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.
“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
“Be a better person”. Hold onto that one for the next time this happens. It never will though.
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.
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.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
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
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.
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.
Oh of course the Europeans have done it better than us
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
This is how it is at about half the big grocery stores where I live in Canada
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.
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. :)
Wait is that an european only thing?
Because then we can’t use it as an arbitrary metric for judging people’s moral righteousness.
You can and will replace the coin with something worthless of equal shape and size.
As an American, coins are already basically worthless.
This was very common in Canada in the late 80s and 90s with a couple chains still doing it today.
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
So civilised.
Yeah I think I saw that, a contractor in his work van in Texas I believe
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.
deleted by creator
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)
deleted by creator
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.)
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.
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.
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
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!!”
Where I am people do not trust people and shopping carts are coin operated.
What if returning the carts is my usual practice, but there was a time crunch one time and I needed to save myself the extra 30 seconds?
I’m having a tough time imagining a scenario where you’re in too much of a hurry to spend 30 seconds returning the cart, but not too much of a hurry to buy your merchandise and load it in your vehicle.
Maybe if you are about to piss your pants, but even then you should check inside the store first. But that’s about it
Then your time management sucks.
Believe it or not, jail!
If you are in such a hurry you don’t even have 30 seconds, you shouldn’t be shopping in the first place, especially if you buy enough to fill a cart.
Unless you get a phone call just after unloading your shit into your car what sort of emergency allows you to shop but still demands literally no second be spared?
I suppose if it was dire you save those 30s, it’s acceptable.
But you would not be immune to being judged by a third party. They wouldn’t know the situation is dire unless explaining it, which would take at least a few seconds.
The post specifies an exemption for dire emergencies. It would need to be pretty dire for 30s to make a meaningful difference.
Otherwise, by the metric here, you’re a bad person whenever you’re in a moderate hurry.
I always just park next to the cart return things. Makes it easier to find your car and you don’t have to walk as far.
Parking next to the cart return doesn’t count. You must bring the cart all the way back.
Walmart sells indulgences.
The description says unless it’s a dire emergency
Removed by mod
My experience is as anecdotal as yours, but it seems to me that the typical conservative male is more likely to return the cart than not. Conservatives, as backward as they can be, typically have irrationally higher expectations for certain rules.
These are the same people who would be ok with police brutality, but would be upset with swearing in front of an old lady.
The people I see leaving carts more often than not are older people (perfectly capable of walking into, through, and out of the store but act like they’re too frail to return the cart) or two different groups of women (stuck up Karens or moms who are by themselves with children).
$10 says Yankees, on average, leave more carts in the parking lot.
This is not based on extensive travel and observation, and I am not planning on what do with your $10.
(Nothing much, but $10 is $10)
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but are you saying that it’s morally neutral to put others at risk as long as you’re putting yourself at the same risk?
Cuz it’s not. Not at all.
Removed by mod
prints this image out a million times and attaches it to every shopping cart I can find
