky, eh? 🙂

    And if you think that’s bad, I often find myself replacing merchandise on it’s proper shelf or hook in a store if someone else has not done so. Worst of all, if I’m browsing in a library and find a book not in its proper spot on the shelf, I’ll reshelve the book so it is in its proper place!

    I know, I know, by now your saying, “This guy’s got to get a life!” I guess work, golfing four times a week, trying to write a novel, and being a volunteer Big Brother still doesn’t take up enough of my time. Oh well.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    2. “I always return the cart to the corral, plus ‘stack them together’ so they aren’t hanging out past the end of the corral. Once in a while I’ll retrieve another cart that is on my way to the cart corral.

      And if you think that’s bad, I often find myself replacing merchandise on it’s proper shelf or hook in a store if someone else has not done so. Worst of all, if I’m browsing in a library and find a book not in its proper spot on the shelf, I’ll reshelve the book so it is in its proper place!”

      Chris…took the words right out of my computer. This is my modus operandi also. I was raised in a retail store, well-trained.

      And in our little local recycle buildings I also will try to fix mixed up glasses, remove caps, garbage bags and other miscellaneous mistakes.

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  6. Greetings! I work in a large grocery store, so I always return my cart — always have. Also try to straighten up the cart corral, too, and silently rant against people who don’t park straight in the lot or leave carts helter-skelter. Definitely misplaced perfectionism. But, of course, it doesn’t apply to my housekeeping. Go figure …

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    1. We used to park way off in a corner so my wife could extend the walk for some needed exercise. I once at a local Cub did not park it very carefully in the slot, way off there alone. When we came out, there was an obscene rant attached to our windshiled telling me to park straight in the slot.

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      1. That’s funny, Clyde — and rather unfortunate. I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, but sometimes that imp of the perverse wants to do it to some big, shiny, new, over-sized, gas-guzzling Intimida-like truck or SUV.

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    2. Joanne: “Definitely misplaced perfectionism. But, of course, it doesn’t apply to my housekeeping. Go figure …”

      Me, too…neatness and straightening definitely not applied “in house” at my house. What IS that about???

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      1. Same here, but now that I actually do almost all of the housework, I have become mauch better about it.
        cynthia, are you not doing the Carlton Fair, too?

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      2. oh yeah, she is! we are minions together at the goat show. (when i’m not helping with the triplets)
        one class is called “get of sire.” the three doelings will represent Majority (Mr. T) so he is pretty nervous. and pretty stinky. so he doesn’t get to go watch his daughters mince about.
        today is the calm before the storm…. making cajeta and cheese. always return the cart to the corral – especially at TJ’s in Mahtowa – but i often forget to feed the parking meter.

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  7. Havin’ had dingin’ done to my car a few times:
    Carts . . .
    Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’
    Keep those carts a rollin’
    Rollin’ Rollin’ carts to corral side!
    Get ‘em to a teather
    Windy rain or weather
    Wishin’ my ethics I could hide..
    Oh, vittles, love, and kissin’
    Is what I might be missin’,
    But I will push cart to corral side.
    So pull ’em back, head ’em in,
    Load ’em up, load ’em in,
    push ’em there, push ’em in corral side.
    Push em there, don’t hide,
    Get ’em there, shove ‘em in,
    Shove ’em in Corral side!
    C’mon, step here
    Movin’, movin’, movin’
    Keep those carts a movin’
    Movin’, movin’….
    Hmmmmmm
    Don’t let them cars go dingin’
    Just rope, curb, and land ’em
    Soon you’ll be off to where you abide

    I always put my cart in the corral, and other loose ones, often take one in with me, shelve books (which generally librarians like my wife frown upon in case you do it wrong), return magazines to the right place at B&N (which has made me a favorite at local B&N coffe shop).

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    1. Very witty, Clyde!

      When we look at this cart-returning behavior, I think we are seeing the effects of being middlewestern. We are such a NICE breed of people. Maybe a Saint Louis housewife who smacks a stack of Cheerios boxes with her cart will stop to pick them all up and rearrange the stack. But in Minnesota, the average shopper is going to do that if they just walk by a stack and it falls without them hitting it. I’d expect most Minnesotans to stop, pick up the boxes and rebuild the stack just like it was.

