shopping rule theory

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.

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

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.

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.)

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?

But I gotta get my quid back.

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.

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!!”

Where I am people do not trust people and shopping carts are coin operated.

Not really. If you don't put it away, you can hit it with your own car. So that means that even the most self-centered southern inbred has the incentive to put it away or it'll hit their truck.

What if returning the carts is my usual practice, but there was a time crunch one time and I needed to save myself the extra 30 seconds?

prints this image out a million times and attaches it to every shopping cart I can find

Capitalist has entered the chat.

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?".

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

I mostly shop at a place where you can safely leave the carts on a covered sidewalk outside of the store. Get fucked moral absolutists

If there was a law punishing people for not putting shopping carts back, I would deliberately break it and sue whatever stupid fucking government passed such a thing under the grounds listed in the post.

A law like that would be a violation of our rights. You can't just use government to force people to do whatever you want. We have rights.

As if disabled people didn't exist.

This is such a dumb take - doing unpaid labour for corporations is what makes someone a good person? Nah.

It's not a theory, it's a damn law.

I disagree with returning the shopping cart being an act of free will. There is a lot of societal pressure to do it for some people, or to not do it for some other people. And there is always the risk that someone who you know will walk see you not returning, and tell all your friends about it. Or want if your boss happens to see you? What would happen then?

So yeah, better quickly return it. Better than having to deal with all these unknowns.

One time I went to a Walmart in the middle of the night and turned all the cart returns backwards. What does that make me?

I return the shopping cart entirely out of the fact that ai fucking hate it when people leave the cart in the parking space. But yeah if theres a concrete sidewalk or something I may leave it there if the return area is a row of cars away.

I love when people leave their carts around because that means I am not forgetting my coin if I have to take one out the aisle

But then what do you do about those monsters who leave carts in motion, on slopes, leaving them to hit parked cars?

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 go to Buehlers where my stuff gets conveyor belted outside and they put it in my car for me. I need not return the cart because it does not leave!

I have very young children, meaning very often I can walk away from the car after getting them in their carseats and unloading the groceries or whatever and be gone for about two minutes before one or both of them start losing their minds and getting scared. If the shopping cart return spot is more than two minutes from my car (round trip), then the cart gets left exactly two minutes (round trip) closer to the return spot and in a spot that doesn't inconvenience a) anyone parking, b) anyone leaving, and c) the employee that will eventually have to return it to the store.

Ideally, I catch someone walking inside the store on my way and ask if they'd like the cart, but not always.

That's just how it is, I don't feel bad about it. I don't know if you all live somewhere where these cart return chutes are more available, but most large parking lots here are the size of like two football fields and they have three total return chutes.

What irritates me is how often the "parent parking" spots are filled with people that get into their cars with no kids. They are typically located right next to the chutes, and it is great because you don't have to walk short children through a parking lot, you can put them in a cart, and then walk in where cars backing out can see the little kids.

I seriously rarely see people with kids using those spots. 100% some of the people in this thread are using the parent parking spots without kids, returning their shopping cart right next to where they're parked, and then judging people for not returning their carts.

I prefer the Gom Jabbar but the Shopping Cart seems like a viable alternative.