Well, things are back in full swing here at Sneed headquarters, following our vacation. I had to attend the monthly meeting at our store this morning. We had a talk from a corporate big shot about how we can make the store more efficient and thus more profitable. What was missing from the discussion was how this was going to translate into more moolah for the little people. Some people might argue that the payoff for the little folks is that they get to keep their jobs, but since retail work is not hard to find, that isn't really isn't much of a motivator. Have you ever met someone with a noble idea that you just know will end badly? My mom used to tell us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. My mom could be a downer. Yesterday I had a customer, an old lady, who came into the store dragging a beleaguered 'old lady' shopping cart. The kind that you can push to the store and bring home a couple of grocery bags in. It was old, beaten up and missing one wheel. She told me that she retrieved it from the trash and had a plan to use it, assuming she could find another wheel. It seems that she lives in the old folks complex around the corner from the store and she is troubled that many of the residents bring home their groceries in the store's carts, which they dump outside her building. It is up to the store to come and retrieve them, which she thinks is unfair and inconsiderate. Her plan is to fix up the discarded cart and leave it outside her door for the use of shoppers in the complex. Her only condition is that they return it when they are done. I wasn't able to find a matching wheel for her cart, so she decided to buy two new ones and by the time she left the store, she had spent about $25 to repair the old cart. A new cart costs about $40 to $50, so I guess it was still a good enough deal. I hope her plan works for her, but knowing human nature, I suspect her cart will be pilfered in short order. You have to admire her intentions. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky