14 ms·

Why don't people return their shopping carts?

• latchkey 11mo ago
  I don't even think about it. If available, I take it from near where I park and I return it to the front of the store with the rest of the carts. The little tiny bit of extra exercise is nice to clear my head before I start driving.
  • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
    When it becomes a habit, good deeds become effortless. I wish I could say that about most people.
• hpdigidrifter 11mo ago
  I assume it's generally unbecoming to reference 4chan posts for an academic but surprised the Shopping Cart theory didn't get a mention given how close it was to the subject matter. >“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 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. The Shopping Cart Theory, therefore, is a great litmus test on whether a person is a good or bad member of society.”
  • GenerocUsername 11mo ago
    I live by this. It is one of the least controversial 4chan takes. There is nothing wrong with citing 4chans shopping cart theory. It is truly a marker of good vs bad people as far as it comes to participating in a high trust society.
    • hackthemack 11mo ago
      I worked at a grocery store for a while in my teens and early twenties. It is really a surprise to me that this has become an internet topic and even more surprising how strongly people feel like it is a litmus test for good vs bad. I just do not think it is a good litmus test. People are busy, some people have kids. Who is really being inconvenienced? One thing I want to point out is that everyone I worked with at a grocery store loved going out and getting the carts. The employees saw it as a mini-break from the drudgery of the day. From having to go get carts many times, I will say, that if someone leaves their cart in a parking spot... well that is bad behavior. But if they just push it into the grass, or out of the way, who cares if it is tucked away there, or tucked away at cart corral. Someone has to go out and get the carts anyway, and it broke up the day, got you outside.
      • iamnothere 11mo ago
        Speaking of memes, you just did one: > Who is really being inconvenienced? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugjak-but-how-does-this-affect-you-personally https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugjak-but-how-does-this-aff...
      • arwhatever 11mo ago
        Grass might hold the cart in place, but most abandoned carts get dropped off in places where the wind can catch them and blow them into cars.
        • hackthemack 11mo ago
          Fair point. I did not usually see a free roaming cart though. Maybe times have changed. Usually, people would prop them up against a curb, or ditch them into a grassy spot, or they would put them by a low spot in the parking lot next to a drain, or put them next to a column on the sidewalk. Just my anecdotal experience, it seemed like people would put their cart back if there was a cart corral in the center of every parking row.
  • waitwot 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • ranger_danger 11mo ago
    It sounds like a good test in theory but I would say it's actually more nuanced than that. In my experience, there are certainly reasons that returning the cart might be difficult or impossible (handicap, small children etc.). If you speak to employees about it, I have been told that they often actually like going outside to get the carts, so to me this is not only increased convenience for me personally, but desired by the employees also as they get a "break" from the chaos inside the store.
    • stronglikedan 11mo ago
      > if you speak to employees about it, I have been told that they often actually like going outside to get the carts This has been my experience as well, but people will always blindly insist the opposite just to "win" the shopping cart argument.
      • HDThoreaun 11mo ago
        The employees arent there to have fun. When customers create work for the store they need to spend more on wages and prices go up. The shopping cart theory isnt about the employees, its about making the whole system a little bit worse for everyone else.
    • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
      >I have been told that they often actually like going outside to get the carts They are getting the carts either way. No one is saying to return all carts to the store. There are several partking lot racks for a reason.
      • 1718627440 11mo ago
        It seems to be different in the USA, but here they wouldn't. If somebody would abandon a shopping cart, it would stay there indefinitely until somebody returns it. I mean the employee might do it after work, on there way home, but also only for the same reason any other random person would do it.
    • 11mo ago
  • abetusk 11mo ago
    Interesting theory. Here's my counter theory: People's moral righteousness on whether they think a person can be judged by a morally neutral and inconsequential action sheds light on their true moral character. Especially so if the judged action is insignificant but socially frowned on. I know this is all in half-jest but the article and discussion seem pretty mean-spirited to me.
    • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
      >People's moral righteousness on whether they think a person can be judged by a morally neutral and inconsequential action sheds light on their true moral character. You call it moral righteousness. I call it emotional intelligence. You realize as you grow up that your small actions shape and reflect your larger self. And you can see it in others too. We call it "work ethic" in white collar jobs, and I'm sure you wouldn't defend someone who's otherwise an excellent programmer submitting sloppy reports, having inconsistent time estimates, or simply making snarky PR's. It's a shame we don't value it when it's not about maximizing shareholder value.
  • cedws 11mo ago
    My completely unqualified opinion is that this kind of behaviour is linked directly to intellectual ability. Returning the cart requires self-discipline but also implies a thought process around upholding and creating social order. Even fear of shame implies a desire to uphold social standing with others. Whereas not returning the cart can only be explained in two ways: a thought process that says ‘not my problem’ (selfish, disorderly, bad for society) or no thought process at all, like an animal with no higher order thinking.
    • eesmith 11mo ago
      I strongly doubt it is related to intellectual ability but cultural expectations. Some years back someone did a study about which country's US diplomats at the UN had the highest number of NYC parking tickets. Diplomats don't need to pay parking fines due to immunity. This is very similar to returning shopping carts. As I recall, it was clearly correlated with country, which in turn was connected to national corruption rates. Ahh, here: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12312/w12312.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12312/w123... > Overall, the basic pattern accords reasonably well with common perceptions of corruption across countries. The worst parking violators – the ten worst are Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Bulgaria, Mozambique, Albania, Angola, Senegal, and Pakistan – all rank poorly in cross-country corruption rankings. While many of the countries with zero violations accord well with intuition (e.g., the Scandinavian countries, Canada), there are a number of surprises. Some of these are countries with very small missions (e.g., Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic), and a few others have high rates of parking violations but do pay the fines (these are Bahrain, Malaysia, Oman, and Turkey; we return to this issue below). I've read far too many stories of people who don't clean up after themselves at a store or restaurant, justified by "no need - they pay someone to do this" or even "it's a good thing I do this otherwise you wouldn't have a job" to know it's simply intellectual ability.
