If you scatter carts in random places the supermarket has to employ someone to collect them. So you are a job creatorTM. This is why I never return my cart, and also why I jump on cartons of milk in the dairy aisle and take a dump in the broccoli.
I've always told my family I like to build up "cart karma." You get karma by bringing a cart in with you from the parking lot, or returning the one you use after. You lose karma by leaving your cart in the parking lot. Even if I'm going in for a single item, I'll take a cart in from the parking lot with me and leave it in the rack by the store.
I don't really care about cart karma, it's just a way of saying that it seems like the nice thing to do.
No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart.
Cart Narcs. Those guys are fucking crazy. They were doing their thing in Texas. I've read stories of idiots pulling out guns for less.
BUT! What if the parking lot is four miles long and there are no cart returns anywhere and you're tired because you've been working 20 hour days with no time off and it's 140 degrees outside and the grocery store is exploiting their workers and you haven't eaten in days and you have a disability and the carts are coin operated and this is literally the only way to solve the unemployment crisis? WHAT THEN??
Murica, fucked up because of shopping carts. In germany you have to put money in the cart, and get it back while bringing the cart back to where it is from. Problem solved.
I would add scooping dog shit is another test. There are people out there who will bag the shit and then leave the bag on the ground for the poop to steam in for a few days before they put another bag right next to it to keep it company.
I've gone out of my way multiple times to put up multiple cats that were blocking parking spaces, including handicap spaces. While the handicap ones make it seem like the person is an extra asshole, I wonder if it's the handicap person that leaves it there and it just moves into the space. There's are very few stores that put a corral by handicap spaces.
Interesting idea... Is human morality (in situations where no punishment exists) a result of the societies we live in and our societal expectations, our upbringing, or is there some inherent morality (guilt from doing something bad, or satisfaction from doing the right thing) within most people?
Whilst I do live somewhere that has trolleys with coins, sometimes you get one that is damaged and doesn't require a coin. Yet I still return those ones, because why wouldn't I? It only takes a minute.
Another possibility is that people that don't return the cart may not be having their needs met. A person who is tired after walking across the hot parking lot may not return it out of a desire to maintain a modicum of health. Or, perhaps, they may not think about it because their cognition is temporarily hindered by hunger, exhaustion, or some other carnal need.
On Maslow's hierarchy, I'd say if a person meets all of their physiological and safety needs they are more likely to return the cart than those who do not.
I was concerned this was going to be a comment about what I put in my shopping cart.
But I can tell I'm an individual of extreme self-discipline because after I filled my shopping cart with chocolate and vodka I return it to the carousel.
hmm no this seems wrong. If the parking lot is a mile long and there are no cart returns it makes me a bad person if I rack the carts in a line with all the others in the boonies? If you are getting abandoned carts its probably because you don't have enough cart returns, not because people are bad
Well the discussion started off ok before ending in a rabies infested rant against humanity! Talk about going off the rails!
Anyhow, many people return the trolley so they don't look bad/feel guilty. That doesn't necessarily make them 'good' or 'civilised' and therefore fit into the 'being forced' category through peer pressure. Does that make them 'animals' and 'savages' too?
nah fuck that shit. there are staff paid to do it and if the store can't afford that staff they are fucking lying. they have earned this with the price fixing and gouging and I'm not giving them any more of my time than absolutely necessary.
in addititon when I had that job myself, more often than not people put them away wrong and I had to redo everything. I've gotten called to the office more than once because shoppers that put the carts away didn't lock them somewhere along the stack and the whole thing rolled across the lot and smashed in to someone's car. Collecting lose carts is way easier than pulling them alll apart and putting them back after finding the two near the middle beginning of the chain and not being able to get them back together without doing it one by one in the stupidly hilly lot.
Stop giving away free labour to large grocery stores! They want to merge and jack up prices and somehow we are bad if we don't bring the carts in so they don't need to hire someone to do it?
Wrong. The correct act is to put the cart out of the way of others, but not in the corral.
You then help provide a job to a person that capitalism wants to take away. They want your free labor. And then they provide less and less corals to save those extra pennies, knowing that you'll walk. Fuck them.
I think it's similar to weights in a gym. Leaving them on the barbell is a jerk move. Returning them to their correct staging location is the ethically correct thing to do. Whenever I see them left on the barbell, I imagine a fantasy where the person has a team of horn players follow them around and play for them to announce their superiority.
An estimated one out of every 500 Americans is homeless
Unarmed noncombatant civilian women and children are being bombed, shot, and starved to death.
There has been a nearly 70% reduction in wild vertebrates worldwide since 1970
The leading cause of death among children and teens in america is firearms
Privileged westerners could do something about these things, but they are sipping their pumpkin spice lattes and congratulating each other for putting their shopping carts back because, you know, it's the ultimate test of moral righteousness. Ugh.
Hey, I have asthma and there have been days where I've barely had enough energy to make it back to my car let alone put a cart back. Not everybody is having the same day you are.
People always crow about this shit, "oh the poor workers having to retrieve carts","oh its so bad and lazy", and then you point out that some workers like the time they get to spend outside walking and suddenly under the scooby do mask its just some guy that doesn't want his car dinged by rogue carts.
Keep downvoting it gives me strength. Let your cart hate flow through you. Think of me next time you see a feral cart in the wild, it was ME, I PUT THAT CART THERE, I BLEW THE WIND THAT SENT IT ROLLING TOWARDS YOUR PARKED CAR. Watch out here it comes! 🛒 💨
Depends on your beliefs. There are people who believe in being judged for every action by an almighty force or being, so it's probably not absolutely perfect. I might be smitten in my next life for it.
Costco is the only place I don't always return carts, since around here the cart returns can get very far away, but curbs you can tuck them away on are everywhere. That, and they have staff just for gathering carts constantly.
TIL I'm mostly a good person but sometimes I am also no better than an animal and an absolute savage who will only do right when threatened. Interesting. Another thing is that I'm grateful for other savages who don't put their carts back cause I don't have to walk so far to get a cart.
Typically parking lots are filled with cars, and I need to drive between the parked cars. If a cart is in the way it makes it harder for me to leave, just saying