Posting the shopping cart theory because people had questions in a separate thread

In the UK you have to put a £1 coin in to unlock it. Whenever you return the trolley back, it gives you the coin back

It's interesting to read the comments, as there are people who are like

I sometimes don't return the cart and I attest myself to not be a bad person. Therfore the test is bullshit.

But then they behave like a dick in the comments; showing involuntarily that the test is a good metric.

So I think even a post about this test works like the test on a more meta level.

If you scatter carts in random places the supermarket has to employ someone to collect them. So you are a job creator^TM. This is why I never return my cart, and also why I jump on cartons of milk in the dairy aisle and take a dump in the broccoli.

You return your cart because it's the right thing to do

I return my cart because it gives me a sense of superiority

We are not the same

No one will punish you for not returning the cart

My opinion on this is reason number 8735 why I will never, and should never, be in charge of a country.

Don’t be a lazybones folks!

My favorite part about when this gets posted is that there is always someone trying to justify not putting the shopping cart back.

Edit: didn't even have to scroll half a screen length lmao.

Flawed. Here, you must insert a coin (or if you have it, a token with the shape of the coin) that will only be returned after you put the cart in the correct place.

So you actually lose something if you don't return the cart.

As a combination cart pusher and cleaner for a supermarket, absolutely fuck anyone that doesn't return their cart or worse, throws it into a gardenbed

I've always told my family I like to build up "cart karma." You get karma by bringing a cart in with you from the parking lot, or returning the one you use after. You lose karma by leaving your cart in the parking lot. Even if I'm going in for a single item, I'll take a cart in from the parking lot with me and leave it in the rack by the store.

I don't really care about cart karma, it's just a way of saying that it seems like the nice thing to do.

That goes for everything you can return but don't have to. You can throw your trash away after the movie, you don't have to leave it in the theatre.

No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart.

Cart Narcs. Those guys are fucking crazy. They were doing their thing in Texas. I've read stories of idiots pulling out guns for less.

I take other people's trolleys back on my way because I'm not a piece of shit.

I'll do you one further. It is morally correct to take a cart from the parking lot to use in the store rather than grab one from inside the store.

BUT! What if the parking lot is four miles long and there are no cart returns anywhere and you're tired because you've been working 20 hour days with no time off and it's 140 degrees outside and the grocery store is exploiting their workers and you haven't eaten in days and you have a disability and the carts are coin operated and this is literally the only way to solve the unemployment crisis? WHAT THEN??

Murica, fucked up because of shopping carts. In germany you have to put money in the cart, and get it back while bringing the cart back to where it is from. Problem solved.

I would add scooping dog shit is another test. There are people out there who will bag the shit and then leave the bag on the ground for the poop to steam in for a few days before they put another bag right next to it to keep it company.

To shop is human. To return is divine.

I've gone out of my way multiple times to put up multiple cats that were blocking parking spaces, including handicap spaces. While the handicap ones make it seem like the person is an extra asshole, I wonder if it's the handicap person that leaves it there and it just moves into the space. There's are very few stores that put a corral by handicap spaces.

Don't know about you people, but here in Hungary (Eastern-Europe) I haven't ever seen a cart not returned at least as far as I remember.

I uh, avoid taking a cart, because I have a big ass reusable shopping bag. I'm not sure where that leaves me.

Interesting idea... Is human morality (in situations where no punishment exists) a result of the societies we live in and our societal expectations, our upbringing, or is there some inherent morality (guilt from doing something bad, or satisfaction from doing the right thing) within most people?

Whilst I do live somewhere that has trolleys with coins, sometimes you get one that is damaged and doesn't require a coin. Yet I still return those ones, because why wouldn't I? It only takes a minute.

Around here there are definitely consequences in the form of pesky looks and headshakes. Well at least coming from me.

I was concerned this was going to be a comment about what I put in my shopping cart.

But I can tell I'm an individual of extreme self-discipline because after I filled my shopping cart with chocolate and vodka I return it to the carousel.

Everyone praised me.

I'm a fan of the Capitalist Realist Shopping Cart Theory, myself.

Putting shopping carts away is bad for society and you should stop doing it.

The reason is that putting a shopping cart away requires labor, labor requires a person to do it, and the person who has to do it is employed by the grocery store.

Thus, if enough people refuse to put their shopping carts back, enough excess labor will be generated at grocery stores around the country that they will be forced to hire more people to do it, creating jobs.

QED

What if you take them home to burn leaves in?

Seems legit

"No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart..."

Hmmmm, I wonder if this is always true. Maybe somewhere there is someone who does not let such things stand.

Plot twist: I don't use a shopping cart. (I always use the textile shopping bag that I bring from home.)

Animals are far better than people.

I think it's similar to weights in a gym. Leaving them on the barbell is a jerk move. Returning them to their correct staging location is the ethically correct thing to do. Whenever I see them left on the barbell, I imagine a fantasy where the person has a team of horn players follow them around and play for them to announce their superiority.

Yass and when I'm walking into the store I always offer to take a cart for someone walking theirs back, if such a person is within hailing distance.

I'm going to start recording people not putting their carts away. Endless content for my future channel.

Yay, I'm good!

TIL I'm mostly a good person but sometimes I am also no better than an animal and an absolute savage who will only do right when threatened. Interesting. Another thing is that I'm grateful for other savages who don't put their carts back cause I don't have to walk so far to get a cart.

