I saw someone leave their cart next to their car and get back in the car. So I grabbed it and put it in the corral a few spaces away. That person drove back through the parking lot to tell me to “mind my own business”. I still get a little schadenfreude about how upset they were over their own conscience and perceived social judgement.
“Be a better person”. Hold onto that one for the next time this happens. It never will though.
“Mind your own business” is such a perfect encapsulation of how completely incapable of self-reflection that person must be.
The cart was no longer their business, but yours. So not only couldn’t they recognise that the judgment they felt came from within, they projected that feeling outwards so hard they ended up sticking their nose into your business about it.
That’s how they avoid learning basic life lessons like, “I should return the cart,” because as soon as they hit the “I should” part they freak out and make it everyone else’s problem.
Tbh I would have put it right behind their car lol
Why not use the European system where you have to use a coin to unlock the cart from the stack. People are more likely to return the cart if it costs them money if they don’t and if they still leave the cart out some kid or hobo will return it eventually.
Some stores in the US do this, most notably Aldi. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, especially in an increasingly cashless society.
Names a European store.
They sell like coin shaped discs you can put on your keyring, dunno if that’s a thing in the US though.
Yes, I know Aldi started in Europe.
My point was, they have stores in the US, and their stores in the US also do this. Which is unusual for US stores. Trader Joe’s, for example (which is also owned by one of the Aldi companies) just has regular carts without the coin chain things.
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That’s not correct, actually. There were two brothers who inherited Aldi, and they did have a falling out over cigarettes, but they actually split the company in two - Aldi Nord (North) and Aldi Sud (South). As the names imply, they operate the Aldi stores in North and South Germany respectively.
In other countries, either Aldi Nord or Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores, but they do not directly compete with each other. The exception is the US, where Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores and Aldi Nord operates Trader Joe’s (which the original owner of Aldi bought from Joe Coulombe in 1979).
Huh, that sounds familiar too. Looks like I screwed this up last time I researched the history of Trader Joe’s for some post like this.
You can 3D print a tool that lets you unlock the cart, then pull the tool back out, so you don’t need to leave anything (coin or otherwise) in the cart to use it.
A good option if it’s available to you, as long as it’s tough enough, would suck if it broke up in there.
I mean, yeah. Aldi is European but has locations in the US. They’re the only store here that does this afaik. I’ve never seen the keyring thing but sincw no other stores need a coin I’d have to shop at Aldi a lot to justify ordering one online.
It was tongue in cheek. But it does make sense a European chain would bring that over to the US.
They give those out at the shop info where I live
Because we’re not savages, and can return the carts like a civilized society.
“Civilized”
So civilized in fact, there are monetized YouTube channels dedicated to catching & shaming people for not returning their carts.
So it’s kind of like the European system in a way. Instead of getting a coin for returning an abandoned shopping cart, you can get a subscriber count & ad revenue!
That cart narc guy is absolutely obnoxious. Sure I get his angle, and perhaps some people need to be shamed into doing the right thing, but I’m amazed no one has run him over yet.
He had a firearm pulled on him once actually, he walked away very quickly while continuing the bit haha
Yeah I think I saw that, a contractor in his work van in Texas I believe
So civilised.
Well we clearly can’t. Even the existence of corrals shows it’s too much to return a cart to a store we just walked out of with said cart.
Can we just use the nordic system where people are not fucking savages and bring their carts back? I hate people who don’t return their carts but I hate even more when I need coins to unlock the cart. I haven’t carried coins since 2014.
I live in a Nordic country, we have carts which need a coin, most people have a thing on their keychain to unlock a cart, majority of carts are returned.
I need to get one of those, my local (rural) grocery stores don’t have the locking shopping carts and I alway forget to bring a coin when I need to unlock one.
In fact, we are so used to taking them back that we even return shopping carts that we have unlocked without a coin.
Uh, maybe that’s an unfortunate design.
My local aldi does this and still when I get there I find like 3 trolleys scattered around the tiny carpark. I can only grab like two max to take with me to the pen.
Yeah. For a lot of people a quarter is nothing and worth tossing for the convenience of not being a decent person.