      • gxnxcxcx 11mo ago
        > I've read far too many stories of people who don't clean up after themselves at a store or restaurant, justified by "no need - they pay someone to do this" or even "it's a good thing I do this otherwise you wouldn't have a job" to know it's simply intellectual ability. That they can barely articulate a verbalized post-hoc rationalization* for that kind of behavior doesn't prevent them from lacking the minimum processing power needed to achieve awareness of how they are leaving ungreased the machinery of the commons. Into which they will keep being embedded, pulling levers left and right all day long. Even a moderately zero-sum minded sociopath can be aware of the perks of investing a modicum of well-placed niceness; if for no other reason, just to avoid losing social capital. * And probably a memetic one, hardly an original thought.
  • kgwxd 11mo ago
    The worst offender is the kind of person that doesn't put it back specifically because they know about this theory. "Don't tread on me!"
    • hat_monger 11mo ago
      Luckily these sorts tend to be so clownish they keep themselves out of power
  • xtiansimon 11mo ago
    Are people who return shopping carts also predisposed* to be _good drivers_? * Not considering physical limitations.
  • oliwarner 11mo ago
    For an idea about society, that is an incredibly isolated lens on the problem. You gain something if others put their trolleys away. You gain something [fuzzy] knowing you may have helped others. We have these mechanisms of cooperation that some people eschew, that some demand, and coin-release trolleys are the response to what happens when it breaks down. Coincidentally a supermarket near me has recently converted their trolley stock to coin-release. I have three children and increasingly few Pound coins so a result of this is I shop less, and far less impulsively. Good job, Tesco.
  • bradlys 11mo ago
    This depends too much. It’s standard at many stores to have someone who goes out and fetches all the carts. They have to do this anyway because of the cart corrals. This sounds like some idea by a European in some tiny parking lot without those. People here have mentioned it only taking 30-60 seconds, which definitely speaks to European centric stuff. A lot of the places I’ve shopped where I’m using a cart, it takes minutes to return. That’s why people aren’t doing it. You spend 1-2 minutes walking to your car. That’s why they leave the cart, it’s an extra 5 minutes round trip. But for an employee who is going to be going around the lot anyway to do this job, it’s no extra added time. This also ignores that people like me will sometimes pickup a cart like this on the way to store if it’s convenient. We also don’t leave them in parking spaces or whatever. We leave them somewhere reasonable.
  • dioxis 11mo ago
    You forgot to add: "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."
  • sharts 11mo ago
    There cited reasons for not returning carts is often job creation / security. Leaving carts means someone must retrieve.
  • noman-land 11mo ago
    There is a third position I've come across, which is also used to justify littering. It's the "they hire people to do this so I don't have to". Sometimes combined with "if I returned my cart/didn't litter those people wouldn't have a job".
    • Tostino 11mo ago
      I'd lump them in with the "bad" members of society group in a heartbeat.
• bluedino 11mo ago
  I already checked out my own groceries. I'll just leave it in the parking lot for someone who works at the store to retrieve it. The real problem is the people who take them 3 blocks away and don't return them. More stores are using those wheels that lock up using various technologies when they are taken outside of the store property.
  • ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
    I'm with 4chan on this one. The actual problem is people like you.
  • marcellus23 11mo ago
    > I'll just leave it in the parking lot Do you mean leave it in one of the designated areas? Or are you just leaving shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot?
  • alkonaut 11mo ago
    No the problem is people who leave them in thr parking. Unless you return it you’re making everyone else pay for returning _your_ cart. Plus of course making the parking harder to use in the meantime. Just return the cart.
  • 47282847 11mo ago
    You could say you create a paid job by not returning your cart. The downsides I see is that free wheeling carts can cause accidents (eg during wind) and create annoyances such as blocking parking spaces. We could probably find some more arguments on both sides. Personally, I consider the downsides to outweigh the pros, which is why I consider it to be the right thing to return it.
    • bluedino 11mo ago
      On the other hand, it can be convenient to grab a loose cart that's near your parking space, instead of having to un-jam a cart from the 50 that are stacked inside each other at the front of the store.
• mindslight 11mo ago
  > And one woman, upon being confronted about leaving her cart, declared, “I have really bad vertigo,” before getting behind the wheel and driving away. To be clear: Disabilities deserve accommodation. But if you could push the full cart to your car, why couldn’t you return the empty one? FWIW, the cart itself can serve as a mobility aid for some types of disabilities. So the hard part might be walking back alone from returning the cart, and that person might view abandoned carts next to open parking spots as a good thing for where they themselves want to park to minimize the cartless walking. I'm certainly not trying to justify the overall trend, just talking about this one particular example.
  • rvba 11mo ago
    Do you make those arguments in good faith? If someone has vertigo that does not allow them to push a cart for few meters, then maybe this same vertigo means they shouldnt drive a car at all. Because they can cause an accident and kill themselves, or others.
    • mindslight 11mo ago
      idk about vertigo specifically (and things laypeople diagnose as vertigo), but yes in that I had a family member who was exactly in this situation. Walking sticks and still very concerned with falling while getting to a cart, then perfectly stable after being able to grab onto something in front of them. Though I highly doubt they themselves left carts around the lot rather than returning them to the closest corral.
  • murderfs 11mo ago
    How did she get into the supermarket in the first place?
    • mindslight 11mo ago
      Driving? Plenty of people have personal mobility issues while driving just fine once they're in a car. Have you ever given away used home health aid items on craigslist? It can be a pretty sad scene.
• waffletower 11mo ago
  Surprised that safety wasn't a statistically significant reason. Pushing your cart to a return exposes one to more parking lot traffic as a vulnerable pedestrian -- particularly worrisome for the elderly. It minimizes risk to leave the cart near your vehicle. Perhaps I have a really solid rationalization at work here :D
  • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
    Wouldn't make too much sense because cart kiosks are typically no more than 4-5 parking spaces over. The marginal risk compared to getting to your care are basically nil.
