If you leave your cart in a parking space, you’re sub-human
You’re passible if you take it to the corral
But a truly good human will stack the carts into proper rows if the carts are loose in the corral
I firmly believe in the validity of the Shopping Cart Test. On a related and depressing note, my little city is overrun with errant shopping carts.
I have a clip from my dashcam floating around somewhere of me stopping, jumping out of my car, then hauling ass to catch someone’s runaway cart moments before it hit a parked car. Honestly one of my proudest moments.
On the opposite end, I once left a cart (on a curb) and it haunted me. To be fair, it was absolutely storming outside and I was chilled to the bone and just wanted to warm up…
- I used to work at a supermarket and preferred returning carts to other tasks, and got paid hourly. When someone returns the cart, they’re doing that hourly work for the store owner for free. Since time is rival, you could be more effective with your altruism than helping store owners.
- You’re depressed because there’s so much homelessness, right?
I push products to the shop floor because some people prefer stacking the shelves to their other work. I’m an altruistic job creator. You’re welcome
Isn’t that just the parable of the broken window? Somebody ultimately needs to clean the dishes and return the cart - they’re not wasted time.
I’m even more altruistic than the lazy shits not wanting to put the cart back since I don’t just not do something, I’m actively doing it to benefit their day.
It’s not benefiting or harming them either way. Their day is spent and their odds of getting paid are the same.
I’m creating more work for them, if everyone just trashed the stores they’d go in we’d have more people working at the stores. I’m a job creator
Apparently I’m a truly good human because my organizational autism trait gets triggered. I’m not even annoyed fixing them. It’s just satisfying to see them in order.
I do have some caveats for this. As my parents both park in handicap, we’ve noticed that the cart corrals are super far from the handicap spots and I won’t blame someone who already has trouble walking half way down the parking aisle to a corral.
I do tend to take the random carts from the parking lot in to use for shopping when I see them though. No reason to take one of the ones already brought back.
The exception is the handicapped area. When I drive my 80 something mother, we park in a handicapped spot, and I get out and grab the nearest cart for her. She uses that like a walker to get to the store. When we get back to the car, and she gets in, I leave the cart near the handicapped spots for the next person. I have often seen others do the same thing.
We parked the other day, and there were no carts nearby, so I went and got one for her. She could have made it into the store with just her cane, but she would have been slower, and not as confident.
So leave a cart or two in the handicapped zone. The handicapped folks have already worked out their own system that the normies don’t know about or understand. It’s a Geezer Thing.
This comment section is a nice mix of “I’m a waiter, please don’t do this, you’re making my job harder” and “I always do this to make the waiters’ lives easier”
Checking in at 23 hours - I count one comment to this effect, but even there the caveat is ‘but only if you do it wrong’
As a waiter, I’ve never had a customer stack their plates correctly for me
My dad gets legitimately angry when I do this. Boomers are a different breed
Yeah, my boomer uncle told me it was low class after he watched me do it. When I was a waitress at the time. Fuck him and that mentality - I do it to this day and make into 6 figures
Impressive. Employ a buncha seasoned techniques ‘n’ tactics during service? Influence by Dr. Cialdini had some, (including one that was essentially dishonest), but one more normal one like this:
That’s bizarre to me.
edit: you just unlocked a memory of my mum bollocking me as a kid for doing it. It’s so bizarre why?
Too many people see life as a zero-sum game with a one-dimensional ranking. To them, success is defined as the number of people of people you’re better than. Worse, many people go by pass/fail,as in “they’re one of the good ones” (popular with bigots everywhere)
My dad gets legitimately angry when I do this
I think it has to do with “putting the waiters out of their job”. Like, when you do a part of the job for them consistently, the restaurant manager will eventually notice that and realize they can do with a little bit less staff. So they hire fewer waiters, which means potential waiters face a tougher job market.
And for anybody saying “that little bit of support can’t make the difference between more and less staff”, yes, it can. Consider that a restaurant manager might have already decided to fire a waiter that’s a bit less performant (because they struggle to keep up) but decided to keep them anyways, just in case. Now they see that people do a part of the work, and that might just give them the idea that maybe, they could do with fewer waiters, and there’s that one lazy guy who can’t keep up anyway …
Waiters have told me to please not stack the dishes because it messes with their carrying technique.
Yes. If you do it incorrectly then there’s food on the bottom of the plates now and they can’t shuffle it to their preference anymore.
When I was a server I hated when people stacked their own plates. First off, I found it performative. Secondly it messed with my system. Thirdly it usually produced a 20lb pile of dishes covered in queso, half eaten burritos, and guacamole that was impossible to carry.
Yeah man. I don’t stack anything, not because I don’t want to help, but I don’t want to mess with your system. Waiting isn’t as easy as it seems and I absolutely have no idea how to do it, so I don’t want to interfere. I prefer to sit awkwardly and pretend that me leaning back as much as I can to make more space is equally helpful.
Huh, me mum was a waitress at one point and taught me to stack for politeness, I didn’t realize it was a preference thing. Now I’m not sure what to do.