Yeah for me the real value here is where the hell am I going to get another quarter. I use my phone to pay and don’t carry cash.
Whenever I go to Aldi (US) there’s usually at least a couple carts with quarters left in the parking lot so I just put them back. The quarters pile up in my car until I eventually bring them inside.
Fine, they can subsidize the cart retrieval employee cost.
Also I discussed this with someone in the UK once and they pay an entire pound for a cart… we do quarters because it’s the largest denomination common coin in the US.
True. Come to think of it, at least with the coin system there is an incentive for another customer to bring the cart back.
On the flip side, where I live people sometimes bring their cart back but don’t connect it to the others, so that somebody else can use it without needing a quarter. Those people are nice. :)
You can and will replace the coin with something worthless of equal shape and size.
As an American, coins are already basically worthless.
Some might think it’s the price for a cheap shopping cart. In German there was a comedian who did a prank call at a store, telling them he bought 500 carts for 500€ and use them as rabbit cages.
German
ComedianThe math ain’t mathing here.
German humor is no laughing matter
Oh of course the Europeans have done it better than us
This is how it is at about half the big grocery stores where I live in Canada
Food Maxx in the U.S. employed this in low income areas to prevent cart thefts. So, that’s nice.
If you want to prevent theft then I feel like 50 cents deposit isn’t going to cut it
Wait is that an european only thing?
Because then we can’t use it as an arbitrary metric for judging people’s moral righteousness.
This was very common in Canada in the late 80s and 90s with a couple chains still doing it today.
I’m Geordi.
I’m disappointed Q isn’t on this.
Covered by the original’s post text: “Q intentionally leaves his cart in the blind spot behind the most expensive car in the lot.”
Q: increases the gravitational constant of the cart collection area until all the carts fall into it. Keeps going until a singularity forms and the planet is destroyed.
Q: with a bright flash Captain Picard becomes Captain Picart
Oops! Disappears with a blink
Q shops with 1 cart for each item he has, and returns them all upside down.
Can you put names with all these faces? I can only do three. Updated with trash@lemm.ee 's & Klear@sh.itjust.works help, we’ve got 5 of them labeled now. Plus something about broccoli according to ashestoashes@lemmy.blahaj.zone.
I assume this is funny answers only? Some kinda woooosh? I think a lot of Lemmy could name them all, given how popular Trek is on here.
Unfortunately I’m serious and I cannot put a name or anything else to any of those faces but of course I recognize them from the show which I’ve never really watched. Ideally the actors’ names or characters’ names. At this point it doesn’t matter, I could Google it if I really cared.
You’re allowed not to know! It’s just that since you’d got Picard I thought you’d know the rest since they’re from the same show (Star Trek: The Next Generation).
Seeing as I’ve just discovered you can use tables on Lemmy, I’ll give you a proper answer:
Actor Character Patrick Stewart Jean-Luc Picard Jonathan Frakes William Riker Brent Spiner Data Gates McFadden Beverly Crusher Marina Sirtis Deanna Troi LeVar Burton Geordi La Forge Michael Dorn Worf Denise Crosby Tasha Yar Wil Wheaton Wesley Crusher Colm Meaney Miles O’Brien Diana Muldaur Katherine Pulaski Dwight Schultz Reginald Barclay Michelle Forbes Ro Laren Majel Barrett Lwaxana Troi Brian Bonsall Alexander Rozhenko That’s awesome! Thanks 😄
Ooh Lemmy tables, groovy. I’mma play with Lemmy tables sometime too.
yeah Captain Picard is ubiquitous and he’s in so many memes, and all over pop culture, as much as I live under a rock, I think someone would have to be living under a rock AND COMPLETELY DEAD not to know Captain Picard haha
Brian Bonsall? The kid who played the youngest child Andy on Family Ties 80’s sitcom? He was on TNG? I googled him and TNG does not show up for Brian Bonsall. Is there a different Brian Bonsall in existence?
Yeah, the same kid:
Top right is Beyond Belief Fact or Fiction “we made it up” guy.
the 6th on the right is lt. broccoli
okay I’ll take your word for it. I have no idea what’s going on.
Fourth on the left is Marcus from Fallout 2.
