>“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.”
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.
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.
> Who is really being inconvenienced?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugjak-but-how-does-this-aff...
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.
Sometimes you can't park without getting out of the car to clean up after other people, because carts are littering the parking spaces. (Including being pushed from adjacent spots into handicap spaces.)
I've parked near corrals and had people half-ass push them next to it, effectively double parking me until I removed several carts.
I've had to jump out of the way of carts being whipped down an aisle by a strong wind in a storm.
Nobody's talking about bringing carts back to the building, but doing the bare minimum of putting them in the corrals. Failing to do so is saying you value your minor convenience over other peoples' time, property and health. Tucking them on a curb is saying you know you're doing a bad thing but don't really care.
That said
> But if they just push it into the grass, or out of the way,
One marker of whether something is acceptable in society(or having a functioning brain, at times) is to ask oneself "what would happen if everyone did what I'm doing." This applies to most things...littering, talking on speakerphone or blasting music in public, etc. I think this example would similarly fail this test, imagining hundreds of carts piled up somewhere 'out of the way.'
Except for particularly busy times, I don't think you'd see major pile ups.
But I generally agree with what you are saying. It's a valuable question to ask "what if everyone did this".
It takes 30 seconds to return a cart. Nobody is so busy or has so many kids as to not be able to wheel the cart into the cart stall. If you have that many kids, then you probably can't really safely grocery shop in the first place.
The reason it gets brought up is exactly because it's a small thing to do that is generally accepted as being the right thing to do. You basically won't find someone defending not wheeling back the cart as being the right thing to do (outside of maybe a true emergency).
as the parent said, it's a 30 second walk and if you can't trust kiddo not to die for 30 seconds you shouldn't be shopping w/ them in the first place.
It is an inconvenience though, even if as insignificant as an eyesore for others, or the landscaper who may need to remove shopping carts from the planter to do their work.
You could apply similar logic to people who carelessly throw trash in the recycling bin or on a sidewalk where it’s someone else’s job to clean up after them. I’ve seen people go as far as to say they are graciously “providing a job” for someone else when they throw their refuse in the recycling bin.
The fact that the shopping carts are such an inconsequential thing to shrug off is what makes them a great litmus test — will you do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do, even when there is so little at stake
The great thing about the “job creation” theory of antisocial behavior is that it justifies all kinds of things, from graffiti to dumping to stealing decorative plants from the local park. Why bother following implicit (or even explicit) rules if there is no consequence? Surely it won’t have any consequences in the long run!
I always return my cart.
The theory holds and you are making excuses for bad behaviors
Unless you're "having kids" in the sense that you're about to give birth to one, saving 30-60 seconds isn't going to make a difference in your day. It's like trying to optimize your travel timing so you can stop at fewer red lights. Maybe it gives someone the illusion of efficiency, but no one is really saving any time.
Most people who leave carts don't mind them blocking others' paths. If you're going out of your way to push one over the curb and into the muddy grass, you might as well have parked it in the designated spot by now.
Where I am, large enough stores have dedicated "outside" employees, most of whose time is be spent pushing carts. For them it's not a fun change of pace, it's just their job. If everyone put their carts back in an orderly fashion, they would need to do less weaving in parking lot traffic and trudging through horrible weather than they otherwise have to. Sure, "it's their job", but I don't want to make it even harder, especially considering how much they tend to be paid.
Funny how peoples' attitude toward retail employees probably wouldn't extend to more work being created for them in their work.
No, this is simply about can people do small things to make the system better. Things that cost them essentially nothing but make the world work.
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.
This has been my experience as well, but people will always blindly insist the opposite just to "win" the shopping cart argument.
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.
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.
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?
Just return the cart.
It's very strange that people think the same courtesy should not be extended to shopping carts.
What's so bad about it? We had a great meal at [place], might as well help the overwhelmed person working minimum wage by giving them some breathing space.
Put the cart back man.
This satisfies the golden rule. I want the person on the table before me to do a reasonable effort to keep the table clean. And I will do it for the next person.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stores in the US provide a lot of services to shoppers; bagging groceries, taking them out to your car for you, etc. I don't see why collecting your cart can't be part of that. The exception here is stores like dollar tree, where employees are treated like absolute trash by corporate.
Then again, they still have to go out to the cart return areas to collect them which takes time, so in that sense leaving carts around just makes their job a bit harder. Hmm. Not sure now!
What a strange accusation when the second sentence in the article is...
> One cart was wedged into a curb, another sat toppled over in a parking spot, a third drifted like a metal tumbleweed across the lot
The reason people put carts away is to avoid the obvious issues caused by not putting carts away...
I've been around Europe a fair bit and from Bulgaria to Portugal, people just return their carts. It's a no-brainer.
Yes. See also: resistance to COVID masking.
The only thing that's useful about those things is that it's easier to get them faster.
> Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.
> Is this a US phenomenon
Yeah, you can kind of do whatever you want here. It's sort of our thing
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)
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.
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.
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...
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!)
Hell, a few times the victim has been someone with a visible mobility disability and they kept on harassing.
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.
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".
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
It’s not authoritarian to have a sensible set of laws that you enforce rigorously, backed by soft norms that are only enforced through social customs. Yet in the US we seem to want the inversion of this, legal enforcement of social norms with weak enforcement of hard laws. Very strange.
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?
My god, people act like there's kidnappers at every grocery store just waiting for this one moment to abduct a child.
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?
Feels like a lazy justification
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.
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?
(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.)
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.
In large metro areas, exit lanes can be back up, usually because there is a light at the end of the exit. For instance, exit 32 on the BQE can backup to the point that you sit in the exit lane for 10+ minutes as batches of cars move through the intersection. To circumvent the wait, some people just pull up to the front of the exit lane and merge in and go through the next next batch of lights. A lot of people will try to prevent you from merging, but someone will always eventually let you through. It's called exit lane jumping. It's illegal but I highly doubt anyone gets pulled over for it.
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.
latchkey•4h ago