One of the supermarkets in my town does something that really annoys me. They have a right to do it and I have a right to be annoyed. It doesn’t annoy my wife, so she shops there a lot more than I do. You need a quarter to use one of their shopping carts. They’re chained together and it takes a quarter to release one cart from the next one. It doesn’t cost a quarter, because you get the coin back when you chain the cart back up.
It cuts down on cart theft and frees the store from paying someone to retrieve the carts strewn all over the parking lot, but I dump all of my change into a jar on the dresser, so if I have to go to that store, I have to remember to get a quarter. Either that or I have to go to the service desk at the market.
Why do I bring this up at this time? Well, nobody won Powerball last night, so the next drawing will have a potential grand prize of something like $325-million. Since I’m annoyed about needing a quarter at the supermarket and since the Powerball prize is $325,000,000, I have synthesized a new plan if I should win the big prize.
I still know how unlikely it is that I’ll win, I’ll still jump on the bed if I win and I’ll still try to put that huge check in the ATM, but I’ll also go inside the bank, get a crate full of quarters and head for the annoying supermarket’s parking lot, where I’ll liberate all the shopping carts! Free the shopping carts!