Grouchy mom goes grocery shopping

Baby J is now over 19lbs (possibly over 20lbs by now, as that was a few weeks ago). Pretty heavy for a not-quite six-month-old who doesn't sit up, crawl or obviously stand on his own.

This morning after our weekly jaunt to Storytime at the library, we dropped in to our local grocery store (we'll call it Joe). I don't like dragging the infant seat around with 19lbs of baby in it, so as much as possible I leave it in the van. Since Joe has those carts with the infant seats attached, I decided to get Baby J and put him in one. He seems to like the view from up there, anyway.

Unfortunately, this particular store likes to leave those carts outside, and it's been raining quite a bit the past few days, so there was a nice little puddle in the bottom of the seat. There were a couple of employees outside unloading pumpkins, so I asked if they had a rag or something that could clean up the puddle.

"You can go into Customer Service and they can give you a roll of paper towels" one of them replied.

Now, perhaps this doesn't seem like that big of a deal. However, I'm already carrying 19lbs of squirmy baby and trying to wrangle two active preschoolers to keep them from taking off on me. Plus, with squirmy baby in my arms I'm supposed to take the roll of paper towels back outside and manage to pull of paper towels, while NOT dropping baby on the ground and wipe this out? Out in the parking lot, while making sure that my far-too curious 3-year-old doesn't take off to go look at pumpkins, or swing sets or who knows what else?

It just really irritated me, so I did something I don't usually do. I went to Customer Service, as directed, and proceeded to tell the Customer Service person what had happened. Of course they apologized all over themselves, and I think a manager was there to overhear. They asked who it was, but thankfully the woman didn't say anything to them in front of me (I would have been mortified) as she took the paper towels outside herself to clean off the seat for us.

I get that people who don't have kids don't always understand, but honestly, you can't just go inside and get something yourself to help out a mom with a baby in her arms? The pumpkins are THAT important that if they are not put out RIGHT THIS SECOND the entire store will collapse?

I wanted to suggest that perhaps if they were going to leave those carts outside it should be someone's job to go out each morning and check that they were clean and ready to go, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm kind of a wuss like that. Joe, however, does have some kind of contest going right now where if you submit feedback to your shopping experience online you could win $2000 worth of groceries. Now THAT would be a win-win situation (for me, of course!) so I just might do that.

Back to my quiet, meek mommy ways now. (My husband is snorting if he read that...)