I have to say, I never see this around here. Folks either return their carts to the store or at the very least, put them in the stalls in the parking lot. I don't think I've ever had to get out of my truck to move a cart so I can park since we moved here.
When wallyword started charging 5cents for a 1/2 cent bag they said it was to cover the cost of returning the carts to the store. My attitude is they are billing me for a service so i am not going to put the carts away for them.
ReplyDeleteNow at sobeys and rona who never claimed the bag fee was to cover cart returns, i drop the cart in the return spot they have.
For our local mom and pop story I take it all the way back inside for them.
Exile1981
I figure there are two types of people. Those who return their carts and those who don't. You can extrapolate that to pretty much every other area of their lives that calls for taking care of your own mess. This is why character at a young age is such an important thing for me to try and impress upon young people. It will open a world of friends and make you always know that even if you are wrong, you can correct yourself and others will accept it. Not so for a angry person or a selfish liar.
ReplyDeleteFunny how I can turn a simple picture into a novel, isn't it?
A subset of the cart non returners are the motherfuckers in gyms that don't put their plates and dumb bells back in the racks. I don't get it, WhoTF walks away from 10 plates on the leg press or 125# dumb bells laying on the floor?
DeleteBack in my yoot, a buddy and I worked at a Dept. Store.
ReplyDeleteWe use to see who could collect the Longest shopping cart line to push back into the store๐๐๐.
Now The lazy bastards have some Motorized do-hickey they use.
I'm sure you've heard of the shopping cart test. There's no compulsion to return them, but there is an unwritten social contract that you should. People that return carts are capable of self government. People who don't need a nanny state to take care of them.
ReplyDeleteGet over yourself.
DeleteWhat did he say that was wrong, Anon?
DeleteThe number of abandoned carts in the market parking lot is a quick and informal measure of the level of community pride and order. If there are many, lock your car doors and keep driving.
DeleteI agree, however we have on Publix with a huge parking lot and no cart returns scattered throughout the lot. It's the only large store I've ever seen sans cart returns. My wife and I return our carts always but sometimes we are tempted to not. We aint spring chickens. It's the worst when the temps are well in the nineties.
ReplyDeleteMy wife was complaining about that the other day. Apparently there was one place to return carts in the middle of the lot. Since we were toward the edge it was a pretty good walk for an old person. Actually the store was closer. Just in time, a nice man came by on his way to the store and said, "Let me take that." This being a bedroom community for the local state university, the nice population is diluted by Yankees and academics.
DeleteI was just going to say the same, when we lived in south Florida a lot of places that had shopping carts (Publix, Home Depot, Costco, etc.) for whatever reason provided no place to return the carts besides the store entrance. Or just not enough. Most of those places had massive parking lots; parking carts on the curb like that was actually the best option sometimes.
DeleteI was once read somewhere that you can determine the quality of the area you live in by the number of unreturned carts. Not sure if it’s true, but from the places I’ve been, it seems to be pretty accurate.
ReplyDeletewe'll there is one shopping cart related measurement I am familiar with: if you see random shopping carts anywhere other than the storr parking lot, you are in a shitty neighborhood.
DeleteWhen I was a kid, my friend's father had a paper route filling the newspaper boxes around town. On the weekends my friend would fill in for dad and I often rode along. He drove an old shitcan '61 Mercury Comet. We'd go to the Gainesville mall parking lot and find a loose shopping cart and push it with the car, get that bitch going 60 mph. Aim it for the curb surrounding the parking lot and when it hit the curb it would launch like a pinwheel 20 feet in the air and sail off into the woods. During winter time when the leaves were off the trees you could see the mangled carts that had managed to get hung up in the trees. Redneck entertainment at it's best.
ReplyDeleteI find myself going to one of these many big box stores and waiting in line - looking at 20+ registers and only one cashier. Just the other day, I was in a long line of fellow customers (15+ customers) - not one cashier was attending to ANY register. And, of the 4 self scan stations they have, one of them scanners was inoperable.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, I'm not going to be their cashier AND be expected to return their carts, at least, not until I get on their payroll and offered an employee discount!
My Walmart would also have a few handicap scooters out there too.
ReplyDeleteDaryl
A few years ago a Home Depot lot guy told me to stop returning my cart because he needed the job. I honestly believe that he was not kidding or joking.
ReplyDeleteI've had the same experience. Pretty sure they weren't joking. Usually I'm taking it into the store because I'm basically using it as a walker. It would about kill my knees to walk into the store without the support and then acquire a cart. [rocketride]
DeleteI remember, as a teenager working for a supermarket, relishing the job of corralling the carts in the parking lot and bringing them in. Anything to get away from the customers! I see no problem in leaving the carts near your car (but out of the way of traffic or parking spots) since it provides someone else with a job. Don't think for one minute that by eliminating the need for that job, prices will come down.
ReplyDeleteInteresting take on this cart stuff. I rarely return them. I pay for services of the store when I shop and having someone pick them up should be their job, not mine. I worked my way through college at Kmart and picking up carts was one of my responsibilities. If more people put them up, maybe I wouldn't have had a job. If it's windy, stormy, different story. I put them away. Otherwise, let the retain business deal with it. That should be one of the expected services a store should provide.