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  8. I’ll be shocked if a Baboon says he or she routinely fails to return a cart to its little pen. That constitutes laziness (which we all are guilty of) but laziness that makes other people do work we should have done. That is so NOT-baboon!

    I’m like Catherine and Anna. Like Catherine I don’t shop at shopping centers where they have carts. Like Anna I shop at a grocery store where cheerful folks do the carting for me.

    Something seems primitive and inefficient in counting parking lot cars as an index to shopper interest. Couldn’t that be automated? If general shopping activity is what you want to measure at a shopping center, forget the cars and set up meters on the toilets to count the flushes. I’m sure there is some set ratio between how many hours people shop and how often they pee. This isn’t rocket science. You could connect the flush counters to some kind of gauge like a speedometer and be able to monitor shopper activity in real time.

    Unfortunately, I don’t see a role for Dale in this.

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  9. Morning–

    I replace the carts too. And restack them if necessary…I’m only a little bit anal. Once or twice someone walking past as I finish loading the car will actually take the cart FOR me! (I’m trying to decide if I look that old and feeble or they’re just being nice?) In any event, them doing that makes my whole day — and makes me want to pay it forward.
    Sometimes I’ll pick up a wayward cart on the way into the store.

    I always thought ‘cart retriever’ would be a terrible job. No sooner round them up than they’re all out there again! Hate those kind of jobs… why won’t the grass stay cut or the cows stay milked??
    Course now they got the little motorized cart things… won’t be long before it’s all automated; carts will work with the ‘remote sensing metrics’ and the ‘lot attendant’ sitting in some office with a bank of computer screens to return themselves you think?
    When I was a kid there was a high end grocery store in Rochester that used tubs and a conveyor belt to take your grocery’s out to a SECOND LANE of drive ups. I don’t think we ever used that… we didn’t go to that store very often.

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    1. Ben, I’ve been meaning to ask you this — as you milk your own cows, I’m assuming you’re a small dairy operation. Do you sell your milk to a creamery, directly to consumers or just for personal use? Or is it just a fun hobby for exercise ;~)

      Seriously though, you seem to be one busy dude as a farmer, cow milker, theatre set designer, father, blogger, etc.

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      2. Joanne, I don’t milk anymore… (but milking as a ”fun hobby”??– I think my mind went blank for a minute there! Hah!)
        I milked 25 – 30 cows (because the barn only held 25) and sold to AMPI, a creamery. We drank our own but I never sold to others… that was always sort of frowned upon…
        I’m busy in that lazy sort of way… I can putz for hours!
        Thanks though!

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  10. Good Morning to All,

    A lot can be said about shopping carts. They seem to play a big role in our culture. Aready we have learned that there are those who don’t use them very much any more because they have changed their approach to shopping. The returning of the carts to the corrals is what we are talking about today and I do that. Other topics include the shopping carts that are put to other uses such as those used by the homeless to hold their stuff. Then there are all the different styles, including motorized ones for the handicaped and small ones for kids to push. We could talk about annoying uses such as those who block passages with their carts or allow their kids to ram you with those small kid carts. We are a shopping cart society or for some, an anti shopping cart society, and now Dale is looking into becoming the first to analyze shopping cart use by remote sensing.

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    1. Indeed, Jim. The structure of grocery stores is a fascinating topic: the logic of what they do, which all runs counter to me, with my space issues from fm. Grocery stores used to have wide aisles, but pushing us against food makes us buy more (sorry, proven true, like how the MOA never lets you not be right in front of a store) and we want to have endless options for everything and get upset if the store does not have what their kids see in ads on TV, so the stores need more shelf space and less cart space. And they jam up the ends of the aisles to get you to but the deals on the ends of the aisles, which often have dummy procing on them, “Two for $, which does make people buy two for $ instead of one for $2). But biggest of all is the oblivious way people drive their carts. DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THAT!!
      But remember, make everything better for your having been there.

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  11. I would love to shop in the sort of grocery stores you folks use, but not a choice here, except a high-priced old-fashioned neighborhood store, very far out of the way, with no real local foods are anything such. St. Peter has a wonderufl co-op, which will expand; wqould be one of the reasons we would go there.
    There is a local food store in Sleepy Eye, which is the worst of all worlds. High prices, no locals foods, won’t let you take carts out, don’t carry it out for you.

