The Ghost Carts Of the Mall

I have some clients in the mall. In one particular mall, whenever I enter it I always see a group of shopping carts just out in the middle of nowhere. If you stop and look at the carts as I did here, it looks as if their owners where whisked away by some strange force. Why were they shopping in formation? Were they waging a Shopping Cart Offensive on Shopper's Drug Mart and died trying?

The story of the carts are a little less dramatic than that. I had some computer equipment one day out in the parking lot. I thought how perfect it would be if I could use this shopping cart to carry my stuff. Well, Walmart DOES NOT want their shopping carts venturing into the mall. So, instead of posting a sign politely asking their customers not to bring their carts into the mall, they came up with quite an ingenious (and obviously very effective) way to stop the problem of wandering shopping carts.

Aaaaanyway, as I got the computer equipment to approximately where you see the carts here in the photo and one wheel locked solid. It became extremely hard to manoever. I looked and looked for the rock that was stuck in the wheel. I think some people sit around and watch this for sport. Someone came up to me and explained I had to go to Walmart and get the cart unlocked. When you get outside the "Walmart Perimeter", a wheel lock trips and then you eventually get a collection of Ghost Carts Of The Mall. I picture a Walmart security officer on a console somewhere, hitting the red "CART LOCK" button and then watching the monitor laughing at the puzzled reaction of the unsuspecting cart stealer. Before I became a Ghost Cart Victim, I never questioned why these collections of carts always seemed to be there. Now I am tempted to give tours every 15 minutes and explain to people The Legend of the Ghost Carts of the Mall.