Chronic Rants

Well that was a surprise: my last post was over 5 months ago, and in that post I said I would continue writing, but then, well, chronic illness was its usual pain in the ass and then some. Still, better late than never, right?

I said in that post that I was dealing with a lot of fatigue because my medications were off and I was waiting to see a new doctor. Well, that new doctor ran a lot of tests; I thought she went overboard, but I’m so glad she ran them! Not only were my medications off, but she found a couple of other issues, also. I’m getting treatments for both. One is long term and I’m slowly but surly getting better. The other should be temporary, and if my immune system was functioning the way it should, I’d be better by now. But it’s not, and I’m not. So instead I’m spending a lot of time resting. I’m not socializing with friends or doing fun things. But hopefully soon, in the next few months, that will get better, too. The fatigue has improved, but not enough, and over-exertion is a big issue.

Even with the extra health issues and the accompanying extra symptoms, I need to keep doing the basics of life, and that includes getting groceries. It was on a recent grocery trip that I felt fed up with the shopping cart system. I’m sure it’s different in different parts of the world, but where I am, the system sucks for disabled folks.

Let’s say you use a cart while you shop, and then you use it to bring your purchases to your car. What do you do with the cart after you unload everything? Where I am, there are usually two options: bring the cart back to the store’s entrance, or put it in one of the cart return areas in the parking lot. There are usually a couple of these in each parking aisle. This seems simple, but there are definitely problems.

Typically the parking spaces closest to the store entrance are marked as accessible parking. Then there are a few regular parking spaces. Then a cart return. Then more parking spaces and, depending on the size of the lot, there may be a second return farther down the aisle.

The most obvious problem is that some people don’t feel like walking to those cart drop-off areas. If they’re parked near the accessible parking spaces, which are bigger than most, then if one is empty, people will often leave carts there. Even if the spaces are taken, people will often leave carts in the marked off area next to the spaces, which then blocks many wheelchair users and others from enter or exiting their vehicles.

The problem that is apparently less obvious but shouldn’t be, is that disabled folks also need to return our carts. Let’s say I park in an accessible spot because I need to reduce the amount I must walk. By the time I get to my car I’m in pain and/or fatigued. Now I need to return my cart. Walking back to the store is too far. And walking all the way over to a cart return is also too far – if it weren’t, I could have parked over there to begin with!

Both of these problems could be solved by simply moving the cart returns closer to the accessible parking spots. Then we’d have accessible parking spots followed by cart returns followed by regular parking spots and then another cart return and finally more regular parking spots.

This solves both problems because disabled people would have an easier time returning our carts and non-disabled people who park nearby could leave their carts in the cart returns instead of in the accessible parking spaces.

This is where capitalism comes in, I would guess. Stores want customers. Most customers do not park in accessible parking. Most customers want to park close to the store. The stores do not want to take up the closer regular parking spots with cart returns. That isn’t an efficient use of space for their paying customers. Yes, it’s only a tiny extra distance for an abled person to walk. Yes, someone who has to return a cart would need to do extra walking either way, and this just changes the direction. But it feels like more effort for folks, and no one wants that. Apparently it’s better to cause a few people to expend a whole lot of effort than to cause a lot of people to expend a tiny amount of effort.

I’m curious what you think. Are parking lots in your area set up in this way? Have you experienced a better system? Am I missing something? I’d love to know!