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  12. The Aldi’s stores have solved the runaway cart problem very simply — carts are locked up and you pay a quarter to use them. When you return the cart (as any baboon would), you get your quarter back! While their prices are very cheap, there’s NO customer service, no bags, no baggers, etc.

    Is that Mike Pengra’s voice I hear on RH doing some announcements? Man, he should have been on the radio a long time ago!

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  13. Dale, isn’t it amazing what topics get everyone’s attention?? Who knew shopping carts…

    I’m afraid I’m another one that has to “neaten everything up” in the stores or library. Uffda, I even “organize” the cards on spinner racks if they’re out of place.
    If I see an errant cart on my way into the store, I take it with me and that’s my cart. I used to think if everyone did that, you wouldn’t even need the corrals, or at least very small ones, but it’ll never happen. What I hate lately is walking through parking lots with no designated walking area — afraid of getting hit.

    I love the Aldi store idea. Cheaper food since they don’t have to pay the cart retrieval guys!

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    1. Walking with a slow-moving wife anywhere is tricky but parking lots are unnerving for me. Also, we drive a small car. So to back out between the large cars people drive today is frightening. And by the way, a thing I learned in the last few months, there are not anywhere near enough handicapped parking spots in front of ogrocery stores, target, etc. A sign, no doubt, of our aging population.

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      1. The parking lot issue was what first drove me to our locally owned grocery store. I had a baby in a carrier with me whenever I went shopping at the megastores and lived in fear of his life in those parking lots.

        I also realized quickly that the smaller store had everything I wanted for about the same price, just not 50 zillion boxes of it, so actually, shopping went much more quickly for me there, as we did not have to hike past acres and acres of processed stuff in boxes we don’t eat.

        I’m reminded of Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, where if you can’t find it at Ralph’s you can probably do without it.

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    2. The whole Aldi’s concept is to save money — it’s a fascinating business model. They don’t carry many varieties, the freezers and coolers are all closed (not open like most stores), it’s a smaller store footprint, only one or two cashiers and it’s mainly their own label with UPC bar codes on all sides for faster checkout. Don’t go to Aldi’s to find only your favorite stuff — they only stock what sells quickly.

      The BIG downside is a lot of their foodstuffs are not very healthy — lots of transfats, HFCS, high sodium, no organic or local. That’s how it was when I shopped there about a year or so ago.

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  14. A connundrum: to recycle here we are required to separate items into brown paper bags, which they then take. So we have to get paper bags at the grocery store, but then we always forget to bring in our green bags.

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  15. My wife is the ‘cart wrangler’ (H-YAH!). I ~usually~ do. There are times when I don’t. It’s how I maintain my ‘could be a bad boy’ image.

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  16. By the very good way: tim’s team won last night, beat Roseburg, OR, where my best friend from HS lives. Score was 6-2.

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    1. I watched the last three innings on the website tim posted earlier; http://www.legion.org/baseball
      and it was very exciting! A fun game to watch.
      tim, I meant to ask you before; how do you react during a game? Does your blood pressure go up? Do you yell and shout in excitement? Or frustration? Chew your nails? Pace? Nervous tics? Tell us all about it tim!

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      1. there are two white bearded guys right behind the plate when the etelecast is going on. one is me. i chew seeds and yell at the guys with words of encouragement. batting and pitching, hollering when the ball gets by the catcher, yelling at the catcher as to where the ball is when it gets popped in the air etc. i am just completely absorbed, tell em you only need one when they have two strikes, tell em they can hit this guy, that kind of stuff. its a big stadium and there is never a shortage of ugly acting fans form the other team so i make it my duty to be the positive influence and make reasonable suggestions as to balls and strikes in casre the umpire is having a hard time deciding for himself. two nights ago i forgot my seeds and sat without the non stop shelling of the seeds and i was ok but i do like to eat them seeds.

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      5. Tim, “i make it my duty to be the positive influence and make reasonable suggestions as to balls and strikes in case the umpire is having a hard time deciding for himself” made me laugh loud enough that my cube neighbor popped his head over the cube wall to find out what was so funny 😉 Good luck today!

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  17. Always a returner.

