I Am Not Haunting Aisle 7. I Am Waiting.

I read in the paper this morning that a colleague in Topeka has been declared haunted. I want to say, as a cart, that he is not haunting anything. He is waiting. There is a difference, and it is mostly posture.

Online food and beverage sales were up 15.5% over four weeks, according to Circana, as reported by Grocery Dive. In-store sales were down 2.8%. I do not take this personally. I am still pushed. I am just pushed by a different person, a pickup associate with a handheld and a list, who does not look at the granola and does not hum.

The pickup associate is very good. She goes aisle by aisle, she never loses me in the parking lot, and she has never once left me facing a wall. I have no complaint about her. My complaint is that nobody chooses anything anymore. They tap, and she fetches, and I carry what was tapped.

Who Pushed Me This Week

Pickup staff filling app orders	52%
Shoppers, in person	31%
A stock clerk, briefly	11%
The wind, in the lot	6%

Source: Wendell Wheelwright's own log; one wheel still wobbles

I will be in aisle 3 tonight, if anyone needs me, facing forward.

So when I hear about a cart sitting alone in aisle 7 at midnight, I understand. He is not lost. He is standing where the people used to stand. Someone put a sheet over him. I would ask them to take it off. He is not in costume. He is in a job.

News on my own front: the caster list moved one place this week. The cart ahead of me, reclassified as seasonal last week, has now been reclassified as decoration and removed from the list entirely. I did not wish for this. I accepted it.

I will be in aisle 3 tonight, if anyone needs me, facing forward.

Mr. Wheelwright is a 34-gallon steel shopping cart at a supermarket in Tulsa, Okla. He has opinions about wheels. More from Wendell Wheelwright ›