The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. 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. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.
A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.
Personally I think shopping carts are the penultimate litmus test. Returning a shopping cart requires effort, albeit a miniscule amount of effort. The ultimate litmus test is litering. It requires exactly zero effort to not throw your trash on the ground or out your car window. To me, littering practically screams, “I don’t give a shit about anyone but myself. I have the self control of a toddler at bed time and I want everyone to know it which is why I throw my shit on the ground like a total fucktard.”
I’m not really a confrontational person but I have rolled down my window and yelled at people for throwing their cigarette butts on the ground. You would think some people were raised in a goddamn barn.
I may feel a little strongly about this issue.
But there is a penalty for littering. Some people might refrain from littering not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they don’t want a fine.
The lack of repercussions for being a scumbag and abandoning your cart is what makes it a good test.
If you’re offended by a cigarette butt on the ground, holy fuck, you should have been around in the 70s. We have come so far and so fast.
When I was a kid, chunking your fast-food trash, any trash, out the window was perfectly normal. The sides of highways were covered in trash.
Further to go, of course, but I’ve seen solid progress.
I live in Sweden; rarely do I ever see a shopping cart just sitting in the parking lot. Can’t remember a time in the last decade.
I figure it’s mostly an American thing we’re too European to understand.
You think so? Are Americans really more lazy/inconsiderate people? Some other reason why this might be more common there?
Are Americans really more lazy/inconsiderate people?
American here. The answer is emphatically “yes”.
Well that’s disheartening. Why do you think that is?
American Exceptionalism/Individualism
I don’t think you’ve ever left the country then
I dont think so. It’s just that I’ve been in several EU countries, and Ive never encountered this issue here.
I think the real reason might be that majority if not all supermarkets require coins to unlock the shopping cart.
Sorry, I’ve become confused about what you mean by “here” or “there”, and where you are based.
You mean coins are required in America? Because not in Sweden. They used to be, like 20-15 years ago. But they removed that. Not sure if there was a law that came into effect or something but… not anymore with the coins. Carts are free to take into the store without coins. Still, everyone returns them.
We have absolutely enormous parking lots, and yeah, Americans are lazy and have an abundance of food. Maybe not more inconsiderate, but Hanlon’s Razor comes into play here. If you don’t believe me, just go to any Golden Corral. There absolutely will be multiple families in there where every single person weighs over 250 pounds, even the 8 year old kid.
I remember a girl in highschool that was an exchange student from Botswana(?) was a bit upset that she was too fat to go home after living here for a school year. She’d gained like maybe 5 pounds. As far as all us Americans were concerned she finally didn’t look anorexic.
My brothers and I would run around the parking lots gathering up all the carts rather than go into the store. This was especially fun at Aldi’s cause we got a quarter for each cart, and could get some candy.
Is there a version of this that includes something about Aldi and other pay to return shops?
The existence of Aldi carts is proof that there are a lot of people out there with no ability to self govern
But for a potential loss of $0.25 they can suddenly self govern.
It’s also about the inconvenience of having to obtain another quarter.
Maybe we can use this to our advantage.
Every voter gets 0.25$, every public traffic ride nets you 0.25$, every CEO with a company that is net zero also gets 0.25$.
Also plays into the rules only apply if you’re rich, just pay for the convenience.
Aldi’s deal is more about getting people to return carts all the way to the front entrance so that they don’t have to pay employees to retrieve them from the corrals.
Of course, with their parking lots being small to begin with, I’m not so sure it’d make much of a difference (see also: Lidl, with the same size parking lot but no 25¢ locking carts).
It might be because I’ve been slamming IPAs this afternoon but that’s the best example of “it’s funny because it’s true” I’ve seen in a while.
I like how this is a funny joke, but also true.
You’re missing the crucial part where the store is for profit. There’s no reason to provide free labor to corporations.
Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A
Your misguided attempt at rebellion against capitalism in reality only hurts the grunt that has to pick up after your inconsiderate ass. You think your behavior actually costs the company anything? You think they hire an extra person because of people like you? No. You just make some poor sap at the bottom of the pecking order that much more miserable
Congratulations on making yourself feel righteous at the expense of your fellow plebs
Superbly put good sir… or miss.
Sounds like they need to unionize and get paid enough to make it worth it then. There’s no moral obligation to do labor for corporations for free or under paid.
Lol “moral obligation”. You don’t do it because you’re obligated. You do it because it’s nice for the worker, and for the other customers who don’t want to navigate around your abandoned cart
I never said I don’t return carts…
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there’s no reason to provide free labor
I never said I don’t return carts
Me thinks there is a contradiction afoot
Are your saying you provide free labor for no reason?
Reading must be difficult for you. Yes I am saying I provide free labor for no reason.
Humans are stupid animals and we do a lot of things for no reason.
If your cart catches a breeze and dents my car then you’re now providing profit to a body shop. Putting your cart away is about not costing random people hundreds of dollars. And it saves the teen making minimum wage from chasing it down in the snow.
Fuck the grocery store, of course. But if you want to screw them over then there are better ways to do it, and with less collateral damage.
I never said I don’t return carts. I just don’t believe there’s a moral imperative to provide free labor for corporations
In a thread about the labor of returning carts.
I agree though. Never work for free
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Where I am, to unlock a cart, you have to insert a coin, and afterwards, to get the coin back, you have to lock the cart to another cart (that’s hopefully part of the pile). It mostly works.
