There are some of you out there that really can’t return the cart. Maybe it’s your own mobility issues; maybe it’s children, animals, or something else that you can’t leave unattended in the vehicle; maybe you just ran out of spoons picking up your medical supplies; whatever reason–I got chu, fam.
When I turn around to return my cart, I always look for stragglers and bring them back. I’m forever alone, but healthy, so getting carts back to their “home” is the least I can do.
“We do what small things we can” gang
“A rising tide raises all ships” has become my mantra as I try to do small things for others and for my community
Really, really, really small
Better than nothing 🤷♀️
Feeling powerless and useless and shitty and need to do something to make the world a more positive place, no matter how tiny. I cast big squishy trans pride silicone six sided dice and gave them away at a board game convention and the happiness that brought some people is one of the things keeping me alive tbh, more literally than most people would like to know about.
fucking ALWAYS.
So I used to put my cart back all the time but then I found out it creates jobs for people that cant get a job. Some one getting out of jail living in a half way home can use these jobs to get out of their situation. I no longer put it back.
Why is this practice promoted?
It’s someone’s job and they make their money grabbing those carts, aren’t we taking that away from them if all is perfectly arranged and they can just collect the carts in 2 minutes? This concept seems to only benefit the business in saving labor?
Coincidentally, I was checking out two days ago at a Costco and the manager came up to my cashier and said, “close up after this one, I’m going to send you home early okay?” The cashier said, “yeah, I guess…” But you could tell they clearly didn’t want to leave early. If there were a bunch of carts in the parking lot at that point, feels like that person might get an extra 30 mins or so on the clock… Why aren’t we supporting that? Manager would say, " let’s close you down after this one, and then please do a lap in the parking lot to grab carts before you go"
Us carefully putting the carts away as customers is just free labor that the corporation benefits from… Period. How does this help the worker making an hourly wage?
Sounds like we’ve got a lazybones over here.
I hope you hit a shopping cart in a parking lot.
Oooh I can escalate this one. I hope you learn to drive, so you can get safely home rather than hitting very large, often brightly colored baskets with padding on all four corners.
So that you can cut your foot in the shower, get a disease, and have to have it amputated. See it escalated!
Tee hee?
Escalated from consequences for your actions to a deranged death fantasy. Must be disturbing to be around you.
Wait does amputation mean death?
Shit I had the wrong definition all along 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Def my b 4sūr
Also, we’re all just mechanicals. There is no moral high ground where you’re reaching.
I hope you learn to consider nuance and stop arguing against the interests of workers in favor of heartless corporations.
That’s a nice excuse. Whatever you gotta tell yourself, I suppose. I doubt you even believe it though. At least I hope you’re smarter than that.
Wow that’s solid condescension. What would probably help though is if you made it more clear that you think you’re superior to the other poster. Maybe you could say “don’t worry, you’ll get there”? Or perhaps “we’ve all been there, I’m sure you’ll be fine when you grow up”?
As someone who has previously put carts away for a job. No, not only does leaving carts out make it more annoying to pick up it can also damage other people’s vehicles, and take up parking spots. Carts roll around or are difficult to see and can get hit. This is the equivalent of saying to just knock stuff off the shelf as you walk through the store, an employee would have to pick that up and it would just cost the company money.
Leaving a shopping cart near your car is the same as deliberately causing damage to products in the store? Very very interesting point of view, if completely unhinged.
You have strong opinions on this topic for there being “a million more urgent matters” or whatever you said in your other comment.
I don’t think this comment actually responds to my points. I’ve worked many hourly retail and restaurant jobs myself. In many there was a regular struggle to hit minimum hours per week to qualify for benefits and managers were instructed to cut people during perceived slow times - none of this considering that I sat in an hour traffic to show up for my scheduled 8 hour shift that I need to meet to make my rent.
I was happy when gobacks piled up, shelves needed to be faced, tables needed to be bused and yes, to carts needed to be collected. When that was the case, I typically made my hours in those common, “we’re going to need to cut someone” moments.
Again, this entire conversation seems biased to the business owner, the corporation’s labor cost, and not the employee. Saying “all the carts are going to hit cars” is a false premise, in my opinion. And what I’m arguing for is the “good trouble” version of this. Place the carts safely away and maybe near the corral, but not in the corral.
Near the corral doesn’t take a lot more time to pick up from in the corral. I agree that leaving then in the corral is fine, someone still has to pick them up from there. But leaving the cart randomly outside has the potential to cause issues for others, completely ignoring the business owner.
As stated previously, doesn’t seem you’ve ever worked an hourly job where management was actively working against that 29 hour threshold and sending people home early from scheduled shifts to make you avoid qualifying for expanded employees benefits.
I definitely have and that doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather not risk damaging others property for an extra 15 minutes of work.
