11mo ago

shopping rule theory

266 comments

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.
- “Be a better person”. Hold onto that one for the next time this happens. It never will though.
- "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.
- Tbh I would have put it right behind their car lol

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.
- Because we're not savages, and can return the carts like a civilized society.
  
  “Civilized”
  
  Well we clearly can't. Even the existence of corrals shows it's too much to return a cart to a store we just walked out of with said cart.
- 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.
- In fact, we are so used to taking them back that we even return shopping carts that we have unlocked without a coin.
  Uh, maybe that's an unfortunate design.
- 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.
  
  True. Come to think of it, at least with the coin system there is an incentive for another customer to bring the cart back.
  On the flip side, where I live people sometimes bring their cart back but don't connect it to the others, so that somebody else can use it without needing a quarter. Those people are nice. :)
- You can and will replace the coin with something worthless of equal shape and size.
  
  As an American, coins are already basically worthless.
- 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
  
  This is how it is at about half the big grocery stores where I live in Canada
  
  Food Maxx in the U.S. employed this in low income areas to prevent cart thefts. So, that's nice.
- Wait is that an european only thing?
- Because then we can't use it as an arbitrary metric for judging people's moral righteousness.
- This was very common in Canada in the late 80s and 90s with a couple chains still doing it today.

I'm Geordi.
- I'm disappointed Q isn't on this.
  
  Covered by the original's post text: "Q intentionally leaves his cart in the blind spot behind the most expensive car in the lot."
  
  Q: increases the gravitational constant of the cart collection area until all the carts fall into it. Keeps going until a singularity forms and the planet is destroyed.
  
  Q shops with 1 cart for each item he has, and returns them all upside down.
- Can you put names with all these faces? I can only do three. Updated with trash@lemm.ee 's & Klear@sh.itjust.works help, we've got 5 of them labeled now. Plus something about broccoli according to ashestoashes@lemmy.blahaj.zone.
  
  I assume this is funny answers only? Some kinda woooosh? I think a lot of Lemmy could name them all, given how popular Trek is on here.
  
  Top right is Beyond Belief Fact or Fiction "we made it up" guy.
  
  the 6th on the right is lt. broccoli
  
  Fourth on the left is Marcus from Fallout 2.
- I'm Levar Burton. This is Reading Rainbow.
  I'm also the guy in column 2, number 5.
- I love that they won't trust Wesley Crusher with the task 😄
- Best STTNG Meme ever!!! I really enjoyed reading them all as they were so fitting to the characters. I had a few legit LOL moments here. I too am Geordi.
  
  I believe USSBurritoTruck created this one. I was going to link the original post, but I don't know how to make a specific post link server-agnostic.

I'm so in the minority here, but I have a different perspective.
I worked at a grocery store for years, with about a third of my job being cart duty. I loved it when people left their carts outside of the corrals, for a few reasons.
First, if a lot of people did so, I would point it out to whoever was the manager on at the time before I went outside. My manager knew that I would take longer before coming back in, and that would give me more time to stroll/relax/enjoy the outdoors before coming back in to customer craziness. Having those extra minutes because my manager didn't know how long I should take was nice.
Second, sometimes I had to walk way the hell out to the edge of the parking lot, which was really nice for a long walk away from customer craziness. Such walks were very nice when the weather was nice.
Third, it was job security. Working during the recession made my managers want to let as many people go as they could, but customers who made it so even the most efficient cart duty workers took a while to clear the lot effectively kept more of us employeed than management would have employed otherwise.
For those reasons, whenever the weather is nice, I try to leave my cart in a weird spot that is anchored by something. I realize that many other cart duty folks probably dislike me for it, but I know I appreciated it when others did this. So I do it for the folks like me.
I know all of the arguments against it and I'm not trying to debate here. Just sharing a different perspective; sometimes, leaving your cart in a terrible spot can be nice for some of the workers.
- Job security for a job that shouldn't need to exist? Dumb as shit. Do you also leave your trash wherever the fuck you want because you think it's "job security" for whoever has to clean it up?
  