Depends on your beliefs. There are people who believe in being judged for every action by an almighty force or being, so it's probably not absolutely perfect. I might be smitten in my next life for it.

Typically parking lots are filled with cars, and I need to drive between the parked cars. If a cart is in the way it makes it harder for me to leave, just saying

society made me like this

I return mine because its an opportunity to get more steps in.

After taking it outside boundaries so a wheel locks up.

Look at tge people returning them in the lot, mostly fat and/or wealthy.

Another possibility is that people that don't return the cart may not be having their needs met. A person who is tired after walking across the hot parking lot may not return it out of a desire to maintain a modicum of health. Or, perhaps, they may not think about it because their cognition is temporarily hindered by hunger, exhaustion, or some other carnal need.

On Maslow's hierarchy, I'd say if a person meets all of their physiological and safety needs they are more likely to return the cart than those who do not.

We have now this in Migros and Coop:

Place it in the stack at the checkout where you unload it and go. Kinda breaks that test. And a headache less for the clerks.

Third option. I park out by an abandoned cart take it inside and use it. Then, like my mother taught me I put it back where I found it.

Am I an animal? An absolute savage? If I then returned the cart after finding it abandoned, then using it, does that make me double good?

In my country we have dedicated people in the parking who literally follow you, can even push and collect the cart from you.

This is only true in the US. In Europe if you don't return the cart you can be sure people will give you looks and think about you as an asshole

I agree that people should put the carts where they go, but this whole "I'm a better human because I put carts back" thing just reeks of unredeemable people scouring their existence for a single redeeming property.

This got me thinking, what is a "true neutral" position.

Finding another cart which isn't returned, and adding yours to it.

hmm no this seems wrong. If the parking lot is a mile long and there are no cart returns it makes me a bad person if I rack the carts in a line with all the others in the boonies? If you are getting abandoned carts its probably because you don't have enough cart returns, not because people are bad

Well the discussion started off ok before ending in a rabies infested rant against humanity! Talk about going off the rails!

Anyhow, many people return the trolley so they don't look bad/feel guilty. That doesn't necessarily make them 'good' or 'civilised' and therefore fit into the 'being forced' category through peer pressure. Does that make them 'animals' and 'savages' too?

Likewise if you're a smoker - you should go directly to jail.

Costco is the only place I don't always return carts, since around here the cart returns can get very far away, but curbs you can tuck them away on are everywhere. That, and they have staff just for gathering carts constantly.

If your litmus test involves doing free labor for a corporation you're already fucked

Nope, I don't buy it.

• An estimated one out of every 500 Americans is homeless
• Unarmed noncombatant civilian women and children are being bombed, shot, and starved to death.
• There has been a nearly 70% reduction in wild vertebrates worldwide since 1970
• The leading cause of death among children and teens in america is firearms

Privileged westerners could do something about these things, but they are sipping their pumpkin spice lattes and congratulating each other for putting their shopping carts back because, you know, it's the ultimate test of moral righteousness. Ugh.

People always crow about this shit, "oh the poor workers having to retrieve carts","oh its so bad and lazy", and then you point out that some workers like the time they get to spend outside walking and suddenly under the scooby do mask its just some guy that doesn't want his car dinged by rogue carts.

Keep downvoting it gives me strength. Let your cart hate flow through you. Think of me next time you see a feral cart in the wild, it was ME, I PUT THAT CART THERE, I BLEW THE WIND THAT SENT IT ROLLING TOWARDS YOUR PARKED CAR. Watch out here it comes! 🛒 💨

Hey, I have asthma and there have been days where I've barely had enough energy to make it back to my car let alone put a cart back. Not everybody is having the same day you are.

Women do this so there kids don't get kidnapped.

Stop giving away free labour to large grocery stores! They want to merge and jack up prices and somehow we are bad if we don't bring the carts in so they don't need to hire someone to do it?

Wrong. The correct act is to put the cart out of the way of others, but not in the corral.

You then help provide a job to a person that capitalism wants to take away. They want your free labor. And then they provide less and less corals to save those extra pennies, knowing that you'll walk. Fuck them.

counter argument: it is someone else's job to put the cart away.

Look man, you can occasionally be selfish or lazy without immediately being an absolute drain on society. Is not putting the cart back ultimately a dick move? Yeah, but its also an incredibly minor dick move, and maybe I've already used up all of my fucks for the day.

Edit: Ok, yall have convinced me. I'm going to start wheeling shopping carts into the most inconvenient places in the parking lot on purpose now. It's really funny how much it ruins all of your days, thank you for giving me a mew source of joy. I wouldnt be surprised if I tipped and treated service staff a hell of a lot better than most of you considering how much you're all itching to feel superior to others over extremely minor things

nah fuck that shit. there are staff paid to do it and if the store can't afford that staff they are fucking lying. they have earned this with the price fixing and gouging and I'm not giving them any more of my time than absolutely necessary.

in addititon when I had that job myself, more often than not people put them away wrong and I had to redo everything. I've gotten called to the office more than once because shoppers that put the carts away didn't lock them somewhere along the stack and the whole thing rolled across the lot and smashed in to someone's car. Collecting lose carts is way easier than pulling them alll apart and putting them back after finding the two near the middle beginning of the chain and not being able to get them back together without doing it one by one in the stupidly hilly lot.