  • 1718627440 11mo ago
    > Pushing your cart to a return exposes one to more parking lot traffic as a vulnerable pedestrian The amount of car traffic you are exposed as a pedestrian is way larger, that the few minutes in a parking lot are a rounding error. Also on a parking lot, there are a lot of pedestrians, so car drivers will drive even more carefully then on any random street, where pedestrians can also walk around at any time.
• hackingonempty 11mo ago
  > So I approached the question of shopping cart abandonment the way I would any puzzle about human behavior: I collected data. My evidence came from an unlikely source: Cart Narcs, a small group whose mission is to encourage cart return, sometimes gently, sometimes less so. CartNarc videos are selected for the reaction of the subject. Many videos where the subject just returned their cart or didn't get sufficiently agitated end up on the cutting room floor. It isn't a representative sample, there is heavy selection bias. No conclusions can be drawn from them despite the attempts of the author. It isn't even "somewhat" scientific as the author states.
  • itopaloglu83 11mo ago
    I have my study with the sample of one as well. At Kroger, they have these shopping carts that locks their wheels if they were to be taken too far from the store. Well, sometimes they just lock without any reason, so what does the person do as they grab one as they're entering the store an it's locked? They just leave it there, and pull the next one. And over time, the Kroger entrance is just full of shopping carts that are locked and every customer that comes in gets agitated because all the initial carts they interact with are locked.
• miggol 11mo ago
  Do people not return carts in your country? I enjoy Cart Narcs but they would have a hard time making content in The Netherlands. We do have small parking lots here, and many carts have a coin deposit mechanism. It's not just that we're a morally superior people.
  • bluGill 11mo ago
    The vast majority do return carts in my country. But when you have 100 customers an hour (which isn't much) and 5% don't return carts that is 5 carts per hour - odds are you will always see a couple carts out of place. The numbers above are made up of course, but the point remains that a small minority makes everyone look bad. Only one store near me has a coin deposit: Aldi which has European roots - it has probably never occurred to them to check if the cost of the coin collectors is worth it (I'm sure it adds $5 to the cost of a $300 cart). Every other store finds people return their carts often enough that it isn't worth the bother to put those in place.
    • miggol 11mo ago
      And what country is that? If you're comfortable sharing. Of course the coin thing somewhat relies on coins of mentionable value being in common circulation, which rules out the US from the start. Here few people still carry coins since contactless, but most still have a fake euro coin somewhere on their keyring or in their car for shopping carts. They hand out these fake coins, which are usually branded with the supermarket's logo, for free inside the shop. But the system still works because having to go inside for a new coin negates the saved effort of not bringing back the cart. And there's probably some feeling of discomfort associated with abandoning the cart with your coin still in it.
      • bluGill 11mo ago
        US. The US $.25 coin is similar in size to the .50 euro coin (about half the value). It is in common circulation and most people still have them. Most people I know keep a stack of them in their car for use in the carts.
• kevinsync 11mo ago
  Parallel but unrelated, you can play these tones [0] to unlock shopping cart wheels that have locked up on you. The literal only times I ever abandon a cart (not return it to the store or cart corral) is when they lock up and I can't move the god damned things -- and the rare times it has happened have been in the middle of aisles where cars are supposed to drive, FULLY LOADED CART, before I ever get to the car to unload. [0] https://www.begaydocrime.com https://www.begaydocrime.com
• andy99 11mo ago
  Seems early posters are blaming the customers, but at least in Canada the grocery stores treat their customers with so much disdain that i see no problem with people leaving their cart wherever, if it can make more trouble for loblaws et al. Framing helping out a hostile oligopoly as “doing the right thing” is nonsense. For the record I generally bring back my cart, but I’d stand behind someone who wanted to hurl it into the middle of the lot, at least at one of the grocery oligarchs.
  • bluedino 11mo ago
    I'm honestly surprised stores don't make you enter your email address, phone number, or shoppers card to use the cart.
  • tavavex 11mo ago
    If you want to cause trouble for Loblaws, don't shop at Loblaws and other chains of theirs. Willingly giving them your money, and then performatively "retaliating" by making the life of the minimum-wage employee (who would be here either way) slightly harder is completely useless as a form of protest. This feels like a rationalization for not taking the cart back by trying to hand-wave it to some large systematic actors. But the whole point is that the shopping cart choice is always a hyper-local choice. It's only about you, other customers and the people working at the store, not some distant megacorporation.
  • id00 11mo ago
    I'm returning my cart not because of my support of grocery stores but because I care about other customers: abandoned carts getting in the way of walking/parking, may damage cars and just in general clutter the space
• helterskelter 11mo ago
  I never return my carts. I used to bag groceries in a grocery store and whenever I got sick of customers and/or coworkers I'd go get the carts. The more carts far out in the parking lot the better, I could an entire shift without being inside talking to customers.
  • theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
    My dad never returns carts. He also worked at a grocery store when he was young and had the same mentality as this. He also said that he is "creating work" for these young kids and it's good for them ha. Personally, I return carts - because when I worked in a service job, I always had more "important" things to do than clean up after slob customers.
    • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
      Justifying laziness as a mean to maximize menial work really shows the little ways society has slipped off.
      • theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
        Knowing my father, laziness has absolutely nothing to do with it.
    • al_borland 11mo ago
      I liked getting carts too, but I return mine, because no one else I worked with liked doing it. I’m not going to force someone to do work they might not want to do. I don’t know them, and statistically (from my n of probably 50), most people don’t want to do it… especially in the winter. Most of the time I will leave my cart inside and carry my bags to the car. I use the small carts and they run out a lot, so I like to leave it there for other people who like the small carts.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • 11mo ago
• buggymcbugfix 11mo ago
  Is this a US phenomenon? Here in Germany, people always return their shopping carts. Yes, the carts take a coin as a deposit, which can be removed when the cart is returned, but many people have shopping cart openers (for want of a better word) on their keyrings, that circumvent the deposit, yet I haven't EVER seen anyone leaving their shopping cart. I'd go so far as to say that'd be even less socially adequate than urinating in public. I've been around Europe a fair bit and from Bulgaria to Portugal, people just return their carts. It's a no-brainer.
