You will find many similar carts clustered together in one place. To take him you will usually have to have some coin. Carts are all very similar and hard to tell apart. Generally they are cheap and nasty, but usually come with brightly colored plastic and are emblazoned with some logo or other to identify his value and origin.

The cart doesn’t belong to you, he will always return to the cluster of other carts. A cart is not choosy about who uses him. He may be brand new, or he may have been used hundreds of times without you knowing. He does not come with a list of previous users. If you pick one at random without paying attention, you may find someone else has had their junk on him and left him all filthy. As you can see, some people like to have a lot of meat on their cart. Others may have been used by losers.

If you push him away, he will just whizz off into the distance with no direction or navigational skills. Someone else will soon come along and start pushing him in your place. Unless you put things into him, he will remain empty.

Older or heavily used carts often have defects making them hard to get along with. Despite your best efforts they will go in strange directions, jam up completely, or tip over.

Carts are not great vehicles. Their small wheels mean they will only roll on smooth surfaces. Some have squeaky wheels and just won’t shut up.

You can try to take one home and keep him for yourself. Although he can be fun for an evening in the long run you will find him clumsy, unwieldy and relatively useless.

If you are a big fan of shopping carts as I am, you might want to consider opening your own mini supermarket. Then you will have access to and control of the carts whenever you please. A damaged one will not be an issue you can simply replace him. If a few go missing you will have plenty more where that came from or can canvass for replacements.

Appoint an old master to keep them in order and you’ll never have to go shopping again.