  Capitalism is garbage and produce garbage jobs because it's based in the religious concept that people should work. Within the context of capitalism, this makes sense. Putting away your cart doesn't challenge capitalism, so "job security" makes sense as an objective unless you're challenging the capitalist system.
  
  Why shouldn't it exist? Are you saying people should walk carts all the way inside. That wouldn't exactly be the better solution.
- You still made the effort to put your cart in the "correct" place.
- Interesting point. So it's more like
  Cart? Returns Leaves
  
  Thinks return is right 😇 👿
  Thinks leave is right 👿 😇
- whenever the weather is nice
  I definitely don't miss helping out with the carts on a freezing winter morning in Colorado and trying not to fall on my ass.
  
  And it is those times when carts get abandoned more than ever.
  Having to pull carts off of snowbanks and fracturing my arm after a fall was not my idea of a fun time when I used to work for a grocery store in high school.
  Didn't even get to leave early that day because we were short staffed and "You're fine, you just need to keep your arm moving to work the pain off."
  One of the formative moments for me that contributed to my distrust of capitalism.
- Aight, how about when it rains? Do you leave it for your own convenience? I assume putting cards away while getting drenched is not fun at all. This is the real litmus test. You will be judged.

Cart?	Returns	Leaves
Thinks return is right	😇	👿
Thinks leave is right	👿	😇

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.
- Yeah bringing in the carts is one of the best parts of some jobs
  
  When I was a cart pusher I could spend all day in the lot. What really sucked is when they changed from the lightweight plastic basket carts to the XL metal carts. Could push plastic basket carts all day and I would smoke cigarettes by my car in the downtime. XL metal carts ruined that job. Also never cared if they were corralled. You have to push them out the corral and with the XL metal carts they were heavy and hard to maneuver.
- 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

In Europe, you have the incentive of getting a coin back
- the very fact that they had to install this system tells us all we need to know about humanity.
  
  Nobody did that shit until LIDL introduced the concept. After that, nobody still did it. LIDL are still the only ones who require the sacrifice.
- No free Litmus test for us, sad.
  
  You can still get the test!! Hear me out if you have two keys you can press the buttons to disengage the locking mechanism as if it were a coin
  This way the cart is now coin free, I do this all the time you just need the right key and a bit of practice
- Depends on the store. My local IKEA at least does not require a coin.
- Wait this isn't standard practice in the rest of the world???¿???
  
  It is at Aldi (and maybe Lidl?) but uncommon in general in the US
- Aldi used to do that in the US. Maybe they still do. I never carry coins on me, so for this reason (and the always extremely long lines at checkout) I never shopped there.
  
  I keep an Aldi quarter in my car. I don't shop there regularly, but I'm always prepared when I do.
  
  There are plastic coins you can use instead.

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:
If you do return the cart you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart and because it is correct; and
If you don't you are no better than an animal, a savage, who does what is right only because there is a law in place or you are forced to.
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.
  
  Become ungovernable
  
  good way to get your teeth stronger for the "eat the rich" movement
  
  Fourth option: I filled the cart with groceries, it is now my home.
- So you are criticising the over simplification presented here and I agree with you.
  I would however point out that although I also don't like the binary aspect of their blurb, I find that I would quite agree with their final sentence. I don't think the test shows whether we are a good or a bad person, but it does say something about a person's ability to fit in a society.
  
  I think it's a interesting experiment I just thought it was funny how those who don't return were demonized.

Remember that a lot of religious people believe that without written rules of what is right or wrong that we'd all turn into literal murder hobos.
- jesse what the fuck are you talking about jesse
  
  I think they're saying religious people believe that if it isn't an enforced rule by either the law or some religion, people won't follow it.
  (I know it's the jesse meme text but internet sarcasm is hard so I'm putting my interpretation anyway)
- jesse what the fuck are you talking about jesse

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.)