  • ceejayoz 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • spookthesunset 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      • slater 11mo ago
        > Masking did absolutely nothing to stop Covid It did.
        • spookthesunset 11mo ago
          [flagged]
          • slater 11mo ago
            > Keep on telling yourself that I will! > data doesn’t lie $5 sez you have some data that just so happens to confirm your biases, and i bet there's also some data that says masking actually did help. Utterly pointless arguing this nonsense, in the end it always just turns out to be speed-runs to some tedious conspiracy theories.
          • 1718627440 11mo ago
            So you think surgeries that are performed without medical masks, wouldn't have a higher infection rate?
• rvba 11mo ago
  It would be useful if the author tried to classify by age. Would be nice to see if this is a boomer problem, or a general problem.
• sparrish 11mo ago
  People can push the full cart 2 miles all around inside Costco but not an extra 30 feet to return an empty cart to a cart corral? There's no reason for it. It's one of the best indicators of narcissistic individuals - the other is treating restaurant servers poorly.
  • bluedino 11mo ago
    The stores literally have people who are paid to collect the carts.
    • nlawalker 11mo ago
      From the cart corrals. Do you leave trash on the ground because they have people paid to empty the trash cans?
      • bluedino 11mo ago
        I don't leave trash on the ground because littering is against the law.
        • tavavex 11mo ago
          If laws were loosened up and littering was no longer punishable, would you begin littering? Is hypothetical legal recourse the main thing that would motivate you not to act in a certain way?
        • id00 11mo ago
          Is the law the only thing that stops you from littering?
        • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
          I'd love to see anyone get charged for literring in a fast food establishment.
        • al_borland 11mo ago
          So you only do things if there is a specific law that compels you? There is no moral compass?
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• lakkal 11mo ago
  I always return my cart to a collection kiosk thing out in the parking lot, or to where the carts are lined up at the store entrance if that's closer. I don't recall when this became a thing, though. Back in the early-mid 1980s as a teenager my first job involved going out into the lot at K-Mart and bringing in all the carts.
• lvl155 11mo ago
  People in this country can’t even bother to put their carts back and you think they’re not going to get replaced by AI?
  • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
    Well, AI would take a long time to properly corral all shopping carts back to the store. Much easier to have it product slop and replace passionate underpaid creators.
• baggy_trough 11mo ago
  For me it depends on the store. A normal grocery store: I will always return the cart. A luxury store: I don't, I consider it part of the service that I'm paying more for.
  • bluGill 11mo ago
    A real luxury store will push your cart out to your car for you and then bring it back. I have one store near me that does that - we buy most of our groceries there because they are close and cheap (Aldi is cheaper, but everyone else is more expensive)
  • 1718627440 11mo ago
    What the hell is a luxury store? Can you name any brands? I don't think we have them.
    • baggy_trough 11mo ago
      The ones I'm talking about don't have brands; they are local boutique groceries.
• jmyeet 11mo ago
  What I find fascinating is the mental gymnastics people go through to justify not returning their shopping cart. It's not enough to simply be quietly selfish. Peoplw want affirmation for their actions. Often you don't need to return it to the store. There are return bays scattered all ove rthe car park. The goal is fairly simple: carts can cause accidents, damage vehicles or simply block parking spots. Yet you'll find any number of posts from people saying "I've got my kids in the car so I'm not returng my cart". But didn't you have your kids with you when you went into the store? Can't you unload your cart, return it then walk you and your kids back to your car? This is (IMHO) one of the worst cultural norms in America: people want to be celebrated for largely pointless selfish actions as some kind of virtuous display of their rights. Often being community-minded requires very little from individuals. You're not a hero for bucking that norm.
  • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
    America fails the shopping cart test and it really reflects on how we treat the rest of our culture. I dont know if the chicken came before the egg, but the behavior shows nonetheless.
• bitwize 11mo ago
  Well, duh. The least you can do is wheel it into the nearby cart corral, where the store employee will shepherd them all back in with a CartManager XD (whose name is extra hilarious to me). If you know anybody who's worked in retail you understand the suckage of drawing the short straw of having to round up all the carts, especially in inclement weather. My wife had a couple of joint replacements a few years back, and for a time she availed herself of a motorized cart where available. I LOVED driving these back into the store, and I got indignant when a staffer tried to offer to take it in for me. One time I was approached by a kid who I swear to you, looked just like Morty Smith, offering to take the motor cart back. A little skit formed in my head, which I related to my wife on the car ride back home: Morty: Aw, geez, I could—I could take that back for you, sir. Rick: Oh no you don't. Mario Karting this thing back into the store is the most fun I get to have on our weekly grocery trip. How DARE you try to take that from me.
  • bluedino 11mo ago
    > a CartManager XD (whose name is extra hilarious to me). They're made by 'Gatekeeper' which is even better. You're only supposed to move 25 carts at a time with one of those, and we used to get videos from stores that we serviced where the employees would regularly see how many carts they could get that thing to move at one time...
    • bitwize 11mo ago
      I find it funny because XD is an emoticon for a Cartman face and Cartman... CartManager... XD
    • bombcar 11mo ago
      25 carts is nothing; that’s a single man job. I’ve seen those trains sticking so far out of a target it’d make Union Pacific blush.
• mytailorisrich 11mo ago
  Worse is people who just leave their empty basket behind at the self-checkout till. This isn't sticking it up to the supermarket, this is really just an F U to the next customer...
• kalx 11mo ago
  Wrong conclusion. Not «people», but customers at that particular store.
• tomp 11mo ago
  Can't talk about others but for me personally, I: 1) always return the shopping cart when it's free (it almost never is) 2) rarely return the shopping cart when it's paid - sorry but I value my time more than €1 it cost to rent the cart, and, well, clearly there's no "social contract" - there's an "explicit contract", which says "you rent the cart for €1 and we refund you if you return it" so clearly not returning it is fine (also, someone could earn €1!)
