” Do you accept your duty to return the cart even though you gain nothing?”
We always return the carts to the stanchions. I figure we do gain something by doing that. If a store doesn’t have to hire a person to wrangle carts all day long, that might possibly keep prices lower. (I know; it’s a stretch, but it makes sense to me.)
So, are you saying that all the homeless are terrible people - because they are very often pushing a shopping cart around town?
Shame on you for judging those who are less fortunate than you.
(/s)
If I park and find a shopping cart someone just left in a non-blocking spot, and it’s near where I parked, they’ll I’ll return it to the same spot.
All other times I return it to the carriage return or up front of the store.
Hell, if I’m walking into the store and I see a shopping cart left behind outside that’s blocking a parking spot or a row, I’ll even return it to at least a non-blocking area.
I always run my shopping cart into the sides of other parked vehicles, I also like to kick the wheels so other shoppers get the cart with wobbly wheels.
Then when I’m finished I like to push the cart into oncoming traffic usually with a small child riding inside.
Sometime I take the carts home. I now have quite a collection for the coming apocalypse.
Does this make me a bad person ? I think not !
“This is a pretty good indicator of a person’s ethics, i.e. how you behave when there is nothing to make you act one way or another.”
I admit that when I have a cart full of shoplifted steaks I often don’t have time to return the cart, but I want to.
Does that make me a bad person?
See, isn't that a cool thing for me to do?
This is very limited part of the larger question:
Do you return your own shopping cart?
If an abandoned shopping cart is near your car, do you return it to the corral section?
If an abandoned cart is between you and the corral - but not threatening your own car, do you step over and push that cart to the corral?
Would laz hit it?
I always return it to the rack. Except maybe a few times in my life. But I also pick up the loose cart in the lot and use it to shop with.
I travel for a living and have found that there is a correlation between neighborhoods that do not return shopping carts with neighborhoods that remove the trigger locks on gas pumps
I’ve gotten flamed for this in the past BUT will share for the sake of seeing another viewpoint. At my local supermarket, the guys that corral the carts and return them to and from the store to the return areas are disabled. If everyone returned their cart, it would create less jobs. So, I think occasionally leaving a cart in not the right space, gives a disabled person a job.
Disagree.
A third option is to put it somewhere safe which is what I normally do.
It is not because I feel unseen so I can be naughty. I don’t consider it naughty. God always sees me, and I know it.
They have employees paid to come out and wrangle the carts.
Been there watched that. Once when a woman filled her car she then pushed the cart to the backside of the chart corral but not ten feet farther to it’s proper position . She then turned around and took off and the cart started rolling downhill toward other cars. I ran and stopped it before it hit.
She was from Oklahoma. Figures.
Here in LA shopping carts are replaced often because the homeless keep taking them for their portable home transporter.
Then some grocery store genius was looking for a way to cut costs. They said "You know what, customers can bring their OWN groceries out and we won't have to pay so many people to do this".
The entire grocery industry went "gee okay!". However it wasn't too long before the flaw in their plan became evident...they had to buy MORE carts and of those carts they bought MORE were being stolen and lost. In addition they now had to deal with carts clogging the parking lots and all kinds of claims because of dented and dinged cars.
Then some other grocery store genius said "I know...we'll train the customers to do the very thing that we used to pay people for. We'll ask them to bring the carts back!"
Well that didn't work so hot. So instead they made cart corrals to at LEAST get the carts in one location so they could hire people to go out and get the carts from the parking lots.
In other words this test and the guilt associated with NOT returning the carts is a clever marketing act intended to help you save the grocery conglomerates money so they don't have to provide personalized service anymore.
I’ve been fascinated at how Aldi has largely conquered shopping cart theft for a mere 25-cent deposit. People are strange.
If I could I’d return the cart to the nearest correl. However, I have trouble walking and have to use a motorized cart. I’d return it to the store except then how do I get back to my truck?
I like to park next to a cart corral. Easier to find my car and return my cart.
If a cart corral is close by, I will walk to it.
If I take a cart left near my car in the parking lot, I feel justified in leaving it right where I found it.
If there are insufficient numbers of cart corrals, I feel justified in leaving my cart anywhere.
If there are no cart corrals, it’s a 50/50 chance that I will return the cart to the store itself.
I do have back/hip/knee issues, but I won’t use them as an excuse to not return a cart. The cart makes a nice walker, and everyone just thinks I’m just shopping.
Some of our local stores employ mentally challenged folks (since we can no longer say “retarded”) to collect carts in the lot. If everyone did “the right thing” they’d lose their jobs.