It’s hard to believe that a reddit post about being able to tell if someone is a decent person based on whether or not they put a shopping cart away has stuck around as long as it has. It’s a pretty arbitrary metric.
My hot take is that there’s an assumption that the employees don’t want to go waaaaayyyyy out to get the carts.
When I worked at whole foods, I loved the outfield carts. I got to get away from the all seeing eye of management for a little bit, sometimes see a sunset, get to breathe some fresh air…
I know not everyone is like me, but not everyone is unlike me either.
Sometimes I still take a cart to the furthest possible space to give the poor cart worker a damn break.
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.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
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.
It doesn’t matter what the reasoning is. The net effect is positive.
It’s important to maintaining my self-image as a cool and aloof guy that you know I’m not doing the nice thing out of the goodness of my heart.
No problem, Han Solo.
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.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Because otherwise the parking lot would just be a mess of carts randomly felt everywhere.
Yea, no such thing in my country. Practically everyone returns the cart.
I’ll never understand people who make doing free labor for a corporation some sort of top tier ethical standard.
Not lttering, following traffic rules, there are so many small ways we make our society better and yet people get so worked up over the one that is providing free labor.
Not lttering
What do you think leaving a cart in a random spot is if not littering?
Not littering.
There is a specific place you are supposed to put the thing when you’re done with it. It’s basically littering to do otherwise.
Yes clearly that’s exactly the same as throwing trash around at a park /s
basically
exactly
🤡
Thank you!! I upvoted away one of your down votes. You have said what I was thinking!
Um, not free labor. Preventing that cart from damaging cars
Sounds like we’ve got a lazybones on our hands.
In b4 someone unironically tries to defend not putting their cart back. There’s always one.
One? Like a solid 10% of the thread wtf
Sometimes I don’t put the cart in the corral…
I take it back into the store because it’s closer than the nearest corral. Or I take my bags out before I go into the parking lot and leave the cart in the lobby cart storage.
I’m creating jobs. When you push the cart you’re pushing wealth from the cart pushers to the CEO of Walmart.
The CEO isn’t paying that salary. It’s a cost of business. A business you’re paying for as a customer. All the customers pay a percentage of a nickel extra for shopping in a store that has a cart returner on the payroll.
I suppose ithe job pays badly and isn’t very interesting. It’s not something I’d waste my life doing. I wouldn’t want my kids to do it either. Actually I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone. Life has much more to offer than pushing carts all day.
So, congratu-fucking-lations, you’ve created a job that nobody ought to do and made everyone pay for keeping a sorry ass kid on poverty wage.
Ok, so you’d argue that by pushing the cart back, then you’re the one doing the same meaningless job for free. Good point, right?
But here’s the catch: Nobody ever needs to return a cart.
There are at least two ways to do this.
One: We can all accept that the cart doesn’t have a home to be returned to and just leave them wherever and pick them up at the same place. This is obviously the chaotic neutral way.
Two: Pack your groceries in bags in the cart after (or while) paying. When you push the cart back towards the car, you walk by the cart corral, pick up your bags and walk to the car while leaving the cart in the corral. It’s fucking magic.
Oh, first off to be clear the wealth is transferred to the shareholders, not the CEO (though the latter is often the former). I can’t recall if I was trying to be evocative by saying CEO, or if it was just a slip of the tongue. Skill issue.
Cart pushing might sound like a silly example, fair enough. Though here it’s important as a debate battleground for the reality of labor struggle, I really doubt customers pushing carts is going to decisively shift the balance of power & destroy western civilisation. There is also the fact that the people doing this work might not be aware of their interests, and might get annoyed by people leaving carts out. That does harm.
You’re right that in theory the externality is split between the customers & shareholders. However, in reality when the costs are reduced the shareholders are generally able to pocket the difference as profit, since customers don’t have access to perfect information about how they’re being screwed. In theory this is counteracted by the free market’s ability to produce efficient prices (competitors will compete). But in reality it isn’t: Look around. Everything’s going up. They’re taking it.
It sucks that there’s low quality work. But what do you think will happen if that work isn’t available? If someone had that job, they could pay for rent & food. Without it? They will starve. That’s what happened in the 19th century. They. Just. Died. We, fortunately, haven’t seen what that looks like because the west is broadly still protected by the social welfare systems built in the 20th. My friend worked as a Walmart cart pusher, without that job he’d have had nothing.
Edit: ok basically you. Mr Walmar, cuck chair
There’s always one.
Confirmed, it seems one did. Sigh.
My husband wouldn’t put the cart away.
But he has cerebral palsy which made walking back to the car without the cart for stability difficult when he was shopping alone. He actively liked if someone left a cart in the handicapped hatch mark area because then it would be close so he could grab that going into the store and be balanced against it.