  • aarond0623 11mo ago
    This is confusing to me. You value the time to return the cart more than €1, but not more than €0?
    • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
      The mindset makes sense if you see his as an implicit service. The equivalent is if there was a dedicated cart collector every 2-3 spaces and you pay them $1 to return your cart. Now you're paying for a service. It's like littering in a park vs not throwing your trash in the bin at a fast food restaurant. One is more of a commons that everyone has responsibility to clean up. The other is a private establishment who will clean up after guests if they don't. I'd rather just be clean regardless but I see the perspective.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • tstrimple 11mo ago
      It's a similar phenomenon to day cares dealing with late pickups. They have a few chronically late parents, so they institute a late pickup fee. Parents who always picked their kids up on time because of the implicit agreement now have an explicit agreement that it's okay to pick them up late if they pay a bit more. So the incidences of late pickups actually increased at the day care. You're exchanging a trust based system for financial interactions and some people have very different motivations. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468061?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468061?seq=1
• cvoss 11mo ago
  Are we talking about bringing your cart all the way back to the store entrance, or about placing your cart in one of the cart corrals located out in the parking lot? At a large store in the US, the latter are typically provided, and they are nearly always near at hand (maybe 5 spaces away). It's not a far walk.
  • bombcar 11mo ago
    It’s the latter. The detailed DnD map puts “return cart to store” in lawful good and “return cart to nearby ravine” in chaotic evil iirc. https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/jc0az4/dnd_moral_alignment_of_people_by_the_way_they/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/jc0az4/... My memory was decent!
• waffletower 11mo ago
  Since there are rarely compact carts available at the entrance of my local store, I often bring a cart in when I park initially. While more self-serving, where one decides to participate in the shopping cart social contract is of interest as well.
• assemblyman 11mo ago
  I always wondered if there are people who don't have a clear distinction between their private space/home and public space. Whether it's not putting their carts back, or talking loudly on the phone/playing music in a gym or any public space, tossing trash our of car windows, there are some people who seem to inhabit their own inner world so fully that it doesn't register that there are other people around them and that they are using a shared resource.
• creatonez 11mo ago
  Cart Narc's formula is a fantastic way to end up harassing people with invisible disabilities. Hell, a few times the victim has been someone with a visible mobility disability and they kept on harassing.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• phibz 11mo ago
  Independent thought and personal accountability are sadly lacking in the US. "I see a bunch of unreturned carts. I must follow and fit it. See im justified in not returning it." :-(
  • tavavex 11mo ago
    This is closer to a variant of the broken window theory than something that's US-specific. Where I am, people who don't return carts are clearly in the minority, so they probably choose to do it because they think it benefits them greatly.
• assemblyman 11mo ago
  I keep seeing the argument that non-returners are creating jobs. Does that mean they also throw their trash on the streets so cleaners have to be hired? Should one randomly break into houses so every people need to hire security guards? How about scratching cars on the street so mechanics and painters have some extra work?
  • scoofy 11mo ago
    I can understand the argument insofar as it's necessary for the business to want it clean, so the result is not a tragedy of the commons. I knew a special needs teacher when I was younger who would make this argument, but it was specifically because he worked with kids who had a history of crime, as so the argument was specifically that we need jobs for people who can't be trusted with either money or food. He would suggest not cleaning up after yourself at a fast food restaurant specifically because trash/bussing was effectively the only jobs these kids and young adults could get. I never felt convinced that this was an effective strategy, I follow the logic, but within the logic is the assumption that putting these kids to work is a better outcome than using that capital to try and improve their situation/behavior. I honestly don't know which choice is more optimal or whether people can really change en masse.
    • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
      I also don't want a risk of my car being dented. So there's some tragedy there if it was truly rampant. >within the logic is the assumption that putting these kids to work is a better outcome than using that capital to try and improve their situation/behavior. Sounds like your teacher would be great in politics. "creates jobs" is much easier sell than reformation. I'd rather fix our broken windows than pretend that some people are "destined" to stay as minimum wage workers instead of aspiring to their passions. But those can't be done in a single term.
    • 1718627440 11mo ago
      > I can understand the argument insofar as it's necessary for the business to want it clean Here, the business wouldn't care. It would be the costumers, who would find it inconvenient, and would need to return other carts, if they want to.
• system2 11mo ago
  I watched many Cart Narcs episodes. Always the same, the people look uneducated in every single one of them, mostly "Karen" types. It is about respecting society, and these people don't. In the EU, they respect and care about their society. It is all cultural. ALDI solved this problem, even in the U.S. Their carts only work with quarters, so people go back to the cart area to get their quarters back. Maybe we should get the dollar coins circulated more so every cart in the U.S. uses those to encourage people to move their carts back. Quarters might not work everywhere in the U.S.. They probably would justify leaving their carts even more now because they will think: "Hey, next person gets a free quarter, it is better to leave it, I help someone to make money now".
  • bombcar 11mo ago
    To the contrary, almost all paid airport carts offer a reward for return, but you can always find them abandoned amongst the parking An interesting phenomenon. I will always return a Walmart cart but rarely if ever return an airport cart; probably because I love finding one “for free” and pass it on.
    • system2 11mo ago
      Or spending 3-4 minutes to return the cart will cost them the same amount of parking fees. Just a thought. I think carts are more complicated than they seem.