ReplyDeleteI was discussing this issue one day with a guy I worked with. Don't remember how we got on the subject. It was his contention that "they(the stores) pay people to collect the carts, so I leave mine beside or in front of my car." I return mine to the corral in the parking lot.
ReplyDeleteNemo
The way I look at this laziness is if they don't have time for the small things, they don't deserve the big things.
ReplyDelete(Old Tech) Not so fast everyone. Considering the condition of most of the carts at any Wal Mart, have you considered these carts may be almost impossible to push because the homeless grabbed all the good ones?
ReplyDeleteIn the People's Republic of San Luis Obispo (CA) there's a new law that the stores will be fined fifty dollars for any carts found off the premises. That way the government can punish (tax) the store for the carts that the "homeless" steal. Of course, that fine will be added into the cost of the groceries so we can continue to fund the lifestyles of those who choose to live a life mooching off the people who work
ReplyDeleteBack in my younger days when I bought a new car ever couple of years, I didn't feel like it was actually mine until some fool's cart rolled into it in a grocery store parking lot.
ReplyDeleteThe shopping cart is ultimate litmus test weather a person is capable of self governing .
ReplyDeleteTo return the shopping cart is an easy convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct 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 the shopping cart.
Simultaneous, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart is the apex example of weather a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning your shopping cart. You will not 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.
A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening with the law and the force that stands behind it.
Backwoods Okie
Then most days I can self govern but some days I'm just an animal...
DeleteTake the cart back if you feel like it. It's your choice, your decision.
ReplyDeleteFor all of you who feel it is some big "social responsibility" to take your carts back, thank you for being easily manipulated by social guilt. The world needs more suckers and saps. I hope to see you out picking up litter along roadsides, paying more income tax than you legally have to, volunteering to fight the evil Russians in the Ukraine so our politicians can keep their kickbacks, and otherwise preaching to other people about things that are none of your business.
At least in the photo they put most of the carts up so they either don't take up a parking space or can't run loose and ding cars.
Stores that don't provide cart corrals out in the parking lot deserve what they get.
I often take a cart from the parking lot to shop with, but that means I'm not walking it back to the store when I'm done. I don't make the problem worse, but I'm not working for the store for free either. My time has value.
Oh, fuck you. I put my cart back because I was taught at an early age to pick up after myself. Apparently you weren't. I'd hate to see the inside of your house.
DeleteThanks, wirecutter. You put it about the way I feel. If I knew a person didn't take any better care of something that was lent to them to make their life easier, I certainly wouldn't hire them to use my tools ( or probably to do a job for me either with their tools).
DeleteIf you can't be bothered to take the time to do that "right", you'll probably do a half ass job and gloat about cheating me.
I shop early in the morning when the lot is mostly clear. That allows me to park no more than one space away from a cart corral. That way I can still be lazy and easily return my cart.
ReplyDeleteIf we all put them away some kid is going to loose a job
ReplyDeleteI always put the cart into the cart corral, BUT.... I have learned to lock my car when doing so. We have disgusting little pricks (probably illegals and their kids) that will - when you're walking away from your car to put away the cart - rush up, open the car door and grab a grocery sack or two - and be gone before you can turn around. I expect thIs to happen more and more as groceries get more expensive ... AND as more and more as millions more illegals pour across our border. Just another one of those unintended consequences you read about. Parking lot piracy. Be aware. (Lots of "more" there, sorry)
ReplyDeletethe aldi's stores have you drop a quarter to use the cart & gives it back when you return it to the corral . . . .
ReplyDeleteAnd the locking wheel does lock it down until you drag it back a foot or two from the edge! Makes a good parking brake on the hill though.
DeleteCoupla weeks ago I made 75 cents returning Aldi’s carts that had been abandoned in the parking lot.
DeleteThe quarter for a cart at Aldi is the way to go, there is always a cart there if you want one and you get your quarter back when you're done. If you're lazy some else will return it for the twenty five cents you left.
DeleteI'd totally do that with the grand kids but then again, I'm a guy who picks up pennies.
DeleteIf people didn't do that, I wouldn't have any carts handy to wire tie to some asshole's bumper or door handle who takes up 4 parking spaces.
ReplyDeleteIn my travels for work all over the country, I used to see this all the time at the big box stores. Lazy fucks can't be bothered to walk a few steps to the cart return corral. I nearly got in a fight one time because I called this idiot out for leaving his cart in the next parking space to his car.
ReplyDeleteCreating jobs and job security? hahaha
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should look on the bright side. This is a revenue opportunity for Bubbles from 'Trailer Park Boys.'
ReplyDeleteOne thing to consider, which is not relevant to the pic, but is for some of these comments, is that single parents with one or more small children are not really able to take the cart back. They would either have to take the kids with them or lock them in the car.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I always return mine and offer to take carts from others, especially the elderly or single parents.
Otherwise, spot on with the comments.
Sure, I can understand that. Hey, I don't come down on people for leaving their carts in the lot, but I take mine back and if I see somebody doing the same, especially if they're old, crippled up or have kids, I'll take theirs back too. It's just as easy to push two as it is one.
DeleteLots of diversity here so you can find a dollar store cart in a ditch two blocks away from the store. My beer store uses a dollar store cart to roll their boxes to the dumpster.
ReplyDeleteLooks like New Jersey plates... they can't even pump their own fuel- just sayin'
ReplyDelete