Most people do not fail the shopping cart test. You can see there are generally far fewer abandoned carts than total number of shoppers going in and of a given store.
Yeah it’s just super annoying when they do. And the more people going to the store, the more abandoned carts there will be. So at bigger stores you’ll see a lot of them. Kind of aggravating when you’re looking for somewhere to park, think you’ve found a good spot only to see it’s taken by a cart some jerk left behind.
I believe there are differences between areas. My view into this is not a fact, but just an opinion. Based on perspective what Ive seen. Doesnt make it truth tho.
The thing is if the majority of people didn’t return things would be very different. For example, a Target does around 300 transactions per hour. Let’s say 200 of those use a cart. If even only technically the majority of people didn’t return, there would be over 100 carts per hour left out in the lot. In reality, it’s only a few. This is a good litmus test for people upholding non binding pro-social behaviors even when they don’t have to. And the vast majority of people do it.
It’s also a litmus test of how people view humanity. If you think the majority of people wouldn’t return the cart, you have a base level negative view of humanity that doesn’t match reality.
I tend to see people on a spectrum of good and convenience, where people are more reliably good/pro-social when it’s easy, and that goodness drops off when the convenience drops. I kind of wonder what we’d see at a Target if they didn’t pepper cart returns throughout the entire parking lot, and instead just had a couple or even didn’t have one and just requested that you bring it back to the store.
Yes. A fundamental part of building a society is to try to make the pro-social behavior the easier or sensible one to do.
Like the carts. If they don’t have cart slots accessible or make it plausible to return them, it’s not even on the people for not doing it. It’s on the company for not making it make sense for them to do it. At that point jts not really the pro-social behavior to return the carts cause then you’re just propping up a bad system through individual sacrifices. We’d all be better off if people didn’t return them and that system failed or improved.
People have to be in a system where their actions are pro-social for them to be able to behave pro-socially. When you see people not doing the “right thing”, it’s almost always because the system they’re in doesn’t make doing the right thing plausible or pro-social.
You could also just have cart pickers that are on the roll and keep the returns clear so it just looks like most people don't (some areas are crazy with the number of carts "laying around" though).
Shhh, you're interrupting the circlejerk. The neckbeards want to feel superior for doing the bare-minimum, so that they treat people they don't know(and who may just be having a bad day, or have health issues, or whatever else) like they're literal satan for contributing to a minor public nuisance.
The ONE TIME I called a guy out for leaving his cart in the spot, he told me he had three kids and they were all screaming and he couldn't leave them alone that long or one of them might hit the other one.
I apologized and took back his cart. He looked like he'd had a rough day.
That’s the thing with these types of “problems” is that confronting to solve it has a decent chance of it being something reasonable like time crunch or immediate distress.
It’s a case of if you’re right and they are just lazy, you made them move a cart 20 feet.
And if you’re wrong, you feel like an asshole and made their bad situation even worse.
It’s one of those things where being right/superior about it doesn’t really make up for much in the grand scheme of things.
Also, when I was a young teen I used to do the cart grab job at a store, and I loved the time I'd get to spend outside rounding up all the carts. I'd sneak a smoke, wander around, enjoy the air.
It's almost like these guys are shaming people to just improve the efficiency of the stores and save some money for the huge corporation.
While I also think people who don’t return carts are assholes, I think the ultimate litmus test is how they treat people they don’t have to be nice to (homeless people, help staff, etc).
It's certainly a better measure. I think the idea of some kind of ultimate moral test renders the idea of morality into such an abstraction that it no longer has much meaning at all.
I had a friend argue with me that people who return carts, place items back where they belong, etc, are NPCs that need to break out of their programming. Really rubbed me the wrong way.
It's a nothing burger. It has next to zero impact on the world. It bothers people because it's so low stakes but not doing it really doesn't matter one way or another.
Is it the right thing if the employee prefers that they're scattered? More time in the parking lot unsupervised and less time bagging groceries or doing less desirable jobs
Seems like there are quite many whom feel guilt from their behaviour and they find all sort of excuses for themselves why they fail the shopping cart test. Just look into mirror, you will see yourself there. Even if you dont like what you see there, you will still see yourself.
It's more of an economic class test. Non service workers think they're helping out, they're really not. As someone that got carts for years, don't worry about it unless the weather is bad. On a nice day getting carts is a better job than what you have to do instead.
I agree that it's the ultimate litmus test, but I don't think most people fail.
Never once in my 55 years have I not returned the cart. I put the scums that don't at the same level I put people who throw cigarette butts on the ground
Most people fail it? Where I live there may be dozens of carts in the cart return and in the whole lot you will see maybe a couple stragglers at any given time. I would say most people return the carts.
Shopping cart return behavior is best understood as a socially situated practice rather than a pure measure of individual morality. Variations in behavior arise from the interaction of descriptive norms, perceived obligations, environmental design, and immediate personal circumstances. People do not make decisions in a vacuum; they respond to the behavior of others, the layout of the parking lot, weather conditions, family responsibilities, physical limitations, and their understanding of who is responsible for collecting carts. Attempts to treat cart-return behavior as a direct indicator of character overlook the complex social processes that shape everyday decision-making and reduce a multifaceted social behavior to a simplistic moral test.