• m463 11mo ago
  People who wonder about this stuff should travel to Japan. It is sort of amazing and uplifting to see a whole society with a high level of good behavior. - People trim their bushes and trees (they frequently look like Dr. Seuss trees) - The sidewalks are clean, even in the most urban environments - I've seen women leave their purse on the table when they go to the bathroom. - People wait to cross the street - Cars are carefully parked and aligned inside the lines - People wait in line - stores are well organized
  • waffletower 11mo ago
    For the purposes of this specific conversation, the layout of typical Japanese supermarkets, the cost of groceries and the frequent lack of specialized parking for supermarkets, Japan is probably an irrelevant comparison. Where there are parking lots, people typically purchase only what could be carried back to their car without carts. Bicycles are used for shopping with much greater frequency than countries like the U.S. Shopping carts are typically taken and returned at the entrance of the store before the customer exits. At Uwajimaya in the United States (a Japanese asian market with stores in Oregon and Washington), remarkably, the same cultural use of shopping carts occurs.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • unscaled 11mo ago
      Most people in Japan live outside of the Yamanote circle in Tokyo. Rural and Suburban supermarkets have parking lots (although in central areas they can still be quite small) and people still use cars for shopping trips, especially in the countryside. It is true that grocery packages are much smaller than the US (since Japanese houses, even in the countryside, are smaller and I guess the average household size is smaller as wel). Shopping carts in regular supermarkets are smaller than abroad, and are usually built to house 1 or 2 shopping baskets you can also carry by hand. But hey, we still have Costco in Japan, and package sizes and shopping cart sizes are just as big as they are in the US (although the parking lot is probably considerably more crowded). And Costco is extremely popular here. It's far messier than a Japanese supermarket and I do see inconsiderate people sometimes in Costco, but the cars are still parked nicely and most people do return their shopping carts. It would be interesting to compare Costcos in Japan and the US directly though.
• there4 11mo ago
  I don't see mention of parenting. Imagine you’re in a hurry. Your child is tired and hungry, and you are too. You’ve just loaded the groceries into the trunk and finally gotten your child strapped into the car seat. You think for just a moment that you're done. But then you realize: you still need to return the shopping cart. You should have loaded the groceries, locked the car, gone back to the cart return and then carried your child back to the car to load them into their car seat. Now you’re faced with a dilemma with three bad options — do you take your child back out of the car, leave them unattended for a moment, or abandon the cart and go home?
  • cogman10 11mo ago
    I'm a parent with a child with profound autism. You leave your kid in the car for the 30 seconds it takes to return the cart. It's never been an issue and the kiddo is perfectly content waiting for a short period while I walk the cart back. My god, people act like there's kidnappers at every grocery store just waiting for this one moment to abduct a child.
  • cush 11mo ago
    > I don't see mention of parenting. When I read this I thought you meant bad parents not teaching their kids to return their carts > dilemma... do you... What exactly is the risk of leaving the kid while you quickly return the cart?
    • there4 11mo ago
      All I'm asking is that we give caregivers a little empathy and some grace. To your question - There's not much risk. Lock the car, return the cart. But what I'm offering is that if I saw a parent leaving a cart, I wouldn't judge and assume that it's because of a glaring moral failing.
      • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
        >I wouldn't judge and assume that it's because of a glaring moral failing. It's not a moral failing by itself, but it then suggests "how many other activities are cut out because they can't take their eyes off their kids for 30 seconds?" That behavior seeps into the rest of the going ons in life. That's not bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes the type of parent who cuts all social contact with non-parent friends after having a kid.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• kevinsync 11mo ago
  I already wrote something else in here, but one other thought I had afterwards was related to IKEA carts -- they have four 360-degree casters, which makes them extra prone to just flying in literally any direction with a bit of wind if they're not returned to the corrals. Strangely enough, I rarely ever encounter an abandoned cart there, or full corrals; they're almost always empty! Curious if IKEA policy is far more rigorous than a grocery store on cart retrieval and return.
  • bombcar 11mo ago
    Many people only use the carts to the loading area which has a well-patrolled corral next to it (any employee tasked with helping you load returns to the building with some or all of the carts). The 360x4 casters are pretty insane the first time you realize it.
  • al_borland 11mo ago
    Last time I went to IKEA I couldn’t physically get the cart beyond the loading area. There were barricades setup that seemed sized specifically to stop carts from leaving the area. As someone who went there alone, this was a real problem. The setup really assumes at least two people are showing up. One to wait with the purchased items, and another to get the car. I’ve avoided IKEA because of this. I don’t know how to deal with it logistically.
• QuadmasterXLII 11mo ago
  Internet behavioral science with terrible selection bias round 2: classify whether someone will comment here that they don’t put their carts back based on their previous comments. Then, interpret the classifier to see what makes them tick
• Xorakios 11mo ago
  When on an extended trip to Delray Beach, Florida and shopping at the Publix market I tried to walk in with a cart that was lurking in a parking space. An employee somewhat angrily explained to me that I was threatening his job because collecting carts and greeting customers was part of the Publix customer experience.
  • fsckboy 11mo ago
    I once got yelled at by a Safeway employee because I didn't respond to her "have a nice day, sir" "I SAID, HAVE A NICE DAY SIR!" (just in case you live in a civilized part of the world, understand: this was in a place where the checker doesn't lift a finger to bag your groceries, that's your job)
  • MathMonkeyMan 11mo ago
    Publix also advises customers not to tip the kid who unloads the groceries into your car. You will accept our service and you will do nothing more!
• brettgriffin 11mo ago
  > Promoting cart return might be as simple as setting a new norm Nobody who does this is not aware that returning the shopping card is the normal, expected, and 'right' behavior. There just isn't a moral hazard that prevents them from doing the wrong behavior. I think there is a larger philosophical/moral question of WHY should someone do the 'right' thing in the absense of a moral hazard. It's something I've thought a lot about over the last couple of years. As the 4chan Shopping car theory points out, the cost of leaving the cart is zero. And the benefit is the saved time/energy. Why shouldn't a rational self-optimizing person leave the cart there? Why shouldn't they hold the subway door open to catch the train? Why shouldn't they pull up the very front of the offramp and merge at the last second? Zero cost, all benefit. I have a self-motto of 'do the right thing' in virtually anything I do. In those examples, I'd return the carts, wouldn't hold a train door open, and would miss an exit and turn around. But WHY do I do it? Why do I feel like I HAVE to do it? Am I actually experiencing any benefit in life over those who don't?
