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.

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.

I'm Geordi.

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.

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.

In Europe, you have the incentive of getting a coin back

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:

1. If you do return the cart you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart and because it is correct; and
2. 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.

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.

I am glad I live in a place where many grocery stores don't have this problem, because they don't have parking lots, because most of their customers don't even have a car much less would drive it to get groceries if they did. (Yes, I do realize how fortunate I am.)

That original 4chan post is like Jordan B Peterson level, which says more about JBP than the 4chan poster.

Maybe we should make a game show titled "Are you more intellectual than a right-wing grifter?".

A long time ago I worked at a grocery store and I preferred it when people didn’t return the carts. Would you rather spend your day gathering carts outside or gathering carts for 10 minutes at a time and then having to deal with customers?

It 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.

InB4 "If everyone returned their shopping carts it would eliminate jobs" idiots come into the thread.

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.

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.

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!!”

But I gotta get my quid back.