He did know it wasn’t ideal though, and I’d take the carts back when I started shopping with him.
Anyone parking in a handicap spot is the one type of person no one should judge when they don’t put their cart away.
Shouldn’t, but people absolutely do judge them! They also judge if they think you shouldn’t be in a handicap spot period. So many people get huffy when they see my (what appears to be) able body get out of the car then…oh shit, my visibly disabled husband!
People getting upset about handicap spots are morons. I’m sure there is some overlap between them and those who don’t return carts.
Now there’s more than one and they’re running mental gymnastics to claim that pro-social behavior is simping for corpos. Special kind of entitled faux-leftism there.
I don’t have time for that. and someone else gets paid to do it!
/s
Idk. I put my cart back but I have heard an occasional decent argument why someone wouldn’t.
One of the biggest ones is a single parent shopping alone with multiple small children. I get that ideally the cart corral probably isn’t super far away, but leaving small kids alone for even a short period of time must be nerve wracking and not always safe depending on the area and climate.
bruh, I was trained as a child to put them back, we would start putting them back as soon as our parents lift the last bag out of it
probably a hot take but if your child can walk by themselves, putting the cart back is definitely a doable chore.
Have had mutinies small children. Always put the cart away. Doors lock and children aren’t that fragile.
One time I didn’t return the cart at Aldi.
I still think about that a decade later.
Because that haunts me I always put the cart back no matter what
For those that don’t know you have to put a quarter in to use a cart and you get it back when you put it away which means there are never stray carts anywhere. People want their money back.
I look for someone coming in to give mine too, as do many others.
It’s worse than that. I shoved it up on the curb and left. Like you see at any other store.
ITT people simp for corporations.
I’m sure daddy supermarket chain loves it when you offer your free labor to him after he’s finished ripping you off with his shrinkflation and grocery prices rising faster than inflation.
As a union household we don’t steal work from unionized grocery workers. Not even something as small as cart wrangling. Anyone who does is a scab.
Sounds like we’ve got a lazybones over here.
Yes, I also shit on the shop floor so there’s more work for cleaners. Wouldn’t want to steal work from them.
Genuinely lol’d, do what you gotta do my man.
I leave the carts that I find near the handicapped spots, as I know when my back goes out I really appreciate having a cart to lean on. I think it’s common for a cart to be a sort of crutch.
My own carts I take back to the store unless I’m way at the end of the lot. If it’s raining or something, always back to the store. I’m already wet, and I don’t wanna make someone trudge out in the wet any longer than necessary.
At first I read “I leave my cart in the handicapped spots”
This is why I always try and find a parking spot closest to a cart corral. People go crazy trying to get a spot closest to the front of the store, but ultimately your last stop before getting in your car should be at the cart corral. Yes, sometimes this means parking further away from the front door, but I have functioning legs and walking an extra 30 feet isn’t a problem.
There are some of you out there that really can’t return the cart. Maybe it’s your own mobility issues; maybe it’s children, animals, or something else that you can’t leave unattended in the vehicle; maybe you just ran out of spoons picking up your medical supplies; whatever reason–I got chu, fam.
When I turn around to return my cart, I always look for stragglers and bring them back. I’m forever alone, but healthy, so getting carts back to their “home” is the least I can do.
“We do what small things we can” gang
“A rising tide raises all ships” has become my mantra as I try to do small things for others and for my community
joke’s on you, i use a shopping bag
Well, put your bag back in the bag corral.
Dang dude that Wojack character went straight to Woah, Jack
The most basic test to separate people from beasts.
I don’t take the cart out of the store anymore. I really can’t afford that many groceries.
Based
I just put it in my backpack and walk past the register without paying
/jk I wish I had the confidence to do that
Always! And I have those super sized insulated grocery bags so I can usually carry everything with both hands once I’m done checking out. So I just return my cart back in at the door and macho walk out of the store. 😤
STOP! STOP PRETENDING THIS MATTERS.! The retail worker doesn’t care! It makes no difference if the carts are in the corral or anywhere else in the lot. It effects NOTHING!! STOP!!
It affects other people if you leave your shit in the way or damage their car.
Plus it’s just nice to not have parking lots full of visible indicators of people being too lazy or self-centered to do the smallest courtesy for others while nobody is looking.
I don’t see it as an issue for the employees at all. I did cart collection at a first job decades ago. Screwing around outside is awesome for a working teenager. By all means, park far away for your own health, and return your cart to the furthest corral from the store to give the workers more fresh air.
STOP! DON’T HARASS MY SHITTY ASSHOLE CUSTOMERS!!I NEED THEIR MONEY!!! IT DOESN’T EFFECT BUSINESS, BUT YOU JUDGEMENTAL SHIT DOES!!