Sweet! Added it 😂
I’m Levar Burton. This is Reading Rainbow.
I’m also the guy in column 2, number 5.
Best STTNG Meme ever!!! I really enjoyed reading them all as they were so fitting to the characters. I had a few legit LOL moments here. I too am Geordi.
I believe USSBurritoTruck created this one. I was going to link the original post, but I don’t know how to make a specific post link server-agnostic.
I love that they won’t trust Wesley Crusher with the task 😄
I’m so in the minority here, but I have a different perspective.
I worked at a grocery store for years, with about a third of my job being cart duty. I loved it when people left their carts outside of the corrals, for a few reasons.
First, if a lot of people did so, I would point it out to whoever was the manager on at the time before I went outside. My manager knew that I would take longer before coming back in, and that would give me more time to stroll/relax/enjoy the outdoors before coming back in to customer craziness. Having those extra minutes because my manager didn’t know how long I should take was nice.
Second, sometimes I had to walk way the hell out to the edge of the parking lot, which was really nice for a long walk away from customer craziness. Such walks were very nice when the weather was nice.
Third, it was job security. Working during the recession made my managers want to let as many people go as they could, but customers who made it so even the most efficient cart duty workers took a while to clear the lot effectively kept more of us employeed than management would have employed otherwise.
For those reasons, whenever the weather is nice, I try to leave my cart in a weird spot that is anchored by something. I realize that many other cart duty folks probably dislike me for it, but I know I appreciated it when others did this. So I do it for the folks like me.
I know all of the arguments against it and I’m not trying to debate here. Just sharing a different perspective; sometimes, leaving your cart in a terrible spot can be nice for some of the workers.
Job security for a job that shouldn’t need to exist? Dumb as shit. Do you also leave your trash wherever the fuck you want because you think it’s “job security” for whoever has to clean it up?
Capitalism is garbage and produce garbage jobs because it’s based in the religious concept that people should work. Within the context of capitalism, this makes sense. Putting away your cart doesn’t challenge capitalism, so “job security” makes sense as an objective unless you’re challenging the capitalist system.
Why shouldn’t it exist? Are you saying people should walk carts all the way inside. That wouldn’t exactly be the better solution.
You still made the effort to put your cart in the “correct” place.
Interesting point. So it’s more like
Cart? Returns Leaves Thinks return is right 😇 👿 Thinks leave is right 👿 😇 whenever the weather is nice
I definitely don’t miss helping out with the carts on a freezing winter morning in Colorado and trying not to fall on my ass.
And it is those times when carts get abandoned more than ever.
Having to pull carts off of snowbanks and fracturing my arm after a fall was not my idea of a fun time when I used to work for a grocery store in high school.
Didn’t even get to leave early that day because we were short staffed and “You’re fine, you just need to keep your arm moving to work the pain off.”
One of the formative moments for me that contributed to my distrust of capitalism.
Aight, how about when it rains? Do you leave it for your own convenience? I assume putting cards away while getting drenched is not fun at all. This is the real litmus test. You will be judged.
Counterpoint:
The Wholefoods in Redmond, Wa is known as Hellfoods by their employees because of how cold people are there and how overbearing management can be. It also is in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. When I worked there, I love the warm summer evenings when I could go out to the outfield to fetch a cart because I got to be outside and no longer under the micromanagement that is retail.
When I would clock off, sometimes I’d nab a cart and send it out on purpose for the guy behind me to give them an escape.
Did every other employee feel the same way as you? Because otherwise that’s not a counterpoint.
But you could say the same for the original premise- not every employee hates getting rogue carts, in fact many like getting them.
I gave an anecdotal point, but the broader argument simply questions one of the assumptions of OP.
Their job is already to gather carts from the corrals. Putting carts in the corrals allows employees to gather carts if they enjoy it without it being an extra inconvenience if they have a time limit. Also like 99% of employees would say they dislike people who leave carts everywhere, especially when they, you know, are a threat to cars if they roll into someone’s vehicles, hence why cart corrals are a thing in the first place. I certainly don’t want carts taking up parking spaces or rolling into my car if it gets windy.