I’ll still keep ordering the queso though, that shit’s delicious.
offer them the plates so they don’t have to reach or move around the table and help them stack them when they’re there… pause your conversations and ensure they spend as little time sorting your dishes as possible, and then both they can get back to what they’re doing and you can continue your conversations in private
especially true when there are plates, bowls, and cups of all shapes
exception being it’s okay to pile cutlery on a single plate because that’s always going on the top and if not it’s easy to tip off all at once to restack
bussed tables for years; what are you doing clearing tables as a server?
I liked it when people stacked their shit up, it shaves a few seconds off me doing it before I dumped it in a tub.
As far as food issues - well yeah if they’re some kids acting like cretins pouring shit all over that’s a problem but what’s that got fuck all to do with the stack?
I find your hate performative to be honest.
Okay, fair enough. How about putting eventual food, that has not been eaten, on the top plate (and in general making sure the plate is not completely dirty)
This. Heard the same from a waiter friend a while back. Since then, I do nutsack
Nutsack is preferable.
My wife and I do this, but I’ve always wondered whether I’m actually helping or just creating a different kind of inconvenience by not organizing them in a beneficial way.
It’s helpful! But don’t put trash inside the cups - this can be annoying to empty
This and the shopping cart thing share the theme of consuming with less cost to the business owner, but with no actual difference (or making it worse) for the employees. Their boss will use all of their time no matter how much work they do. You aren’t saving them work; you’re saving the boss’ money.
If you decline to go into a business near closing, then you’re my kind of people. If you tip highly you’re my kind of people. If you order clearly, concisely, and politely you’re my kind of people.
But while you’re pushing Sisyphus’ boulder up the hill, he just has to go find another boulder.
So if the carts stack up outside, the cart guy has to go outside in the rain, slush, whatever. If they don’t, he can stay inside for longer.
It gives him more time to dick around doing nothing.
Waiters also get some waiting around time. If they don’t, they have to run everywhere. Why wouldn’t you want them to have more breathing room?
That’s assuming the boss won’t give the employees shit for not able to finish enough work in a day.
Anecdotally that was my experience when I worked at a restaurant and later a grocery store. They had no idea how much total work there was; they’d just keep us working.
I may tidy up. But I don’t stack. I won’t even stack at my house, I hate touching the dirty bottom of a plate.
the server and busser will 100% stack them and grab them by the edges of the plates to keep their hands clean, plates generally arent 100% level surfaces and fully covered in gravy so the issue youre imagining doesnt exist
I don’t understand this. At all. Do you let them seat you at a dirty table? Do you think they don’t wash the bottom of the plate? Are you and everyone you eat with flinging food everywhere and somehow getting food on the bottom of plates from the clean table? Please explain it to me.
When one dirty plate go on top of other dirty plate, bottom of plate get dirty too. OP no like making bottom of plate dirty, so no stack plate.
Except once you’ve stacked it, you don’t have to touch it again because you’re just being nice and not the busser so it still doesn’t make sense. The only people obligated to touch the bottom of the plate after it’s stacked are being paid to do so.
OP have empathy and assume other people not like touch dirty plate bottom, even if get paid for it, so goes out of way to not make plate bottom dirty
It could just be a simple quirk of OCD.
As long as you don’t overstack it. Make a tidy stack that can be carried easily with one hand securely. If you eg put utensils between plates you can cause an accident.
And if there’s any big food waste like bones, put them all in the top plate
I usually have a pack of gum and I deliberately start a pattern on how I take pieces out. Usually it’s from left to right, emptying a full row before I move on to the next.
My test is to offer them gum and see where they pick from. Will they recognize a pattern and continue it? Or will they be oblivious?
Either way, it’s not a measure of good or bad. It’s just a fun lil test.
Sometimes I just take a bite out of the entire kit kat bar without breaking it up.
My family would get upset if you did that or if the server came by and offered to take the empty plate away. Why yes one of them is named karen. How did you guess?
you want me to work for you, pay for everything, and tip you?
At a time when the tipping options are 18%, 20% or 25%.
you do you, but if im just chilling talking after i eat, it feels like nothing to me - just something to do with my hands that doesnt feel like work at all and is massively helpful to someone
I do the clean up thing just because I don’t like having a bunch of shit in front of me all spread out. I think it’s years of having to clean up my stations and desks so I can actually function so it’s just habitual. We should be taking into consideration that this might not be helpful at all to the worker if these other comments are to be believed.
My boomer mother did this. My boomer father was indifferent.
I do this.
For the record, the only things that get stacked are things that are perfectly stackable, I don’t put a plate on top of a half-eaten cheese steak or leave utensils in the middle.
we scrape all the crap onto the top plate and stack the others under it.
My test is mostly how do they treat my visibly disabled husband. Who also is older than me and looks it. I don’t like being treated like I’m his nurse. I understand why they might think daughter so I’m ambivalent towards that. A lot of people are short and snippy with him because he’s harder to understand and that gets me upset.
What do you do with your shopping cart when you are done? Do you just leave it to fend for itself in the sea of the parking lot? Or do you do the right thing and bring it back inside or to the cart corral.
The REAL REAL sign though? When someone brings a cart from the parking lot into the store to shop with, ultra move.
I like to stay in the chaotic neutral category. I get my cart from the parking lot, but return it exactly where i found it. Even if it was in the middle of the lot. 😝
This has to be in the top 5 most US things.
