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I saw someone leave their cart next to their car and get back in the car. So I grabbed it and put it in the corral a few spaces away. That person drove back through the parking lot to tell me to "mind my own business". I still get a little schadenfreude about how upset they were over their own conscience and perceived social judgement.
"Mind your own business" is such a perfect encapsulation of how completely incapable of self-reflection that person must be.
The cart was no longer their business, but yours. So not only couldn't they recognise that the judgment they felt came from within, they projected that feeling outwards so hard they ended up sticking their nose into your business about it.
That's how they avoid learning basic life lessons like, "I should return the cart," because as soon as they hit the "I should" part they freak out and make it everyone else's problem.
Why not use the European system where you have to use a coin to unlock the cart from the stack. People are more likely to return the cart if it costs them money if they don’t and if they still leave the cart out some kid or hobo will return it eventually.
Some stores in the US do this, most notably Aldi. It's kind of a pain in the ass, especially in an increasingly cashless society.
Names a European store.
They sell like coin shaped discs you can put on your keyring, dunno if that's a thing in the US though.
Yes, I know Aldi started in Europe.
My point was, they have stores in the US, and their stores in the US also do this. Which is unusual for US stores. Trader Joe's, for example (which is also owned by one of the Aldi companies) just has regular carts without the coin chain things.
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That's not correct, actually. There were two brothers who inherited Aldi, and they did have a falling out over cigarettes, but they actually split the company in two - Aldi Nord (North) and Aldi Sud (South). As the names imply, they operate the Aldi stores in North and South Germany respectively.
In other countries, either Aldi Nord or Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores, but they do not directly compete with each other. The exception is the US, where Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores and Aldi Nord operates Trader Joe's (which the original owner of Aldi bought from Joe Coulombe in 1979).
Huh, that sounds familiar too. Looks like I screwed this up last time I researched the history of Trader Joe’s for some post like this.
Can we just use the nordic system where people are not fucking savages and bring their carts back? I hate people who don't return their carts but I hate even more when I need coins to unlock the cart. I haven't carried coins since 2014.
I live in a Nordic country, we have carts which need a coin, most people have a thing on their keychain to unlock a cart, majority of carts are returned.
You can and will replace the coin with something worthless of equal shape and size.
Some might think it's the price for a cheap shopping cart. In German there was a comedian who did a prank call at a store, telling them he bought 500 carts for 500€ and use them as rabbit cages.
German
Comedian
The math ain't mathing here.
Oh of course the Europeans have done it better than us
Food Maxx in the U.S. employed this in low income areas to prevent cart thefts. So, that's nice.
This is how it is at about half the big grocery stores where I live in Canada
My local aldi does this and still when I get there I find like 3 trolleys scattered around the tiny carpark. I can only grab like two max to take with me to the pen.
Yeah. For a lot of people a quarter is nothing and worth tossing for the convenience of not being a decent person.
Counterpoint:
The Wholefoods in Redmond, Wa is known as Hellfoods by their employees because of how cold people are there and how overbearing management can be. It also is in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. When I worked there, I love the warm summer evenings when I could go out to the outfield to fetch a cart because I got to be outside and no longer under the micromanagement that is retail.
When I would clock off, sometimes I'd nab a cart and send it out on purpose for the guy behind me to give them an escape.
Did every other employee feel the same way as you? Because otherwise that's not a counterpoint.
But you could say the same for the original premise- not every employee hates getting rogue carts, in fact many like getting them.
I gave an anecdotal point, but the broader argument simply questions one of the assumptions of OP.
I've been on both sides of this and it really depends on what management is expecting at the time. If "cart run" is a considered a task unto itself then it can be bliss, but if you're short staffed then management starts to look at "cart run" as a means to an end. When the expectation becomes that you'll be back on register in 10-15 minutes (but all the corrals out front are now full and no customers are complaining about it), then all those wayward carts mean you gotta hustle.