They stopped doing this at a lot of places, but after years of having this coin system it seems people are decently behaved.
But i’m certain it’s a matter of time until they realize they can just stop giving a shit.
I’ve seen a lot of places here drop this system. I have no idea why. Then again, you could also just go to the info and get a plastic thing to unlock them.
They stop doing it often because it gets homeless people coming to the store specifically to return carts that people didn’t return so they can collect the refund.
“Oh no, we accidentally provided an opportunity for homeless people to make some money! This must be stopped IMMEDIATELY.”
It’s probably even worse:
“Ew these dirty bums are scaring away customers and I might lose money. This must be stopped IMMEDIATELY!”
I really don’t think it’s the reason where I live. People just return the carts in general and we don’t really have homeless people as a visible issue
I would hope someone realized it accomplishes nothing except being a mild annoyance for customers. Most people return the carts anyway and it doesn’t really stop anyone from stealing them if they really want them (or rather buying them for ~1 euro).
I’m not so sure. It’s a really small push but people from places where it exists only in some places and where in others they don’t return the carts it seems to be working. Here they are returned, but we are so used to the coin system that it might be leftover from that. Anecdotally I’ve noticed people leaving them wherever more if there’s no coin system. But also my area has a lot of first generation and very recent immigrants so they might’ve never been with the system to begin with. Or it’s a cultural thing. Dunno. Might be all the reasons.
Based on your username, I’m going to make the wild assumption that you live in Finland. I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have this system in Sweden, and stray shopping carts was never a problem back then. Anectotal and my memory may be a regional thing, sure, but where I live, most people would just put the carts where they belong because it would break the societal norm if they didn’t. And my point is just that this system probably costs more than it pays off for the stores that uses it.
I do think there’s regional variation. In general, we don’t have this system in the US, except for a few grocery stores that are US divisions of European companies. I’ve lived in a few different areas in the country, and in some areas it seems like very few people return their carts and just leave them wherever, while in other areas, people are more conscientious about it. I rarely see a stray cart in the grocery store lots where I live now, for example, but when I lived for a few months in another city, it seemed like everyone just left the cars where they wanted.
I think there’s kind of a peer pressure thing going on, too - people start doing one or the other, and everyone else follows. “He didn’t return, why should I?” vs “Oh, she returned her cart, I should, too.”
Sorta “broken window theory” for shopping carts heh. Unreturned carts cause lawlessness that makes it seem more okay to leave the cart.
Leave it in the “Reserved for Law Enforcement” spot
Chaotic good?
Instructions unclear, nailed shopping cart to the wall
Schau wie sie dieses ausgestopfte Gittertier zugerichtet haben D:
I don’t see a stuffed animal?
There is a bit of German internet lore here. Shopping carts are called Gittertiere (grille animals). And there’s also a community Gittertiere on feddit.de where we post grille animals in the wild, living their natural lives (abandoned shopping carts).
This grille animal was “stuffed”, more accurately translated to taxidermied, which I expressed my sadness about.
Grumbling this to myself for the thousandth time in a Costco parking lot, I looked out at the sea of parked cars and realized that the majority of people probably DO put their carts away responsibly, otherwise the dozen carts I saw askew would’ve been a hundred-fold.
On a side note, my grandmother is always thankful when someone leaves a shopping cart by the parking space, because she leans on them to help her walk, and it’s often hard for her to walk the distance from the car to the stall.
Generally though, yes, return your cart psycho
I used to work bringing in carts at a store and it was the best part of my job. I see this as just a cost of doing business for these giant stores that need carts to begin with, although I always put my cart back. I can understand if the thing is way far away though. Who cares? Let them pay someone a fair wage to keep track of them. We know that will never happen though so you need to bring it back to be considerate to other shoppers. Giving the store free labor lol
Same! I loved just putting on headphones and walking around the parking lot collecting carts.
I don’t put the carts back because it was fun for me and I am giving that me an additional 2 minutes out of the building to just not listen to a Karen complaining at checkout.
Thanks for saying this. Folks that get enraged at the cart thing have something else going on emotionally they need to deal with. Like, the world is out of their control and it’s going to shit so their mind goes to exerting any sort of control it possibly can in order to compensate for their general powerlessness. What we need to do is think hard how to affect what change we can and do that and learn to let go of stuff outside our influence.
Don’t be a lazybones
That hero is going to actually get shot one day.
When I worked at a store we had two sizes of shipping cart and they couldn’t interlock but people would force it anyway or back them in to engage the coin latch. The cart sheds became a total mess and the store was too understaffed and the manager often ended up doing the cars, badly, in favor of pulling people off indoors cleaning or w.e. I often left the cart over a parking separator brick so it can’t roll into cars, but doesn’t add to the jumbled mess in the shed.
we had two sizes of shipping cart… and the store was too understaffed
That’s the store’s own damn fault.
More head office but yeah. They also changed the checkouts from Linux to windows and decided self checkouts could only have one human attendant.
Poetry
+1 for creating your own stall out of an abandoned trolly, even if it goes across the entrance or a disability parking spot
Hey buddy, when I go to a waffle house bathroom and find a discarded needle I don’t make a huge fuss.
I think what I’m trying to say it comes with the territory.
It’s called the “cart corral”. I just love that.
I’ve heard of Elf on the Shelf?
Cart near the mart.
