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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.
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).
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 😬
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.
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.
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?".
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.
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?
It's surprising to me US carts don't have to be unlocked by a coin (which you get back when you lock your cart again), it's like that in every supermarket I know in France and Germany and probably many other European countries.
You can misbehave but it costs you a little bit, and if you do someone has the opportunity to make a buck off you by cleaning after you.
In fairness, that's been phased out in many places.
I suspect less out of faith in humanity and more out of the reality that many people don't carry cash, much less change, anymore and they kept annoying the cashiers.