Yeah bringing in the carts is one of the best parts of some jobs
When I was a cart pusher I could spend all day in the lot. What really sucked is when they changed from the lightweight plastic basket carts to the XL metal carts. Could push plastic basket carts all day and I would smoke cigarettes by my car in the downtime. XL metal carts ruined that job. Also never cared if they were corralled. You have to push them out the corral and with the XL metal carts they were heavy and hard to maneuver.
I’ve been on both sides of this and it really depends on what management is expecting at the time. If “cart run” is a considered a task unto itself then it can be bliss, but if you’re short staffed then management starts to look at “cart run” as a means to an end. When the expectation becomes that you’ll be back on register in 10-15 minutes (but all the corrals out front are now full and no customers are complaining about it), then all those wayward carts mean you gotta hustle.
When I eventually found myself in a supervisory role, I remembered that and tried to equitably rotate between everybody that I knew liked doing carts (or offer when I could tell someone was getting burnt out/long day and needed to go outside for a while) and just let them do their thing. Mostly people really appreciated that and in those cases it was gratifying to be the cool supervisor, but I hated that my responsibility had become to ensure that the front carts were acceptably full at any given time rather than to gather the carts – all it takes is a random rush and suddenly there are no carts and a micromanagey shift lead is chewing you out because they only appear at moments like these (or immediately after the rush while everyone is catching their breath to ask why you can’t find something to do) and your guy outside was just standing in the back of the lot smoking a cigarette, the shift lead doesn’t care that there were carts mere minutes before they arrived on the floor, nor that the cart runner only just started that cig after gathering all the carts strewn into bushes and discarded between cars or down the sidewalk…
god I don’t miss retail lol
In Europe, you have the incentive of getting a coin back
the very fact that they had to install this system tells us all we need to know about humanity.
Nobody did that shit until LIDL introduced the concept. After that, nobody still did it. LIDL are still the only ones who require the sacrifice.
Depends on the country, I guess. There are hardly any supermarkets here in Germany that don’t require you to put in money. Mostly small independent ones with small carts. But every chain uses the deposit.
I know a famila which doesn’t use deposit carts, and they happen to share a parking lot and cart pool with an Aldi which also don’t use deposit, a famila employee does the corralling – mostly re-distributing carts between isles as people do, in fact, return carts just unevenly so.
I don’t really think it’s about the deposit, culture-wise, Germans are as likely to understand a deposit as “that’s mine now”, see Christmas market mugs. It’s signalling “please really do return carts it’s important we don’t want to hire someone to do it and bill you for it that would make our milk 1ct more expensive than the neighbouring store”.
In my country literally every company that has shopping carts outside does this, but I always thought it’s more against homeless people taking them on a whim.
Do you mean Aldi? Aldi does this but none of the Lidls I’ve been to require a coin.
LMAO there are no ALDI where I’m at. I suppose that says a lot about eaten Europe.
No free Litmus test for us, sad.
You can still get the test!! Hear me out if you have two keys you can press the buttons to disengage the locking mechanism as if it were a coin
This way the cart is now coin free, I do this all the time you just need the right key and a bit of practice
Time to take this forbidden knowledge and leave a bunch of shopping carts in the Aldi parking lot
Depends on the store. My local IKEA at least does not require a coin.
Wait this isn’t standard practice in the rest of the world???¿???
It is at Aldi (and maybe Lidl?) but uncommon in general in the US
Aldi used to do that in the US. Maybe they still do. I never carry coins on me, so for this reason (and the always extremely long lines at checkout) I never shopped there.
I keep an Aldi quarter in my car. I don’t shop there regularly, but I’m always prepared when I do.
There are plastic coins you can use instead.
The shopping cart theory, as written here, starts as a litmus test for whether a person is capable of self governing and descends into two paths:
- If you do return the cart you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart and because it is correct; and
- If you don’t you are no better than an animal, a savage, who does what is right only because there is a law in place or you are forced to.
Self-governance: Are you a good person or a monster? There is no middle ground.
WRONG there is a third option where i take the cart home and eat it with my teeth 😬
Or, when people live within walking distance of the store, take the cart home, unload your groceries and then leave the cart by the street.
