CART TRAINER #4

CART TRAINER #4

Having recently been hired as a Cart Trainer for a large supermarket to train their carts to lock their wheels so tightly preventing them from crossing the outside yellow lines of the parking lot. So tightly, they could bounce someone across the handle bar of the cart if they tried; I am ready to try what Cesar Millan, the famous dog trainer, calls “calm-assertive energy”. He believes that dog owners should establish their role as calm-assertive pack leaders and that is exactly what I intend to do. I will be Alpha Cart.

As a Cart Trainer it is clearly my responsibility to keep the Carts exercised and well oiled, to communicate clearly defined rules, boundaries and limitations and to give affection. Each Cart must sense their value and worth to the overall purposes of the Supermarket. This will be my job to insure that every Cart matters and ‘no Cart is left behind’ and put back properly in the Cart Rack.

Each day brings each Cart closer to the testing of the Yellow Line. I take them out little by little to the edge of the parking lot and over time they have confidence they can stop completely when needed. This culminates in what I have termed: Lock’em Up. This is when the Cart is fully trained and when crossing the Yellow Line can instantly lock up the wheels so they cannot go one inch further. Lock’em Up is like a graduation ceremony.

To see the Carts graduate after countless bumps and slams in the Cart Racks, abuses and hits from vehicles, tipped over in flower beds, left isolated and abandoned all over the parking lot and kicked and pushed around by angry shoppers and ridden and mistreated by mean fat kids, is a real thrill to a Cart Trainer.
No, really, this is what happened.

“You shall know the truth and truth shall set you free.” Jesus