This is a benefit of having kids. You can tell them to go put the cart away for you.
Depends on their age. They were the reason I didn’t take the cart back when they were very little. I didn’t want to leave them in the car and go to the other side of the parking lot.
I choose my parking spot knowing I’ll have a cart to return. Though around here, places with cart corals have a bunch throughout the parking lot.
I choose the one that’s available
Edit: what I mean is you don’t always get a choice of parking spot. Of course I took my cart back if it was within reach. But in the cases it required going too far from the car when I had babies inside, I didn’t.
Or people who push them to remote spots like bus stops and abandon them there. And more and more accumulate…
My local Big Blue Store has a cart corral right next to the bus stop, which I actually think is cool. I hate the Big Blue Store make no mistake, but that one particular thing they do is cool.
+1 for creating your own stall out of an abandoned trolly, even if it goes across the entrance or a disability parking spot
Poetry
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Cart narcs out
I’m curious? Do you also do this at Costco? The one I usually go only has two corrals and they are on the extreme sides of the parking lot, everybody leaves the carts between parking spaces. Abby other store I definitely put the cart in it’s place
Not returning your cart should be the one and only criteria for the naughty list.
Interestingly, there was a time not too long ago where there was no such thing as returning your carts. No place to put them, and store employees fetched them. I always return my cart so it doesn’t blow away and smash into someone’s car - but I bet a lot of boomers think nothing of leaving it wherever - because that’s kind of what you did.
I’m sorry but there’s No way even boomers get a pass. It’s been expected to return your cart to the stall for longer at least 30 years. In some places you even had to put $1 into the cart to use it and got it back when you returned it ($1 was also a lot more 25 years ago).
There’s really no excuse for not returning the cart today and anyone who fails at this simple task of self-governance is no better than animal.
But who expects you to return it? The company that owns the store? What if I don’t return it in protest of their corporate greed? Who are they to make me do manual labor for free after I just paid them‽ Back in my day they would load your car for you. Lazy company CEOs are too busy counting money to keep their parking lots in order! lol
I used to work bringing in carts at a store and it was the best part of my job. I see this as just a cost of doing business for these giant stores that need carts to begin with, although I always put my cart back. I can understand if the thing is way far away though. Who cares? Let them pay someone a fair wage to keep track of them. We know that will never happen though so you need to bring it back to be considerate to other shoppers. Giving the store free labor lol
Same! I loved just putting on headphones and walking around the parking lot collecting carts.
I don’t put the carts back because it was fun for me and I am giving that me an additional 2 minutes out of the building to just not listen to a Karen complaining at checkout.
Thanks for saying this. Folks that get enraged at the cart thing have something else going on emotionally they need to deal with. Like, the world is out of their control and it’s going to shit so their mind goes to exerting any sort of control it possibly can in order to compensate for their general powerlessness. What we need to do is think hard how to affect what change we can and do that and learn to let go of stuff outside our influence.
I like that “elf” is the old name of our local petroleum company.
I can totally see them going “is that all you’re buying to heat your home? You know you didn’t drive a lot last year…”
I return my cart if they have returns conveniently placed near where I am parked, but otherwise my feelings are well summed up by Zorg.
Zorg was an asshole, and his story about the broken glass is a fallacy. (Look up: ‘parable of the broken window’)
If it’s too inconvenient to return the cart after borrowing it from the store, then don’t borrow it.
I didn’t borrow it, it was provided to me as a service for consideration. The consideration is the not-insignificant markup on all the food I bought from them.
The practical reality is you will never get 100% participation in cart returning and the store will therefore always need people to run the parking lot. They know this, I know this, everybody knows this. Since this is the reality, you pay for the employee to return your carts whether you politely return them or not. Or did you imagine that the grocery store provides carts for everyone out of their deep-seated sense of altruism?
It’s called the “cart corral”. I just love that.
I’ve heard of golden corral. I don’t want to eat at cart corral.
When I worked at a store we had two sizes of shipping cart and they couldn’t interlock but people would force it anyway or back them in to engage the coin latch. The cart sheds became a total mess and the store was too understaffed and the manager often ended up doing the cars, badly, in favor of pulling people off indoors cleaning or w.e. I often left the cart over a parking separator brick so it can’t roll into cars, but doesn’t add to the jumbled mess in the shed.
we had two sizes of shipping cart… and the store was too understaffed
That’s the store’s own damn fault.
More head office but yeah. They also changed the checkouts from Linux to windows and decided self checkouts could only have one human attendant.
Cart near the mart.
