I can’t believe I missed a perfect opportunity today to ask a pointless, yet somehow interesting question.

I was at Harris Teeter procuring a delightful amount of food, which happened to include some milk. At nearly every grocery checkout situation I’ve had in the past two years–including a wide range of chains in both Virginia and Florida–the store employee has asked if I wanted my milk in a bag.

The answer is always a quick “Yes” or “Yeah that would be fine.”

Immediately after that answer today, I thought of a question I didn’t ask.

“Do people normally get their milk in a bag?”

I mean, I was legitimately curious but for some reason didn’t strike at the opportunity. I think I was slightly distracted trying to think of who the girl at the register looks like. She reminded me of someone, but for the life of my I couldn’t figure it out.

And by the time I snapped out of that side project, it was too late. Maybe if there was nobody behind me in line, or there were more than two items left to be scanned I could have tried to relaunch the topic. But there was an old couple who looked like they wouldn’t appreciate me slowing things down with my line of questioning. So I let it go.

As I walked out of the store I couldn’t help but think I let a golden opportunity pass. I’ll surely go back to the grocery store, and there’s a solid chance the question comes up again. But will I have the same girl, who in my mind at least seemed like she would provide an excellent answer?

This Harris Teeter is located directly next to an Office Depot. I mention this because after walking into HT and grabbing a cart, a woman came in the door right behind me. She already had a cart. A big red one. From Office Depot.

She walked right past the HT employee who seemed to be on cart duty. The guy didn’t even seem the least bit interested that a bright red cart from a neighboring store was infiltrating his domain.

Which brings to mind another burning question from that trip that went un-asked. Does that happen often? Not even necessarily at that particular store, but do people often use carts from nearby stores for their shopping?

In my illustrious retail career, I only worked one place that had carts. They were very non-descript, as were the ones from neighboring Kohl’s. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it happened every day.

But you can’t miss a bright red Office Depot cart in Harris Teeter. Maybe the challenge is to bring the most outlandishly inappropriate cart into a store.