  • iamnothere 11mo ago
    I think the issue is that the long-term decline in social trust—and the accompanying rise in surveillance, authoritarian enforcement, and costs/prices—happens too slowly for people to notice and associate with their own actions. If every time they left a cart out there was a new camera or scowling security officer on their next visit, they might notice and change their behavior. But as it is, they don’t notice their own contribution to the consequences that they so often complain about. (Just so nobody misunderstands me, this is not to say that I want more cameras and security officers. Quite the opposite, which is why I don’t like casual antisocial behavior and petty crime.)
  • tavavex 11mo ago
    > But WHY do I do it? Why do I feel like I HAVE to do it? Am I actually experiencing any benefit in life over those who don't? If I try to dig in deeper for why I also feel that way, I guess it's not about coercion or fear of judgement/retribution. I just have an innate understanding that other people have their own lives, and I don't feel like it's worth it to do things that have a minuscule "benefit" for me while being a far outweighed drawback for multiple strangers. Even though it doesn't benefit me, it does benefit the community I'm in, and is one of many things that make the society I live in relatively nice. Not returning the shopping cart saves a rounding error's worth of time, but now multiple car drivers are annoyed in a major way when shopping carts are rolling back and forth, ramming into parked cars or taking up empty parking spots. Employees now have to spend more of their time getting all the carts, sometimes in bad weather. Not worth it. Holding the subway door saves several minutes for me, but makes the schedule tighter for the operator and forces hundreds of people to wait a few more seconds for me. This difference between my benefit and others' drawback isn't as drastic as the shopping carts, so the bar for me to do it is lower (I would probably do it if trains were >10 minutes apart). But it also has a sketchy feeling to it - I'd trust that the train will remain stopped, but the chance of you getting caught on the side of a moving train is >0%. It has happened many times before, especially in older systems. I don't see what the benefit is for leaving a highway at the last possible second. If anything, this erratic behavior is unexpected and is more likely to lead to an accident. Not worth it, even discounting any feelings you have for other people.
• seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
  Sometimes my cart gets accidentally out of bounds (because I parked too close to the grocer store's property line) and the wheels lock up. Then I try to drag it somewhere out of the way at least. When my kid was a baby, I used to worry that someone might think I'm abandoning him or leaving him in a car unattended when walking the cart back (no one else with me), but it never became a concern unless the weather was too hot. I never did figure out how "leaving kids unattended" laws worked out with returning a shopping cart where the nearest corral was half way across the parking lot.
  • bombcar 11mo ago
    It’s the wolf/goat/cabbage problem. Take the cart with child to the car. Unload the groceries, return the cart and child to the corral. Remove child and return to the car. If this is not possible the child is large enough to survive half a minute unsupervised or you have to park next to a corral anyway (since you couldn’t bring the child to the store to get a cart).
    • seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
      Ya, no, thats not very feasible. The child is perfectly capable of surviving for the 30 seconds to one minute needed. The question was about law, not pragmatics, anyways, since those are the times we live in.
  • 1718627440 11mo ago
    > I never did figure out how "leaving kids unattended" laws worked out That is also exclusively an US problem, and sounds quite insane to my european mind.
• BrandoElFollito 11mo ago
  It is certainly a US problem. In France people return their carts. Some carts have coins, some don't but they are vastly, vastly returned. Coins were introduced in France in the 80s (I still remember my parents pondering about that). The reason was not really that people would not return the carts, but rather to incenive them not to take them away. People would sometimes (not a massive trend ) ride the cart home and then hope for the best. This has today completely disappeared but the coins are still there in most of the shops.
  • mhb 11mo ago
    I'm confused. Are you saying that this is a unique problem to the US and that France used to have a different unique problem, that is, in my estimation, worse? And that it was solved by requiring deposits on the carts. And instituting the deposits worked and you seem to be suggesting that the current existence of deposits is somehow vestigial and unrelated to the continuing discouragement of stealing carts?
    • BrandoElFollito 11mo ago
      Yes and yes :) The vast, vast majority of people here will bring their cart back, deposit or not. There are some b ok eck sheep but you will see maybe 2 carts left in a whole large parking lot (if at all). This is not a matter of deposit anymore, you can get coins at the reception desk. So the problem of leaving the cats was not one we needed to solve. People taking the carts - yes. It was just a small fraction, but enough for the shops to take action. They betted on there fact that 1 or 2 francs (this was before the euro) wrote be enough to deter people from yelling the carts with them. And it worked. And it pissed of the best majority that was not doing it. Today everyone is used to the system so it stayed. I think (but this is just a personal opinion) that having the carts locked helps with their bulk transport
    • 1718627440 11mo ago
      There is a difference between leaving the cart in a random parking lot and not returning it and to decide to just take it (stealing). The latter is a deliberate action, that involves more work, not less.
• JohnBooty 11mo ago
  About once or twice per year, I might leave my cart outside a corral if there's none nearby and I'm sick or in a terrible hurry. (In no cases do I leave it somewhere where it could roll and strike a car) However... On the way in to the store, I habitually take one of those "stranded" carts outside the corral. Thus saving employee labor. I do that all the time. So by my thinking I'm actually running a positive karma balance here. I'm probably at like a 10:1 lifetime ratio.
• insane_dreamer 11mo ago
  TIL "Cart Narc" is an actual thing.
• hahamaster 11mo ago
  The shopping centre where I shop frequently (Europe) has a large outdoor parking space and every 20 meters or so there's a little kiosk where you can return the cart. People do because it's actually easier to return it than to worry about crashing into it when you're getting out of the parking spot. From time to time an employee goes out and collects all the carts from kiosks and gets them back to the shop. I don't know if it's the same way in the US, maybe some people don't return it simply because they parked too far from the entrance.
  • _--__--__ 11mo ago
    Not so much a kiosk, but American grocery stores often have one parking spot every other row that is blocked off with a fence/barrier and marked as a cart return storage. But that has its own problems because if someone hastily shoves a cart in there instead of stacking them in line it takes up too much space and creates a dangerous extrusion into the adjacent spots.