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?
- Depends on the weather
  
  I’d still rather be outside than dealing grocery store customers in the snow, rain, cold, or heat.
- I'm just curious, did you bring the carts in in smaller batches so you'd have to make more trips and the whole task would take longer?
  
  Yeah. Way longer. It’s a much quicker job when all the carts are in one spot and you just bring a long train of them back at once.

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?".

But I gotta get my quid back.
- This one Aldis.
  
  It's basically standard (at least everywhere I've lived) in Europe
  
  Every supermarket has this in the UK. Has for years.

It cracks me up that "shopping cart returner" is a full-time job for Costco employees. One of them randomly told me he's been doing this full-time for 7 years. 🤦‍♀️ But he seemed to genuinely enjoy it so okay. Exercise, fresh air, vitamin D all day every day.
I personally always return my shopping carts to their proper locations.
The only exception was when I was a mother of babies in those 50 lb baby carriers, the chores were immense, putting groceries into the car and putting the baby into the car and then what, I can't leave the baby in the car while I push the cart back to where it belongs, so put the baby back into the grocery cart and push the grocery cart back to the cart return, then carry the baby back to the car? I'm exhausted all over again PTSD just thinking about it.
And in those situations it's a rare treat to get a parking spot right next to the carriage return, but that has its own risks, getting shopping carts rammed into your car while you're parked there.
- I go out of my way to offer to return peoples carts for them, generally anyone but especially women with children and the elderly. To me its no big deal to mash a couple carts together and return theirs with mine.
- Do you guys have parking spots for new and expectant mothers yet?
  
  Yes those exist in some parking lots now, The first time I ever saw one was when my youngest child was about 3 years old. by then I didn't need it any more. My kids were walking.

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.
  
  Yes, they would have 2 hours a day more time to clean and stock the shelves. Making their job easier.
- I mean, the image shows a cart corral (sp?). They still need someone to collect the carts, they just don't have to chase them down or pull them off the curb
  Not everywhere has those, but most places do

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!!”

I take it one further and bring in a cart from between spaces, someone is finishing using packing away groceries, or already in the station and bring it back into the store to use. And as a single person struggling with the increasing cost of groceries, trying to keep my weekly trips under 80$. I can carry out everything I get by hand, leaving the cart in the store.
Returning the cart to the station is like bare minimum and still many people can't even do that.

This should be a do-or-die grade in the finals, globally. And don't let anyone know when or where they'll be evaluated and graded, make'em think the Civics teacher/professor will stalk them around town, putting together their resupply patterns, and grading their mall etiquette. That'll put the fear o'God in'em!
- Which defeats the whole purpose of the test - it has to be done not out of fear of consequences but out of a sense of duty.
  
  This is basically the same as people that need their religion to define their morality.
  
  Completely agree with you! But that may be a bit idealistic at this point, to be honest, and it pains me to accept it, too, believe me! I'm starting to think more in the lines of "doing the best with what we've got," and we ain't got much...
  Edit: of course I was joking in my initial comment, just to dispel any potential uncertainty! But everything with its grain of truth and all that...

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 think it's because Americans don't have dollar coins.
  
  The USA has like 26 various prints of dollar coins. Only two of witch are not a standard weight and size. Those two also being the oldest and more rare of all the versions. We could absolutely start using them as they are still minted on a regular bases. For the life of me I still don't understand why they are so rarely used.
- I had never seen that before in my entire life until an Aldi opened here.
- Stores have tried it. Customers hate it. Chiefly because many people simply don't carry any coins on them. You can't have all of your store's registers set to card only mode (yes this is very common for some reason) and then expect people to have a coin on them at all times, so they don't bother.
  It also seems trivially easy to circumvent. Easier than remembering to bring a quarter with you when you go to the store.
  
