You've seen the guys pushing carts in the parking lots outside of supermarkets and big box Everything Stores. You may have guessed this is a miserable task, and you would be correct! Allow me to list my grievances.

-Your supervisor considers it important that you appear to be fast and efficient. That's why you need to bring the carts back inside six at a time, no less. This requires you to make the stack of carts turn a corner at least once, keeping in mind that only the front cart of the stack still has wheels which can turn. You will accomplish this either by slowly rotating a giant logjam of carts whose wheels grind against an angle they're obviously not supposed to turn at, or splitting the stack into segments of no more than four, the magic number where it's still marginally maneuverable. If you choose to split them, you're likely doing it in the foyer in the middle of a bustling crowd of gawking customers and the occasional mirrorshades cop who got assigned to looking like he's preventing crime. One out of ten customers will "help" you with the giant stack of carts by yanking one off the far end and using it. If your supervisor doesn't see this and it brings the number of carts below six, they will tell you to go back outside and get more.

-Employees hired for cart pushing come in two categories; disabled people who got the task through a jobs program, and teenagers who are here because their parents forced them to get a job. If you're pushing carts even though it's not your official job, congratulations; today's cart pusher was one of the teenagers, and he's spent so long fucking around in the break room that the indoor cart parking spot is completely empty. Shoppers are completely incapable of pulling a shopping trolley off of one of those tree islands because it requires moderate exertion to get over the asphalt curb, so it's up to you to rescue the store's material. Halfway through your task, the disabled guy who got hired through a jobs program will come out and outpace you at least 2X speed, because he was specifically hired and trained to do this and actually kind of enjoys this.

-That's right, tree islands. There are several easily accessed parking spots for the carts to go in after customers are done shopping, which force said carts into straight lines and even have roofs to keep inclement weather off of them. Because the right answer is so convenient and simple, naturally the carts will end up everywhere except the parking spots. Some of this isn't deliberate; many customers are very feeble senior citizens whose knees barely bend anymore, and they genuinely can't walk a few more steps so they HAVE to leave their cart next to their automobile... often their cart was being used as an improvised walker/Rollerator the whole time. Very poor people whose schedules are crammed full as it is might also have the excuse of not being able to spare a few more seconds. Everyone else, you have no excuse. Jamming them over the curb onto the tree island is the absolute worst, since it is actually harder and takes longer than just parking it like you were asked to. All these customers are doing is wasting the time of future shoppers.

-This disregard for other shoppers even happens indoors! When the indoor parking spot is full (or at least looks full), those finished shopping tend to just... leave their cart wedged sideways in front of the stack. As one might imagine, that means whoever is unlucky enough to be cart pushing today has an extra step added to their routine for no good reason. As for the customers forced to work around that obstacle? No problem, they'll just dump the cart at a random angle in front of the sideways one! Soon there will be a giant warzone of trolleys in between the carriage park and the door, and only YOU have the presence of mind to... just move them. It only takes a couple of seconds, seconds in which customers will continue to dump carts near you at random angles, almost always while watching you park one correctly.

-Don't worry, there are traffic jams outside too! See, as an employee pushing a large stack of carts, you have all the drawbacks of both a vehicle and a pedestrian with none of the privileges. CHUDs in pristine 1500 trucks will be pulling in and out of the parking lot at all times of day, and you'll know they're CHUDS because they feel the need to announce how Republican they are with several bumper stickers and a tiny beard. Coming in, vehicles will always be turning into your lane even if you waited until the coast is clear; coming out, they will always wait to start backing out until you get near them and give you a look like you're the asshole for doing your job. If you assume you can just go around them, bad news, you ignored the first bullet point. Your giant stack of grocery carts CANNOT TURN without several second's head start. and if you stop abruptly the front half of the stack will detach like the second stage of a space shuttle. Also like a space shuttle, that runaway cart is likely to slam into a parked car, because you are in a parking lot; if your cart dents someone's car and you're caught nearby, you're going to be fired, so... don't let it come loose. You should be using a hook on a bungee cord to lash your stack together so it doesn't come loose; of course, because the jackass teenager is in charge of cart pushing today, he either carried the bungee cord into the break room with him for some reason or just plain lost it somehow.

-Not even finishing your task is the end of the customer's dissatisfaction. As previously stated, most of your customers are feeble senior citizens, and if the carts in the parking spot are stuck together too tightly they won't be able to use them at all! Something about enameled metal wires and piping in close contact forms a bond which can only be broken by vigorous effort. Because the SLIGHT slack of the stack of wheeled carts resists pulling them apart, the smartest way to do this is to use both hands to push and pull at the same time. Often this is not an option for customers, because one hand is occupied by an overstuffed purse, whatever kitchen gadget they're returning at the service desk this week, a terrified purse dog who shouldn't be in the building, or a toddler who shouldn't HAVE to be in the building. If both hands are unoccupied... they still won't consider pushing and pulling at the same time, preferring instead to jiggle the stuck cart a little bit and then give up. Those who do manage to pry one lose will still manage to cause a long line behind them, as they assume it has COVID on it and use the provided wet wipes in a nearby dispenser to baptize the whole cart (a ritual which does nothing to protect them from COVID and causes the cart to rust more quickly). The easiest solution is for an employee to pry the top of the stack loose for the customers and spare a few of them the grief, which is why any and all cart pushers slam the carts together as hard as possible without even considering it.

-Let's add a multiplier to the difficulty, here. What if the temperature outside is in the single digits? How about if it were 90+ degrees F with no cloud coverage, or better yet, plenty of cloud coverage and humidity at almost 100% saturation? I've seen at least one employee get heatstroke and have to leave for the day this year, and I know they weren't lying because that employee was me. Worst of all, however, is the RAIN. It never just sprinkles, o dear cart pusher. You see, global warming is real, and one of the symptoms is endless monsoons with tree-breaking rainfall and wind speeds which tear the top off of your umbrella. If you're pushing carts, chances are you're in the middle of a parking lot, and a parking lot is never precisely FLAT, you see. That lot was paved over whatever landscape used to be there; combine that with the sheer weight and number of vehicles passing through, and what looked like a flat plane on a sunny day is now an obstacle course of ankle deep puddles. If you're not wearing rubber boots (and I know you're not wearing rubber boots because that's not part of the dress code), expect to be walking around in cold, damp socks for the rest of the day- and if you're doing this regularly, expect the stitching in your shoes to start rotting away so you get even more wet on subsequent attempts. Did I mention that if your store is fairly new construction, the entrance is on top of a shallow slope to keep water from puddling around it? That's nice, except now you're pushing the cart stack uphill in driving wind and rain, and if you have to stop to say, open a door, you get to watch your hard work roll away towards a bunch of parked cars.

I could rant all day about the banal torment you'll endure, but I don't get paid to rant. The absolute worst of it is that a few customers do use public transportation, and every time they protest that they have no room to carry their groceries on the ride home...

TL/DR: I want to see automobiles phased out because i've seen the absolute worst of them.