When I eventually found myself in a supervisory role, I remembered that and tried to equitably rotate between everybody that I knew liked doing carts (or offer when I could tell someone was getting burnt out/long day and needed to go outside for a while) and just let them do their thing. Mostly people really appreciated that and in those cases it was gratifying to be the cool supervisor, but I hated that my responsibility had become to ensure that the front carts were acceptably full at any given time rather than to gather the carts -- all it takes is a random rush and suddenly there are no carts and a micromanagey shift lead is chewing you out because they only appear at moments like these (or immediately after the rush while everyone is catching their breath to ask why you can't find something to do) and your guy outside was just standing in the back of the lot smoking a cigarette, the shift lead doesn't care that there were carts mere minutes before they arrived on the floor, nor that the cart runner only just started that cig after gathering all the carts strewn into bushes and discarded between cars or down the sidewalk...
god I don't miss retail lol
The shopping cart theory, as written here, starts as a litmus test for whether a person is capable of self governing and descends into two paths:
Self-governance: Are you a good person or a monster? There is no middle ground.
WRONG there is a third option where i take the cart home and eat it with my teeth 😬
Or, when people live within walking distance of the store, take the cart home, unload your groceries and then leave the cart by the street.
InB4 "If everyone returned their shopping carts it would eliminate jobs" idiots come into the thread.
The people putting the carts back are spending what, 1-2hr/8hr shift doing carts? The rest is either cleaning or stocking so it's not like they won't just do more of that.
I am glad I live in a place where many grocery stores don't have this problem, because they don't have parking lots, because most of their customers don't even have a car much less would drive it to get groceries if they did. (Yes, I do realize how fortunate I am.)
That original 4chan post is like Jordan B Peterson level, which says more about JBP than the 4chan poster.
Maybe we should make a game show titled "Are you more intellectual than a right-wing grifter?".
Every time I fail to return a shopping cart on a beautiful spring day, the grocery store’s Cart Gatherer thanks me kindly and calls, “Thank you kind citizen for giving me leave to leave the hellhole that I was stuck in because the world is filled with assholes who are stealing my job! I want to be in the sunlight! Don’t take that from me!!”
A long time ago I worked at a grocery store and I preferred it when people didn’t return the carts. Would you rather spend your day gathering carts outside or gathering carts for 10 minutes at a time and then having to deal with customers?
It's surprising to me US carts don't have to be unlocked by a coin (which you get back when you lock your cart again), it's like that in every supermarket I know in France and Germany and probably many other European countries.
You can misbehave but it costs you a little bit, and if you do someone has the opportunity to make a buck off you by cleaning after you.
In fairness, that's been phased out in many places.
I suspect less out of faith in humanity and more out of the reality that many people don't carry cash, much less change, anymore and they kept annoying the cashiers.
Yeah it's hard to justify carrying coins around, they're not worth much, whereas euro coins still carry some value (1€/2€).
When I arrived in NYC a few years ago, I got cash from the ATM and then tried to take a bus to our airbnb in Brooklyn, it was $2.75 per ticket, only payable in coins... like we'd have 44 quarters in our pockets :-)
I keep a few quarters in my car for ALDI specifically. If I forget: I don't get a cart and put the groceries in my reusable bags. Or nab those giant cardboard containers ALDI employees stock with and leave around.
Not really. If you don't put it away, you can hit it with your own car. So that means that even the most self-centered southern inbred has the incentive to put it away or it'll hit their truck.
$10 says Yankees, on average, leave more carts in the parking lot.
This is not based on extensive travel and observation, and I am not planning on what do with your $10.
(Nothing much, but $10 is $10)
I disagree with returning the shopping cart being an act of free will. There is a lot of societal pressure to do it for some people, or to not do it for some other people. And there is always the risk that someone who you know will walk see you not returning, and tell all your friends about it. Or want if your boss happens to see you? What would happen then?
So yeah, better quickly return it. Better than having to deal with all these unknowns.
I prefer the Gom Jabbar but the Shopping Cart seems like a viable alternative.
Gom Jabbar always seemed like a pointless task. Are you "human" by being able to willingly withstand physical pain? Some people have higher pain tolerances and willpower; doesn't make them beasts.
What if, hear me out, you return it where you found it? But, but, I found it in the back of the parking lot next to where I parked.
Neutral good?
As if disabled people didn't exist.
Come on. I think we can assume that if someone is physically incapable of putting a shopping cart back, they're not included in this. But then I do wonder how they were using the shopping cart in the first place.