  Yeah in a cashless society things like that can't work well. In Germany cash is king, you can't go out without. In France it is mandated that shops accept at least 2 means of payments (among cash, card, check or wire transfer), and only cash and cards have enough safety and speed that shops and restaurants want to use it.

I think the theory goes too far, tbh. If we're being a little bit realistic, a difference between animals and members of human society is that animals cannot and do not obey laws. Higher order animals obey direct threats of punishment, such as if you've trained them not to shit on the floor, but that's not the same as law. With a law, you are aware of the consequences without having directly experienced them.
An animal only respects consequences after directly experiencing them.
I am willing to accept into society those who obey (just) laws without directly experiencing the consequences. They ARE better than animals, they are not savages, they are not bad members of society. They are doing the bare minimum necessary to belong to society; indeed, their existence is the reason we form societies at all. You might not want to be friends with them but they aren't animals.
While the conclusion of this post goes to far, I do think it nails it right in the first sentence: if you return the cart, if you do what is correct without need for a law, then you are capable of being self-governing. You would make a good anarchist, for example, because your social group would function well without laws.

What if returning the carts is my usual practice, but there was a time crunch one time and I needed to save myself the extra 30 seconds?
- I'm having a tough time imagining a scenario where you're in too much of a hurry to spend 30 seconds returning the cart, but not too much of a hurry to buy your merchandise and load it in your vehicle.
  
  Maybe if you are about to piss your pants, but even then you should check inside the store first. But that's about it
- Then your time management sucks.
- Believe it or not, jail!
- If you are in such a hurry you don't even have 30 seconds, you shouldn't be shopping in the first place, especially if you buy enough to fill a cart.
- Unless you get a phone call just after unloading your shit into your car what sort of emergency allows you to shop but still demands literally no second be spared?
- I suppose if it was dire you save those 30s, it's acceptable.
  But you would not be immune to being judged by a third party. They wouldn't know the situation is dire unless explaining it, which would take at least a few seconds.
- The post specifies an exemption for dire emergencies. It would need to be pretty dire for 30s to make a meaningful difference.
  Otherwise, by the metric here, you're a bad person whenever you're in a moderate hurry.
- Walmart sells indulgences.
- I always just park next to the cart return things. Makes it easier to find your car and you don't have to walk as far.
  
  Parking next to the cart return doesn't count. You must bring the cart all the way back.
- The description says unless it's a dire emergency

Where I am people do not trust people and shopping carts are coin operated.

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.
  
  I think the idea was that you knew that it'sa test and that you'd die if you remove the hand, so it's less willpower and more reasoning over instinct/fear, at least in theory. You have to presume the box is at least tuned to different people's pain thresholds or whatever.
  Also, the text pretty much says that Mohiam is doing it wrong more or less on purpose:
  "Enough," the old woman muttered. "Kull wahad! No woman child ever withstood that much. I must've wanted you to fail."
  If you give the benefit of the doubt that Herbert figured out the practicalities and wasn't going by rule of cool (which he absolutely was) the implication is that the person administering the test has some control of the itnensity and you're supposed to deal with some pain you're supposed to hold, not become convinced that your hand is a charred stump like Paul is.
  That, and the movie verisons amp the whole thing up a lot, so it comes across a bit differently.
  
  It was always more about the triumph of the mind over the body. When the body is screaming to run away, the mind retains control. That is what makes someone Human.
  
  Put like this sounds pretty lame yes.

prints this image out a million times and attaches it to every shopping cart I can find

Ah, the real life Gom Jabbar
- Gom Jabbar ends in death for non-humans.
  This is more like.... Deciding whether or not to tell the child clone of a man born 11000 years ago his old name in order to break his psyche constructively.

