The cart return was forty-seven steps away

The cart return was forty-seven steps from where the man parked. I counted afterward, using my normal pace, which is not rapid but has been accepted in several airports.

He unloaded four paper bags into the back of a white sport utility vehicle. The bags had handles. The vehicle had a button that lowered the rear door by itself. When it finished, it gave three short beeps so no one would mistake convenience for an accident.

The man pushed his empty cart to the blue accessible-parking sign and turned it sideways. One front wheel rested against the curb. This kept the cart from rolling into his vehicle. It also kept the striped access aisle from being entirely accessible, though a person could probably have gone around if the person had selected a narrow enough wheelchair.

A woman waiting for the space watched him. He gave her the small raised hand we use to mean both thank you and I have completed my part of this interaction. Then he drove away.

The employee gathering carts was named Emil, according to the patch over his heart. He wore an orange vest over a dark shirt in 106-degree heat. The store had given him a machine that could push twenty-five carts at once. It could not retrieve the ones left against signs, planters, or the concrete base of the light poles, so Emil stopped the machine each time and brought those over by hand.

I asked whether the machine was difficult to steer.

“Only when people help,” he said.

He smiled when he said it. People who work with the public often smile at the end of a sentence so the sentence will be allowed to remain.

Inside, the receipt asked me to rate my visit from zero to ten. A rating of nine or ten meant the store had succeeded. Anything below nine meant an associate had an opportunity to improve. I had not met the associate responsible for placing the cart return forty-seven steps away, so I folded the receipt and put it in my wallet.

On the way out, Emil had reached the white vehicle’s cart. He moved it from the striped aisle to the end of his row. This took him nineteen steps, because he was already nearby.

I returned mine to the proper place. It made a satisfying metal sound against the cart ahead of it, which is not much of a reward but is immediate.

Norbert