It isn't extra effort -- you just put your foot on the rear axle and "wheelie" it up -- I've done that during horrid weather. It accomplishes the purpose of protecting other's vehicles.
On the subject of preventing paint or ding damage: Walmart's carts, at least around here, are about the only ones that don't have plastic bumpers on the front edges of the carts. That seems like mild negligence to me. The metal corners will do damage every time. I just spent about 40 hours repairing a quarter-sized ding/dent. Took so long because of re-dos to get it perfect. It is perfect now and you can not detect a repair even when looking at the area from a shallow angle with various lighting. Glossy black cars are tough to do body and paint perfectly.
That damage was not caused by a cart — caused by a broken branch flying through the air during a wind storm. Didn’t want to make a comprehensive insurance claim and have them raise my rates. I also did it better than the typical body shop would do on an insurance job. I actually had the problem of the new paint being of better quality than the factory paint around it — no “orange peel” whatsoever. I had to smooth the factory paint around it to blend in the repair.