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  • I used to work at a Costco. There were two long stretches of parking lot that had no cart corrals anywhere nearby. They were at the farthest points of the lot on either end. Despite all the employees begging them to add a corral in those spots the manager never did. But he would always complain about carts being abandoned way out there constantly.

    I think a 30 seconds round trip to return a cart is more than fair. If you cannot reasonably locate a Coral (or the store does not have one within that walking distance timeframe) I think its fair to attempt to store the cart in such a manner that it doesn't block someone else trying to park.

    All that being said the average shopper at our location wouldn't even attempt to find a corral. Often times they would just leave them in the empty space next to their car blocking a parking spot. Usually within 20 feet of an actual corral. Sometimes they would literally yell at one of the cart runners from a distance something like "wouldn't wanna put you out of a job!" Before they just left their cart slowly rolling across the lot unattended.

    If you ever want to lose whatever small amount of hope you had left for the basic decency of the human race just work at a Costco for a little while.

    People would leave their trash in the carts constantly. They would spill food and drinks all over the kids seats and just leave them there. They would almost never put them into the corrals properly. They would just shove them towards the corral from a distance which almost always cause the carts to jam up at angles and then the corral would over flow and eventually people would just leave them with their front wheels put over the curbs right next to the corrals that was now spilling over with 7 carts because nobody decided to properly put the cart away and instead just pushed it to the edge and called it quits.

    I have worked all kinds of service jobs over the years. Costco by far had the most selfish and shitty customer base out of all of them. You can tell by the way many of them spoke to employees that they felt entitled to treating everyone like shit because they paid a membership. Hell some of them would even say exactly that whenever they felt even slightly inconvenienced or slighted. Just right out the gate with "I pay a membership fee blah blah blah blah". Every once in a blue moon they had s legitimate argument to be making, but 99% of the time they were just throwing s fit because they wanted to get their way and the managers would bend over backwards for the customers every single fuckin time.

    Sorry this turned into a rant about the worst job I ever had.

    Yeah many people are too selfish to put away a shopping cart these days.

    • I used to work for Target and Walmart. I feel like there's some overlap between the customers I've experienced at Target and the people that go to Costco. Sure, there were some weird people at Walmart, but at least they'd mind their own business. I swear Karen would try extra hard to go out of her way to interrupt your work for no reason at Target.

      I found all sorts of things in carts at Walmart though. People would buy stuff to do their oil change in the parking lot, then literally change the oil and leave the old stuff in a cart sitting in the parking lot. Of course they didn't put it in the corral!

  • An unironic way to fix half of America would be to let minimum wage workers hurt the public. Give them all baseball bats and make it legal to go for the knees of people who don't return carts, only one tap for people who don't put it back properly.

  • This is such a weak post. You really wanna be a good steward of carts? Get one from the corral on the way in instead of using one from the inside. Especially if it's not out of the way. Make the cart retriever's job even easier. Especially on super hot/cold days.

    • This is the way.

      Also, by taking a cart from the corral and bringing it in with you, you’re actively modeling a virtuous behavior you hope people emulate, which does more to correct the problem than whining online about it.

      But it does make me wonder about us sometimes. How did we get this way? How did “Fuck everybody else; got mine” become the default way Americans think? Am I the weird one for being raised to be thoughtful about these kinds of choices?

      I don’t claim to be perfect. I’ve had bad days when I take advantage that permissiveness-inconsiderateness that I see around me all the time, but I always know that it’s wrong, and that I’m doing an inconsiderate thing, but that my frustration affords me the grace to be selfish about this one thing.

      One of the Academy Award nominated short films this year is Instruments of a Beating Heart, about a class of Japanese first-grade students preparing to perform Ode to Joy for the new first year students that will take their places. It’s primarily about the struggle of one girl, but set against the backdrop of Japanese grade school life, student responsibility and expectation-setting for young humans experiencing their first non-familial social environments. It made me think “Well, at least these kids are going to be alright.”

      • The most generous explanation I can get is that people who don't put them in the corrals think they're not as bad as other people not leaving them in the corrals because "hey, at least I put it on the curb," or "hey, at least I didn't didn't leave it in the handicap area," or "hey, at least I didn't put it on a slope so it won't hit any cars," etc.

        I also think there is just a ton of classism here. A lot of people feel better by belittling others. I think on some level the working class realizes they're being taken advantage of, but rather than taking it out in those above them they make others feel lower than themselves. "I am a hard worker. I put in 60 hours a week. My body wasted away. I am honorable for doing this to support my family. I am not lazy. I have skills. Minimum wage workers at the shopping center are lazy and have no skills. I am doing them a favor. I will not stoop to their level by performing such tasks." I think it makes working class people feel like royalty to belittle other working class people they view as less than themselves.

        I don't know how it got like this. I can make guesses all day long but I really don't know.

    • I do this, not because I'm courteous but because if I take one from the outdoor corrals I don't have to wait behind three grannies slowly selecting carts from the inside corral.

    • Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.

  • So I used to put my cart back all the time but then I found out it creates jobs for people that cant get a job. Some one getting out of jail living in a half way home can use these jobs to get out of their situation. I no longer put it back.

228 comments