I have very young children, meaning very often I can walk away from the car after getting them in their carseats and unloading the groceries or whatever and be gone for about two minutes before one or both of them start losing their minds and getting scared. If the shopping cart return spot is more than two minutes from my car (round trip), then the cart gets left exactly two minutes (round trip) closer to the return spot and in a spot that doesn't inconvenience a) anyone parking, b) anyone leaving, and c) the employee that will eventually have to return it to the store.
Ideally, I catch someone walking inside the store on my way and ask if they'd like the cart, but not always.
That's just how it is, I don't feel bad about it. I don't know if you all live somewhere where these cart return chutes are more available, but most large parking lots here are the size of like two football fields and they have three total return chutes.
What irritates me is how often the "parent parking" spots are filled with people that get into their cars with no kids. They are typically located right next to the chutes, and it is great because you don't have to walk short children through a parking lot, you can put them in a cart, and then walk in where cars backing out can see the little kids.
I seriously rarely see people with kids using those spots. 100% some of the people in this thread are using the parent parking spots without kids, returning their shopping cart right next to where they're parked, and then judging people for not returning their carts.
- I'm not judging you, but to offer another perspective to anyone reading this thread: I am a parent of two young children, and have never not returned a shopping cart. I take the kids with me when I return it.
  As a parent, I realizes that it's harder to do things with kids than without, but I go out of my way to not pass that burden onto others.
  There are many ways our situations could be different that would make it harder for you to do this than me - your reasons are completely your business.
  
  I hear you, but in a busy parking lot, the shopping cart elevates the height of the children, making them visible to cars.
  Where I live, the grocery store and target or whatever are primarily SUVs and trucks. The blind spots on vehicles like that are huge, and my children suddenly decide something looks and interesting and will sometimes just bolt off.
  They're pretty good in parking lots, and obviously we have to and do walk through them, but, when I can, I try to limit the time my children spend on their feet in a busy parking lot.
  My daughter barely comes up to the bumper of some of these trucks! But I do appreciate what you're saying, and I tend to agree with you in most circumstances.
- I mean this is all in your head. Your children will be fine if you return the kart.
  
  It's not all in my head, insofar as it then makes the drive home miserable because they're upset. You honestly think that your desire to whine about this ever-recurring meme complaint about shopping carts isn't "just in you head" too?
  They're both "in our head": I'm worried about my kids' happiness and comfort, and you're worried about being critical for a meme.
  It's a shopping cart. I do what I can, and when I don't have the kids, I return the cart to the chute. I realize it's funny to make this a big deal on the internet, but my real point was that people with small children find it harder to do, and if we all keep spaces near the chutes open for people with children, it's much safer for children going into AND back out of the store.
  And you'll get your shopping carts returned more often, as you'd prefer.
- I have never heard of or seen a 'parent parking spot'. It seems kind of unfair to people who don't have kids. I can see why people don't really care to honor that.
  
  They're usually the two spots directly next to a shopping cart chute. They allow a parent to take a returned cart from the chute and immediately put their children in it so that they don't have to walk through a parking lot where no one can see them in their rearview mirrors. Also, you may not know this, but sometimes small children just... start running when they get out of the car. If you've got more than one child, it can be very difficult to hold them while trying to get your other child or children out their carseat. Those things are like jet seats.
  It's much easier to plop then in a cart that makes them visible to surrounding cars and less able to run away while unloading kids. It is also better for getting them into the store. I live in America. The average distance needed to see a 2ft child through the WINDSHIELD is shocking. When multiple cars are backing up and trying to leave a parking lot, it's not fun.
  https://x.com/dannyman/status/1661087159082967040?s=20
  Yes, it is "unfair" to people that don't have kids, but, given it helps reduce the chance of small children being hurt or killed, they are generally seen as a part of good parking lot design.
  If you're less interested in the safety of children, perhaps you might also think about it from a profit perspective. Making accommodations for people who are interested in the safety of their children is more likely to attract people with children, who very often spend money in the store for not only themselves but also those children.
  Additionally, it reduces the incidence of tragic accidents involving children in a commercial parking lot, and costs almost nothing, which is generally seen as a positive by most businesses.
- If your kids can't be alone for 3 minutes, then take them with you.
  But don't blame your laziness on your kids.
- Where I'm from, they're also open to expecting mothers.
  They are also people who shouldn't have to walk super far, especially later on in their pregnancy. It would really suck know for people to get upset at them just because they don't have kids with them, even though they might literally physically struggle walking. I hope that's not the case here lol
  