• jackie293746 11mo ago
  [dead]
• peacebeard 11mo ago
  “Carelessness, in Fitzgerald’s vision, is a way of wielding power. It’s a certainty that the world exists to absorb your damage.”
• fsckboy 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• MathMonkeyMan 11mo ago
  I suspect that the reason is: "I don't want to do that, and if I don't do it then somebody else eventually will, and if they don't eventually do it then that's their problem, and in any case I don't care." Imagine a business that didn't periodically fetch their carts. The parking lot would be a hazard of loose carts, and the store would run out of carts for customers. So the store will have to do it anyway. Returning a cart is a courtesy -- one where it is very visible (temporarily) when the courtesy has not been extended.
  • 1718627440 11mo ago
    I think here the business would rather employ workers to yell at costumers, to return their carts, rather than start to collect them. Well, rather it does not need to employ them, they would do it own their own, but only until after the other costumers failed to yell at these people.
• ghufran_syed 11mo ago
  why is returning the cart intrinsically some sign of “goodness” but returning your plates to the kitchen and washing them at a restaurant is not? The customer is at the store to fulfill their needs, not the store’s. Taking the groceries from the checkout to the car in a cart helps fulfill the customer’s aims. Returning the cart does not, same as picking up trash in the store car park does not. And the revenue from customers pays for return of the carts from the parking lot, so most customers feel that is a better deal than a place that forces them to return the carts. The original article and many of the comments have a hugely moralistic tone - where are people expected to learn these implicit rules? If the store doesn’t care enough to communicate these expectations (assuming they even have them, and that they don’t only exist in the minds of the self-appointed “cart police”), why should customers follow them?
  • valleyer 11mo ago
    > where are people expected to learn these implicit rules? If the store doesn’t care enough to communicate these expectations (assuming they even have them, and that they don’t only exist in the minds of the self-appointed “cart police”), why should customers follow them? The rules are not implicit; there are typically giant signs saying "RETURN CART HERE" over a metal cart corral that often contains other carts. People are expected to learn this during their first or second trip to a grocery store that offers carts. Similarly, at a full-service restaurant, you will be able to notice busboys picking up used tableware, and you will notice a scarcity of customer-accessible garbage bins (as compared to, say, a self-service fast-food restaurant). If you are ever unsure of the protocol, you are always welcome to ask an employee. Employees at these businesses are typically distinguished by wearing a uniform. Hope these tips help you on your future trips to Kroger/McDonald's/Olive Garden.
    • insane_dreamer 11mo ago
      That's because the business is trying to save on their own manpower costs by shifting some of the burden to their customers -- much like self-checkout. If by returning my cart I was helping the employees, I'd be inclined to go out of my way to do so. But actually all I'm doing is helping the business, who is trying to cut as many employees as possible (talking about big stores like Walmart, Target, not some small local grocery that might even be employee owned).
• EdwardDiego 11mo ago
  I didn't see a mention of "they resent being gouged for essentials by oligopolies, and so signal defiance by not returning the cart". But it's real, especially as the cost of living rises faster than inflation.
• Mawr 11mo ago
  I circumvent the problem by not using carts. If I take a cart into the store I'll walk out with a full one. If I take a basket, I'll walk out with a full one. If I take nothing, I'll walk out with my hands full. I'd rather buy a hands-full worth of stuff than a cart-full.
• marethyu 11mo ago
  I think it also explains why most people don't rate after transactions in Facebook marketplace.
• mdavid626 11mo ago
  Only in the US. Here in Europe people simply return them.
• rcxdude 11mo ago
  This is a little amusing to me because at a supermarket I cycle to there's a bit of a general understanding that there should be a stash of carts near the bike stands, so I can usually arrive, pick up one from there, then leave it there for the next person, and save everyone some time.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• gverrilla 11mo ago
  USA safari
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• HocusLocus 11mo ago
  Parked overnight at a midwest Walmart (when that was a thing) and got out to do something at 4am trying not to look like a predator. Ten carts were pushed over the embankment into the creek. Lifted them out and put them where they could be hosed off. What gets into people?
• PeterStuer 11mo ago
  Asociality, laziness and entitlement, not necessarily in that order.
• jiveturkey 11mo ago
  > And one woman, upon being confronted about leaving her cart, declared, “I have really bad vertigo,” before getting behind the wheel and driving away. To be clear: Disabilities deserve accommodation. But if you could push the full cart to your car, why couldn’t you return the empty one? Because you need the stability of the cart (as a walker aid) itself.
  • rkomorn 11mo ago
    That leaves me wondering how they got from their car to the cart in the first place, then. Maybe getting from the car to the cart is worth the effort, but returning the cart is not worth the effort of getting back to the car.
    • jiveturkey 11mo ago
      They parked near one left by a rude person, not near the cart corral. I'm not just being imaginative for the sake of argument. One of my parents does exactly this. I do thank you for not saying "begs the question"! ;)
• jiveturkey 11mo ago
  TFA would be much much better if he'd conducted it across different social/cultural demographics. JP vs EU vs US vs CA for example. I also didn't see any post-cart interview of people that returned the cart. As it is I found it a waste of 2 minutes reading time. It's not somewhat scientific at all.
• Fwirt 11mo ago
  On the other hand, I have a friend who worked in retail as a teenager tell me that employees sometimes appreciate carts getting left out, as it means they get to go for a nice leisurely walk outside, away from the toxic work atmosphere, to go round them up. So while carts getting left out may be positive for other shoppers, it might be doing a disservice to overworked employees.
• insane_dreamer 11mo ago
  Honestly, the thing that bothers me the most about the article is that I learned there are people who not only go around telling people they didn't return their cart, but that they film the people as they do so. That type of online vigilante/public shaming is bad, IMHO. And then the public voyerism of everyone watching it and maybe commenting on it. Such strange human behavior. I can see why many people would respond with "who the fuck are you to be filming me".
• matt-attack 11mo ago
  If everyone returns their cart, retailers will certainly eliminate jobs. I see it as “job creator” behavior. When I see someone returning a cart I scream “job killer!”