That trolley is not good enough, thank you

AND ANOTHER THING

One strange thing about supermarket shopping is the way trolleys are treated, to say nothing of the trolley trundlers. No-one will take a trolley used by another.

Push your load all over a windy wet car park, unload and face a hike back.

You may offer your empty trolley to the person parking right beside you and he’ll choose not to hear, heading over to take one from the stack, occasionally the one you’ve quickly returned.

No-one will take a trolley used by another.

Equally, as you arrive and see someone emptying his trolley you may say I’ll take that shall I and invariably the answer is that newage rage Southland saying – nah, I’m good thanks.

No-one has doubted his health much less his moral standards – maybe only the low level of commonsense which sees the two of you trundling back and forth with empty trolleys.

I think it started when supermarkets, ever frugal with their plastic bags, said they were keeping an eye on their trolleys, allegedly disappearing home with shoppers to be converted into booze wagons, laundry luggers, garden totes or go karts.

Little chance of the latter we’d have thought, not with the shonky wheels and erratic steering of the big ones and the newer models too shallow to hold the requisite lad or two.

But this focus on missing trolleys means folk feel bound to return the trolley to the point where they first sighted it, like getting rental cars back the long way round.

Either that or there is a feeling that every man deserves his own fresh trolley, not one that’s carried another’s purchases.

Inside the store there may be hand sanitisers but the hands that have touched a trolley or two, they are beyond redemption.

The cleanest hands are bare hands which remind their owners of the need to wash, and thoroughly.

I dislike taking food or a glass from gloved hands which may have handled money five minutes ago and heaven knows what since.

Gloved hands seem so rarely washed – even the poncy blue gloves which have replaced swing name tags as the mark of officialdom – ‘‘let me through; I am so needed here’’ – in murderous television tales.

I believe the only gloves to be trusted are the white cotton gloves offered at wedding gown expos.