  Most of the spots where I live aren't close to the doors. They're not handicapped spots. They're just located next to the shopping cart return chutes, which are usually generally found in the center of the parking lot. That CAN help someone that struggles to walk, because they can use a cart to support them as they walk from the middle of the parking lot, but it's probably less ideal than a closer parking spot (if available).

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.
- Why the downvotes?
  
  Fun fact: Blåhaj Lemmy doesn't federate downvotes, which means all the downvotes you're seeing are from your instance. And I feel like the people on your instance are very trigger-happy with the dowvote button for anything that is slightly out of line with the overall narrative.

I go to Buehlers where my stuff gets conveyor belted outside and they put it in my car for me. I need not return the cart because it does not leave!
- god america is weird you can't even carry bags a few metres out the door to your car
  
  In my case it’s a whole ass shopping cart full so
- leaves car there*

Capitalist has entered the chat.

Again american with their "blame the customer instead of pushing bussinus to hire people full time"
- They need to do it the European way where you have to deposit a coin to get the cart and you get it back when you return it. I think Aldi does this in the US.
- Should the stores have valet service patrolling the parking lot for your cart? Or should I just make sure to leave my cart parked uphill from your car?
  Or maybe I should just make sure that there’s an empty cart inside every empty parking spot. That sounds like a fun sunny-day community anarchy event.
  The best thing of the corrals is, when used properly, empty spots are actually empty and you don’t have to worry about stray carts slamming into your parked car. Unfortunately, they are rarely used properly.
  Making work easier for the dude who has to go out to collect them is just gravy.
  But there’s a segment of the American population that doesn’t want to do what’s best for ”nearly everyone, eventually”…they want to do what’s best for “me, now”. Even if most people (themselves included) doing the former automatically results in the latter. Basically prisoners dilemma. Same reason we still have Covid, same reason we can’t have public healthcare, and same reason a few kids collect lead at school every now and then.
- In America the shops have areas where you return the carts and an employee takes them from that spot back to the store. The exception to this is Aldi.
- Most stores here do have one or more people whose job is to collect carts.
  You, meanwhile, are stepping dangerously close to a 'the customer is always right' argument. Having worked in retail I can personally assure you, the customer is usually wrong.

Why is this shopping cart meme so prevalent all of a sudden? I've seen like five unique memes about it in the last few days, not just reposts but three completely unique memes
Why is this particular meme everywhere this week?

It's not a theory, it's a damn law.

what about people that return carts half the time but dont half the time?
- If you only commit murder every other day, are you a murderer?
  
  Only on the on days
  
  the whole point of the shopping carts question is that it is not actually a crime but undesirable behavior. murder is a crime not just bad behavior. not a good comparison.
- They generally know what's right, but mostly from people telling them, not from first-hand experience. Their values haven't been fully tempered yet.

I mostly shop at a place where you can safely leave the carts on a covered sidewalk outside of the store. Get fucked moral absolutists
- Safely, but still creating more work for store employees to collect the carts and possibly inconveniencing pedestrians. Point 1 for the moral absolutists.
  
  Some stores hire students to continuously gather all the shopping carts and return them to the hubs. Altough, I think nowadays all stores in my country use the coin operated carts, so if you don't return the cart, you don't get your coin back.
  
  Mostly, people take the left carts back into the store to shop with

If there was a law punishing people for not putting shopping carts back, I would deliberately break it and sue whatever stupid fucking government passed such a thing under the grounds listed in the post.
A law like that would be a violation of our rights. You can't just use government to force people to do whatever you want. We have rights.
- A law like that would be a violation of our rights
  We have a right to not clean up after ourselves? Tell me more
  The fact is you're borrowing a cart from it's owner, probably a store. If the store requires you to put it back and you don't the they would be within their rights to sue you over it. The only reason they don't is because their damages would be massively less valuable than their legal fees and the time it would take to present a lawsuit.
  
