Andrea's Buzzing About:

Where is my grocery cart?

I’m pretty sure I left it down by the front end of the frozen aisles.

It’s not there.  Nor did someone move it out of the way behind the [rarely used] Register 1.

Huh.  Where is my cart?  Now I’m traipsing around for my trolley.

I’m not grocery shopping, when I stay in close proximity to my market merchandise.  This is my working wagon, a cart with my rubbish bag and duster, my list and notes, my repair tape and of course, the things I need to shelve.

With my ADHD brain set to Random and taxed by tiredness, yet trying to keep several tasks current on my mental “desktop”, it’s certainly not impossible for me to lose track of a thing to fetch or to put away, or the next task I’d set myself to do.  Generally my recursive tracks through the store are sufficient for me to come across either the item or the section of shelves that I need to “face” (straighten up).

Sometimes my mental perambulations cross back over a previous line of thought, and the same mental note will thus occur to me again.

It’s inefficient to be sure, but eventually everything gets done.  I try to streamline my process progress by keeping a running list of Things To Do. The list is also great at the end of my shift, for when I leave a note to my boss telling what usual things I’d done, and also what extra tasks I had tended. Plus, there is the external randomness that happens all night long: periodic calls to cashier during a sudden influx of customers*, and sporadic customer queries that result in my taking them to the item location.

And then — oh bother!  Where DID I park my cart?

Because of course, if it’s a Truck day, I’m stocking dozens of cases of candy or baby formula or soap, then the cart stays put in the aisle. I remove each case of new stock to set, and then return the flattened cardboard to the cart.

That’s fine.  But other days there is no Truck of new stock to set, and I am simply filling in various shelves with Back Stock (B/S, not to be confused with BS).

And right now I can’t find my cart. I try to “retrace my steps”, which more resembles surveying the aisles I usually frequent, because nothing this evening was particularly memorable to imprint itself on my memory.  All too often, my memory is topical, not sequential.

No, it’s not around anywhere; which discounts the “distracted by sequential customer queries” process that results in me being far from my original departure point.

Another hypothesis is that since it’s neither in the usual aisles, nor by Register 1, maybe someone decided to take it to the back stock room.

I pace to the back room, thankfully uninterrupted by a customer, whose query would have restarted this whole recursive process all over again.

Hmn … there’s my cart and equipment, but not the case I was going to stock.  I guess one of the managers decided to do something with it.  Maybe it was one of those new items for which we do not yet have a shelf tag, and they needed to enter the item into the inventory system. Thank goodness; mystery solved.

So I wheel down to the stock bay where the B/S bird seed and dog chews are kept, to fetch more cases.  After loading my cart again, I realize that it’s time to take my Break — some food and water would probably help the whole tired brain thing.  And if I leave a full cart, no one is likely to unintentionally “gaslight” me by changing my surroundings and leaving me to wonder if I’ve lost track of my stuff or my mind altogether.

* Why “everyone” wants to check out at once — no matter when they came in — is one of the mysteries of retail.