Store wars: what do I do when I’m sent off my trolley?

Q: When shopping at my local supermarket, I often find people’s trolleys left in the middle of the aisle while they wander off looking for something. Can I nudge the trolley to the side even if it’s obviously being used?
J.W., Canada Bay, NSW

A: Sorry, I can’t believe that anything like this could happen in a place called Canada Bay. I’m imagining a suburb packed with courteous Canadians who would never leave a trolley in the middle of a supermarket aisle – not even in an emergency fire situation, or when they’d accidentally picked up the wrong maple syrup and had to rush back to grab one with an acceptable 60.5 per cent to 74.9 per cent amber translucency.

A self-respecting Canada Bay resident would always push their trolley back to where they needed to go, or they would thoughtfully park their trolley in the Health Foods aisle beside the organic psyllium husks where nobody ever stops.

So your question didn’t make sense, but then I did a bit of research into Canada Bay and, apparently, it got its name when a bunch of French-Canadians were deported there in 1840. And I thought, ahhh, right: French-Canadians. Now it makes sense.

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French-Canadians tend to be a more passionate people, so maybe your solution is to lean into the French side of your Canada Bayness. If a fellow supermarket-goer has left an unattended trolley in the middle of an aisle, then yes, gently nudge it out of the way, either with your hand, or by taking a good three-metre run-up with your own trolley until you reach maximum trolley velocity, then ramming it to the side while belting out chanteuse québécoise Celine Dion’s mega-hit My Heart Will Go On. Maybe even grab a couple of their trolley items as you pass by: that’s the French-Canada Bay way, after all.

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