  You really do. Governments can't arbitrarily make you do whatever they want through laws; they have to have good reasons for it that are acceptable by the people, and no one thinks it's acceptable for governments to harm their own citizens over an act the OP emphatically tells us harms no one.
  An act that really doesn't mean anything more than a minor inconvenience and annoyance for everyone else.
  And you want to harm people over it.
  They're not the ones who are disgusting. You are.
- Same logic can apply to throwing your trash around. Which does get fined.
  
  I am pretty surprised no one has sued to get those laws overturned on those grounds.
  Laws like that are just dog whistles to enable discrimination, just as loitering laws are.
- Pretty sure it could be considered fly tipping.

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.
  
  given how often disabled people are yelled at for using disabled parking spots, I would not be as optimistic that we'd not be included
  As for how they were able to use it, maybe using it for a little bit is okay but it starts physically hurting after a while leading to them not being able to put it back, that has happened to me before. Or maybe the return cart area is a bit up a hill or otherwise inaccessible
  
  There are no situations except dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their shopping cart.
  It's pretty clear to me.
  Disabilities of all kinds exist. There may be some that use the cart for balance or others that can't easily navigate places where there are cars (visual disability for example). Leaving the shopping cart at exit is easier if you get into a vehicle or mobility aid right at the exit, rather than going around.
  It's funny because I've seen this same post before and half the comments were about disabled people. And here I was the first.

Rokos shopping cart

As someone typically critical of Abrahamic religions, this is the strong argument for why we need those religions :3

This is such a dumb take - doing unpaid labour for corporations is what makes someone a good person? Nah.
- That's a weird take. The shopping part is provided to you for free for your convenience. Not returning the shopping cart means you are creating a nuisance for other people who are coming to the store to get the things that they need. It is blocking parking spots, potentially going to damage somebody's car, and no longer in a centralized location.
  Not returning it is inconsiderate in multiple ways.
- Nah, yours is the dumb take. I guess returning your 3D glasses at the end of a movie is too much "unpaid labor" for you. How about cleaning up your table at a restaurant that doesn't have servers? I guess you just leave the mess sitting there huh?
  
  Nah lol I return the shopping cart and don't make a mess in public. But I really don't believe that's some kinda evidence of morality.
- Working a customer facing job with poor pay and little to no benefits sucks. That's why I do it, for those people, not the business.

I love when people leave their carts around because that means I am not forgetting my coin if I have to take one out the aisle
- Your coin? Are you renting the shopping cart?
  Edit: TIL about European shopping cart rental
  
  I'm not sure if they still do, but ALDI used to do this too. Not too sure about other stores but I've only seen it at ALDI here in Michigan

One time I went to a Walmart in the middle of the night and turned all the cart returns backwards. What does that make me?
- You will probably be mentioned in history with Hitler and Stalin.

But then what do you do about those monsters who leave carts in motion, on slopes, leaving them to hit parked cars?
- Ziptie those carts to their car handles.
- You judge them as bad people, I guess. The post only defines how to judge people, it doesn't prescribe what should be done about it.

I return the shopping cart entirely out of the fact that ai fucking hate it when people leave the cart in the parking space. But yeah if theres a concrete sidewalk or something I may leave it there if the return area is a row of cars away.
- Then you sure are a bad member of society. Did you read the post?
  
  They're simply stating the parameters where they perceive it to no longer be an easy convenient task. We'd need to argue that line to be sure.

I’m not sure I agree. I think there’s some merit to leaving your cart in a different spot, where it could likely be more convenient for someone than the cart return aisle. As long as it’s secured so it doesn’t roll away, I don’t see the problem there. It’s chaotic good, at the very least.

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