Why Can’t We All Just Learn to Use a Trash Can?

I don't get it.  I repeat. I. DO. NOT. GET. IT.

I stopped by the grocery store early Sunday morning.  For the record, I was not making a pre-Snowmageddon bread and milk run.  No, I was on the hunt for three important hygiene products- floss, Carmex and deodorant.  I mean, if we're going to have back-to-back winter weather events, it's important that I smell good, that I not have spinach stuck between my teeth and that my lips look waxed and smooth.

When I got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side to head into the store, I was just absolutely flabbergasted by how much trash there was in the parking lot.  Now, I feel I must interject here and tell you that I don't blame the store or the folks they hire to maintain and clean the parking lot.  And, I know there are people who think that trash in the parking lot means "job security" for the employees inside.  The only answer I have to that is an expletive which I can't type here.  Suffice it to say it's a compound word.

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The real blame here goes to the people who don't know how to use a freaking trash can.  The blame is squarely on the people who are so incredibly lazy and disrespectful to property and the people around them that they think it's okay just to dump whatever is lying around in the floorboard of their cars onto the parking lot.  Who does that?  I seriously can't wrap my head around it.  There were trash cans literally twenty-five feet away.

And I know.  I know what some of you are thinking and I get it.  The same thing goes for carts.  I should have taken a photo of that too.  Next to this empty space, with all the trash, there were two abandoned shopping carts in the adjacent space.  Folks were too lazy to return those as well.  The cart return, by the way, was closer than the trash cans.

But let's take a close look at the trash in the photo I took.  Don't get me started on the latex glove.  Hey, Genius!  While I appreciate the initiative you took to wear gloves to the grocery to protect yourself from COVID-19, I would have appreciated you taking the same precaution to protect the environment from the virus known as litter.  And, if I had a quarter for every used mask I have seen strewn about parking lots in Owensboro, I wouldn't have had to drop forty bucks trying to win the Mega Millions jackpot a few weeks ago.  I would already be making my down payment on an ocean-front villa in St. John.

To the person who ran over and flattened the energy drink can- did you not hear that crumble under the weight of your car tire?  Personally, if I know I have run over something, I stop to see what it was.  You know- can, nail, squirrel.

And what about the person who was apparently sitting in the parking lot and slamming a giant Bud Ice?  What is this?  Wesleyan Park Plaza, random Friday night, 1992?  If you're going to be "adult" enough to sit in a grocery store parking lot knocking back beer in the middle of the day, be "adult" enough to throw your trash away or, better yet, recycle your can.

This is so frustrating.  Look, I have been to parts of the world that are covered in trash and debris.  Trust me when I tell you, it's not pretty and it's not sanitary.  These countries, by the way, don't have the infrastructure to pay for and provide trash collection.  So, yeah, here in the United States, we're a little spoiled in that we have folks who come to our house once a week and dump our trash toters.  But let's keep the emphasis and focus on the actual toters themselves.  That's where the trash goes.  Not the parking lot.

Please and thank you.