Cart Pusher

Ian Stanek

The crappiest job I ever had in a summer was that of the Wal-Mart Cart Pusher.

This particular Wal-Mart was rather new in my home town and so people from all over would flock to the store as if they would find some invaluable treasure within. Unfortunately, since the Wal-Mart was so new, they were under-staffed in some areas, cart pushers especially.

There was only one other employee who had the cart pushing job and we rotated shifts, so we didn’t even get to work together (except for the odd Sunday).

Why was it so crappy you ask? The hours were long. It was the middle of summer in Nebraska, it felt like it was over 100 degrees outside. The work was physically hard and mentally numbing. I had no mechanical help in pushing the carts. It was all muscle for about 8 hours a day.

Aside from the physical toils, I also had to pick up trash in the parking lot. So I had pick up people’s half filled soda cups, McDonald’s bags, stray plastic bags, and the occasional dirty diaper. Then there was always the inevitable stray cart. The carts people would leave at the far end of the parking lot, or the ones where the front wheels are propped on the concrete islands, or carts just plain left out in the lot, because the person who last used it was too lazy to walk to the coral and push it in there.

And I thought all of this was worth $7.50 an hour.