As a person who did this for a job in my youth, may I first say, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
As a worker, collecting stray carts that people left around the parking lot ate up the most time and was the least productive time I’ve ever spent while working. Also, at the store I worked at was fairly popular, on busy days, just collecting carts from the corrales took up enough time that I didn’t really have time left over to make up for you being a lazy asshole.
As a consumer, I put away other people’s stray carts, not only for the reasons above but because I don’t want the cart demon to direct the carts into my car and cause it any damage. I also don’t want my discarded cart to end up causing damage to anyone else’s car. So fuck you for creating an easily avoidable problem that has the potential to damage my property. You suck.
Objectively, returning your cart is the correct, and proper path to take. However, nobody will arrest you, or fine you for not doing it. It is purely voluntary, but universally recognized as the right thing to do. Since you do not do it, what does that mean about you as a person? I think it means you’re a dickhead.
Stop being selfish and lazy, then justifying it with “someone gets paid to do that”. No, that’s not the reason. The reason is that you’re a terrible person, an asshole, and a dickhead.
So I reiterate: fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.
Again, not addressing the valid points I’ve introduced. Also, very odd phrasing throughout…
“Did this for a job in my youth?” We humans don’t speak like that? Also, “in my youth” sounds like the shopping cars you were collecting were horse drawn.
“the least productive time I ever spent while working?” Who the fuck worries about productivity in a minimum wage job like this? “Yeah, I don’t know Dad… I’ve just been really worried lately that my productivity is down this quarter. I’m cleaning up less vomit per hour at Weiner Hut than typical and I’m just worried the business owner isn’t extracting as much profit from my labor as they could be…”
This is like saying we should throw our litter on the floor because it keeps people employed to pick it up.
It’s labour that doesn’t need to exist in the first place because people can’t be considerate of others.
You literally said the labor does have to exist
It’s just who is doing the labor.
“labor that doesn’t need to exist” feels like it’s from a very privileged POV. what if those 30-40 mins here and there are the difference between me meeting the 29 hour a week threshold required to qualify for health or education benefits?
I’m commenting from a US biased perspective where you seem to be commenting from a European perspective based on your spelling. If that’s the case, you already have your core needs met through your government, we do not in this flawed country.
Narrator: They aren’t.
It’s hard to believe that a reddit post about being able to tell if someone is a decent person based on whether or not they put a shopping cart away has stuck around as long as it has. It’s a pretty arbitrary metric.
My hot take is that there’s an assumption that the employees don’t want to go waaaaayyyyy out to get the carts.
When I worked at whole foods, I loved the outfield carts. I got to get away from the all seeing eye of management for a little bit, sometimes see a sunset, get to breathe some fresh air…
I know not everyone is like me, but not everyone is unlike me either.
Sometimes I still take a cart to the furthest possible space to give the poor cart worker a damn break.
An unironic way to fix half of America would be to let minimum wage workers hurt the public. Give them all baseball bats and make it legal to go for the knees of people who don’t return carts, only one tap for people who don’t put it back properly.
You’d have to be some sort of lazy bones to not do something so simple.
What an awesome channel
It’s a wonderful test for if someone is an ass.
One time I didn’t return the cart at Aldi.
I still think about that a decade later.
Because that haunts me I always put the cart back no matter what
For those that don’t know you have to put a quarter in to use a cart and you get it back when you put it away which means there are never stray carts anywhere. People want their money back.
I look for someone coming in to give mine too, as do many others.
It’s worse than that. I shoved it up on the curb and left. Like you see at any other store.
I‘m German. It’s in my DNA.
You mean our coins are in the cart
And there I thought the coin slots only existed so university students had to invest at least 50ct before putting them in their shared flats…
Aldi Stores in the USA have joined the chat
There are so many “unlocked” ones, they too end up where they belong and not randomly on the parking lot.
joke’s on you, i use a shopping bag
Well, put your bag back in the bag corral.
The litmus test for civility.
I usually put my cart away if the parking lot is full. Otherwise, that’s what they pay the cart wranglers for, to wrangle stray carts. I even used to work at Kmart decades ago as a cashier and wrangled charts when the lines died down, so if the lots not full, and the employees are paid to recover the carts and as I know, it’s a nice break to wander the parking lot instead of ringing people up, idk who is really upset about carts being left to their own devices… It does suck when the wind blows a cart into you or your car, but that’s pretty rare… I do make sure my cart doesn’t just roll off when I’m done, no need to send a cart missile careening across the parking lot, but otherwise I’ve never seen a good reason to not leave your shopping cart in an empty lot.
In germany and all of europe i have been to there are no cart wranglers because everyone just put their cart back in it’s place. Before covid all carts had a little lock and chain that connects to the back of the next cart and you can unlock it with a coin. During covid many stores got rid of them and everybody is still putting their carts away. When I worked at a grocery store and there was no line I used my time to talk to my coworkers, stock the shelves or enjoy the quiet for a few minutes…
^ This is what a lazy bones looks like ^
The most basic test to separate people from beasts.