Become ungovernable
good way to get your teeth stronger for the “eat the rich” movement
Fourth option: I filled the cart with groceries, it is now my home.
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So you are criticising the over simplification presented here and I agree with you.
I would however point out that although I also don’t like the binary aspect of their blurb, I find that I would quite agree with their final sentence. I don’t think the test shows whether we are a good or a bad person, but it does say something about a person’s ability to fit in a society.
I think it’s a interesting experiment I just thought it was funny how those who don’t return were demonized.
Remember that a lot of religious people believe that without written rules of what is right or wrong that we’d all turn into literal murder hobos.
jesse what the fuck are you talking about jesse
I think they’re saying religious people believe that if it isn’t an enforced rule by either the law or some religion, people won’t follow it.
(I know it’s the jesse meme text but internet sarcasm is hard so I’m putting my interpretation anyway)
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I am glad I live in a place where many grocery stores don’t have this problem, because they don’t have parking lots, because most of their customers don’t even have a car much less would drive it to get groceries if they did. (Yes, I do realize how fortunate I am.)
That original 4chan post is like Jordan B Peterson level, which says more about JBP than the 4chan poster.
Maybe we should make a game show titled “Are you more intellectual than a right-wing grifter?”.
A long time ago I worked at a grocery store and I preferred it when people didn’t return the carts. Would you rather spend your day gathering carts outside or gathering carts for 10 minutes at a time and then having to deal with customers?
Customers in the store are bitchy and demanding.
Customers outside the store are bitchy, demanding, and controlling a two-ton machine.
Hard choice.
I was yelled at daily. Never was I threatened with someone’s car.
I wasn’t ever explicitly threatened with a car, they were just distracted and didn’t care if they hit someone.
Depends on the weather
I’d still rather be outside than dealing grocery store customers in the snow, rain, cold, or heat.
I’m just curious, did you bring the carts in in smaller batches so you’d have to make more trips and the whole task would take longer?
Yeah. Way longer. It’s a much quicker job when all the carts are in one spot and you just bring a long train of them back at once.
But I gotta get my quid back.
This one Aldis.
It’s basically standard (at least everywhere I’ve lived) in Europe
Every supermarket has this in the UK. Has for years.
It cracks me up that “shopping cart returner” is a full-time job for Costco employees. One of them randomly told me he’s been doing this full-time for 7 years. 🤦♀️ But he seemed to genuinely enjoy it so okay. Exercise, fresh air, vitamin D all day every day.
I personally always return my shopping carts to their proper locations.
The only exception was when I was a mother of babies in those 50 lb baby carriers, the chores were immense, putting groceries into the car and putting the baby into the car and then what, I can’t leave the baby in the car while I push the cart back to where it belongs, so put the baby back into the grocery cart and push the grocery cart back to the cart return, then carry the baby back to the car? I’m exhausted all over again PTSD just thinking about it.
And in those situations it’s a rare treat to get a parking spot right next to the carriage return, but that has its own risks, getting shopping carts rammed into your car while you’re parked there.
I go out of my way to offer to return peoples carts for them, generally anyone but especially women with children and the elderly. To me its no big deal to mash a couple carts together and return theirs with mine.
Do you guys have parking spots for new and expectant mothers yet?
Yes those exist in some parking lots now, The first time I ever saw one was when my youngest child was about 3 years old. by then I didn’t need it any more. My kids were walking.
InB4 “If everyone returned their shopping carts it would eliminate jobs” idiots come into the thread.
The people putting the carts back are spending what, 1-2hr/8hr shift doing carts? The rest is either cleaning or stocking so it’s not like they won’t just do more of that.
Yes, they would have 2 hours a day more time to clean and stock the shelves. Making their job easier.
I mean, the image shows a cart corral (sp?). They still need someone to collect the carts, they just don’t have to chase them down or pull them off the curb
Not everywhere has those, but most places do
Every time I fail to return a shopping cart on a beautiful spring day, the grocery store’s Cart Gatherer thanks me kindly and calls, “Thank you kind citizen for giving me leave to leave the hellhole that I was stuck in because the world is filled with assholes who are stealing my job! I want to be in the sunlight! Don’t take that from me!!”
