Trim Trolleys

Unlike various service jobs on offer in South Africa, we do not have personnel manning certain stations in New Zealand. Like filling our own fuel tanks, checking the inflation on tyres and the engine oil level, for example. Shopping centre parking lots have no “trolley jockeys” either, and it is each one’s civil duty to replace shopping trolleys where you found them. It simply isn’t an option to leave the thing standing in the middle of nowhere.

At the Countdown (previously Woolworths) parking lot in Waikanae, there are two “trundler parks”, which are specially railed off bays in which one can leave your trolley, instead of trundling them all the way back to the shop entrance doors.

One of the shop assistants is tasked with keeping an eye on these parks, and then to collect and re-position “batches” of used trolleys at the entrance doors as the need arises.

One afternoon, after off-loading my shopping into the car, I pushed the empty trolley across to the trundler park. As luck would have it, a young lady shop assistant was busy marshalling the trolleys into a pushable fashion. Being a co-operative citizen, I attempted to push my trolley into one of the two lines of compacted trolleys which she was preparing for her route back to the shop.

“Don’t put that one there!” she called out, just as I was about to dock my trolley. I was somewhat taken aback by her curt voice and apparent lack of appreciation of my attitude of co-operation, but I left my trolley there in mid air, as it were, as she remonstrated and mumbled something about “in tune” and “pretty”.

As neither of these words qualify as being descriptive of me, I guessed that she was talking about something else, as she pointed to the push-bars of the trolleys and I set off towards my car. I glanced around discreetly once more, and noticed the colourful advertising strips on the push-bar of each trolley.

The plastic-covered printing was a brilliant orange on some bars and a bright Countdown green on others. It was only then that I noticed that the young lady had been docking the trolleys in an orange-green-orange-green sequence. My green bar would have been out of kilter with the green one already docked! I simply smiled at her and then went to the car.

Isn’t it strange how we overlook seemingly minor little things which may be important to others. I do not go near the Countdown door, without checking to see whether the shunted queue of trolleys is “in tune” and “pretty”