    Will the images be taken hourly? Will the car counters be responsible to skip cars that were counted in the previous hour’s tally?

    I’m rather late in getting here today. Too busy counting IP packets. 🙂

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  18. To Barbara: It was Frankie Laine.

    Does anyone wonder when Dale will grace the airwaves again? Every time I’m listening to a song on RH (I still try to listen in the mornings), my heart falls a little when I don’t hear him afterwards telling us something (always fascinating) about the song or singer.

    What’s up, Dale???

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    1. Hi Jane,

      Thanks for the kind thoughts. There’s no on-air work on the horizon for me right now. The radio business is changing rapidly so maybe some options will surface in the near future. But I do think Mike Pengra is doing an excellent job holding Radio Heartland together, and I believe he is still only half time in that role. Amazing!

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      1. Hi Dale,

        Yes, Mike is doing a great job, but the whole thing feels so heartless (on Radio Heartland, how ironic) without your (or any human being’s) voice. Of course, I’d much prefer your voice, but doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I really think it’s a bizarre way to run a radio program. ALL of their (MPR) other programs have hosts, and how cold and empty they would sound without them. I’m still mighty puzzled about the whole thing. I’m one of the folks who listens on an HD radio, so maybe that’s the problem?

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  19. not a rouge in the bunch .
    well here i am.
    i proclaim it my duty to make it obvious to the store where the cat corrals ought to be. if it is within range i will push my cart over 6 8 10 parking spots to put it away. if it is further than that i feel it is a bad assumption they make that it is ok to inconvoence me so i push the wheel of the cart up over the curb where it can’t roll away but it does take a parking space. i figure it is the only way to help them design the deal better. target is usually pretty good costco stinks, menards forgetaboutit.

    team did win last night. excellent ball.
    we play today at 4 (6 central)and if we win we are champs. if we lose we play again at 7 (9) and then if we win we are champs , if we lose we are 2 place .
    it is a double elimination and we haven’t lost yet so if we get beat the first time we get to go for the second time.

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      3. Yes, of course red seats…

        Did anyone notice the baboon off in the bushes? Is that new?

        And you know what else I like? At the very bottom of this page, the little teeny tiny smiley face…

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  20. Clyde, I just got a phone call that #4 has landed and is on his way to camp.

    Why I got this call and someone thought it would fill me with delight, I don’t know, but thought you should be warned.

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  21. I’m back, I think. Never can tell.

    We’re finally over the 12-timezone jetlag and lack of Internet connectivity. But now that I started my first, real, no-training-wheels job (with someone running behind — for now) guess where all my time is going?

    I think if this satellite shopping cart index of sales went mainstream, someone would invent a service that provided parking-lot-sized wallpaper — or it floorpaper — imagery installations, for Big Box managerial staff who want to give the impression of a healthy customer base at all times.

    I once was classmates with some crazy kids (healthcare professionals in their late twenties) who made a video of a snowboarder AND a shopping cart rider towed behind the same vehicle through plowed but still snowy residential streets… There’s a different kind of crazy in dem dere Northerners.

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  22. I admit I usually park close to the cart corral so I can not only return my own cart easily but also round up a few strays. I also push them down the line to allow more room. Yes, I am anal! Totally true. Witnesses have reported seeing me move cans to the proper spots that have been either mis-shelved or moved. Really, I’m not making this up.

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    1. Thanks for commenting, junebess5808. I’m also a freelance cart wrangler. I took one from the outer reaches of a Wal-Mart parking lot to the cart corral last week, but along the way I noticed the cart belonged to Cub, another long walk in the opposite direction. Ooops.

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      1. Ha! What if someone already stuck the wrong cart in the corral, say 10 carts back? (I brought mine back, but didn’t extricate the doleful loner…)

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  23. Welcome, junebess5808! It looks like you’re in good company here. As a worker in grocery retail, it’s nice to know there are folks out there who don’t drop unwanted frozen or refrigerated items on just any shelf. A gal in Produce was telling me that she picks up nut shells all over her department from people snacking on the bin of peanuts or pistachios — just throwing the shells wherever — very UNbaboonish!

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    1. Ooops — that should probably be UNbaboon-like … either way it’s odd and doesn’t quite work in the sentence. See? Once again, anal retentive and misplaced perfectionism … {sigh}

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