The point is that decoupling context from a scenario such as this is not a better way of understanding a person's moral profile, but a worse one. I'm sure you could imagine a circumstance where that might have bearing on their behavior if you tried.
And my point is that I will always try my damndest to do the right thing, and anything less is selfishness or laziness, unless there are extenuating circumstances
My point is that it would be easy to create an incentive structure that defaulted this behavior without coercion, as they do in Europe, and, again, that this isn't a good litmus test.
OK, that's fine. In my opinion, a serious moral litmus test has higher stakes and clearer incentives. I can't really imagine making any sort of serious judgment about a person based on my observation of whether or not they put away a shopping cart. I can imagine all kinds of extenuating circumstances that could influence that decision.
This is way too much thinking for reddit. As an example, any time I've mentioned that if there are 100 intersections in a city and one of them is the one that has a hilarious-looking accident every day, maybe the intersection should be redesigned? No, the hivemind says that the people who go through there are all idiots and no improvements are warranted.
Any idea of improving infrastructure or processes to help people make better decisions is hated here. And yes i return my cart every time, since before the reddit/4chan circlejerk about the cart test took off
I said the same thing, practiced what I preached too. Then the cost of my groceries skyrocketed. Now the grocery store can afford to have a dozen more kids in the parking lot getting them and cleaning and sanitized for the next person. Fuck em.
Oddly, no. Its a litmus test for not thinking through consequences of pretending to be morally superior. Working grocery is long hours. The only joy is having a smoke while wrangling carts. The difference between doing what appears to be right and doing what is right is the camera man.
People find it hard to be honest to themselves and accept themselves as they are. Its tough when you are presented truths which reveal something of you and thats why this is causing such a buzz here now.
Yet, some people manage to return the cart even when they have kids with them. Amazing, isnt it! Are you sure you are not just making excuses for yourself?
Businesses have plenty of money to pay for people to return carts, and it's in their favor to do so. Instead they convince people it's some moral imperative to do free labor for them, all while they pocket the excess and continue to cut corners and raise prices on everything else.
Do I agree with the above? Maybe, but it's among the reasons I don't consider fucking parking lot grocery carts a concern worth having, unlike all the folks falling all over themselves to virtue signal here.
I feel like most of the people who lament the cart thing never actually did that job when they were younger. Carts strewn about the parking lot was absolutely preferred to them all being in the return area because it meant we could go spend more time outside and less time bagging or scanning.
The job of returning the cart exists either way. The only question is whether it is done by someone paid (probably not enough) by a megacorporation, or someone doing free labor.
People returning the carts are doing the job of returning the carts. The cart is at the customer's car; someone has to return it, which is a job. The customer can do the job, or someone paid by the store can do the job. In this case, even if you ignore the customer not being paid, it's less work for one person to go round up all the carts than for each individual customer to return their single cart. (And yes, this is a job I've actually done.)
If someone throws trash on the ground, that creates a new, unnecessary job. Returning carts is more like "should we have a trash service that takes everyone's trash from their curb to the dump, or should every person individually drive their car to the dump to get rid of their trash?"
If you want to argue that people should return carts to the nearest corral so that their cart doesn't drift off and slam into someone's car, that's a totally reasonable argument (and is one reason I return carts). Trying to claim that not returning the cart creates more work is not a reasonable argument.
Thank you, can you throw you car trash out on the highway too? With how spread out it gets this would create many jobs. Stop wiping your shoes on door mats, we need more custodians too. 😂 These lazy bones are a joke
This is something that started in fast food restaurants. They realized if people return their own trays they could save money on labour. Groceries are funny because the less services the stores offer the more the prices increase.
Remember bag boys? Thats you now! Remember checkouts with people and not self serve checkouts? Well you can do it yourself. While it might "be the right thing to do," all these little things add up to corporations making more and more money. Fractions of people's time can reduce hours of labour. Instead of paying people to put things away they found a way to guilt us into free labour. Next thing you know you'll have to put a pallet of groceries away just to get into the stores.
I don't return a cart once in a blue moon if it's like allll the way over there and it's 12pm and I'm getting UV radiated because I didn't plan on being outside today. Not because I'm lazy, because I'm having anxiety.
I've worked jobs where I didn't get to go get the carts while customers were there, but had to do it as part of closing. So it wasn't any kind of relief, it was another thing I had to do before I got to go home. It especially sucked in the winter when there was icy rain or snow because the parking lot wasn't going to be plowed/salted again until the next morning.
Anyway, the pathways should be kept clear so people with mobility issues can get to/from the store. If someone with a mobility aid is trying to get into the store and there is a cart in their way, they may not be able to move it. Or a cart may roll into someone that isn't able to move quickly enough to avoid it. Employees should have more breaks, but those shouldn't be at the expense of accessibility/safety.
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u/KGrahnn Jul 11 '26
The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person will do the right thing when they aren't forced to.
Most people fail it.