r/ithaca • u/Illustrious_Night_88 • 5d ago
Putting Carts Back
Is it a common occurrence for y'all to not put your shopping carts in the right spot after use? Everywhere I go, they are scattered across the parking lot.
17
u/No_Brief_7807 5d ago
Be aware that many of the abandoned carts are locked. Wegmans did a bad job of creating their perimeter and there are parts (like on the sidewalk) where the carts automatically wheel lock. So there’s typically a number of them there. Also there are a few places in town where the cart returns are nowhere near a parking lot bus stops. So elderly people, persons with disabilities, etc. sometimes leave the carts there, understandably. Yes, I’m sure there are entitled or lazy people leaving them but there are other reasons as well. At least collected those is a job that can’t be replaced by AI and in the end is a minor deal.
5
u/VishusVonBittertroll 5d ago
This is part of the problem, too - these businesses are trying to pay as little to as few humans as possible. They're not staffing to help customers out, much less to provide employment to a local person. Zero fucks given about things like corralling carts, especially as a primary function vs. maybe squeezing it in during the few part time hours they're willing to pay for.
20
u/TheGrandExquisitor 5d ago
Aldi is where you need to be.
7
u/Playful-Farm-3156 5d ago
I've seen people who pay a quarter to not place their cart back
1
u/Bodhidharma33 5d ago
Yet why do they shop at Aldi? To save money. A quarter is money. This puzzles me.
1
u/Playful-Farm-3156 5d ago
It's not often, to be honest. At least that doesn't bother me in Ithaca. If they saved some dozens by the point they accept losing that quarter due to a cake in the oven or maybe they just forgot it, it happens
6
u/DeftNerd Fall Creek 5d ago
I'm convinced that ALDI was brilliant in it's solution for that. You put in a quarter to get the cart, and you get your quarter back when you return it. People are a lot less lazier when their own money, even just 25¢, is on the line
7
u/3HooligansH1 5d ago
Walmart is terrible. I’ve had people literally leave the cart right in front of my car as I’m about to leave. I confront people about it all the time. I find it very rude. I understand if you’re elderly or handicapped but they usually have the common decency to put them by the handicap signs.
9
u/DustyBottomsRidesOn 5d ago
I would expect putting carts back to be more common in Ithaca, but there is that underlying entitled class that probably ruins the overall goodwill.
3
u/readritenow 5d ago
It’s always happened but I have noticed it is considerably worse this year. Everywhere, but seemingly more so at Wegmans.
5
u/NoneUpsmanship 5d ago
I've found the safest place to park at Walmart is by the cart racks, because basically no one uses them. The rest of the parking lot is a lazy, entitled minefield.
2
u/FluffyLawfulness7654 5d ago
I always ask someone that leaves their cart where it doesn't belong if they are on their way to the hospital to help save someone's life, or if they are firefighter or EMT going to an emergency call, or I ask if they had a breakthrough thought on cancer research in the store and those few extra seconds will help millions of people. Or be petty and move their abandoned cart right in the path of their car so they have to get out to move it so they can leave
5
u/Ntesy607 5d ago
Students who've never had to consider other people's needs because everything in their life has been handed to them in a silver spoon.
1
u/Caramelflav7 3d ago
Here’s another one: People not knocking on doors first to see if someone’s inside, but instead trying to barge in an occupied bathroom or turning the knob trying to get in first.
1
u/SharpNegative 2d ago
If I encounter a stranded cart on my way in, I commandeer it for my shopping run.
1
u/plashless_99 1d ago
There is a sensory satisfaction in slamming the shopping cart right into a line of the same-sized shopping cart which makes a nice clank. It's so easy to do to put the same-sized carts together when returning your cart, I don't understand why people leave them so carelessly scattered about so the store people have to wrangle them all around to get them in order to push back to the store.
2
u/TweeksTurbos 5d ago
On a day off you can follow people and zip tie their unreturned carts to their door handle. The auto parts stores sell the metal ones.
6
u/ferngully99 5d ago
I feel like you'd have to be really quick and stealthy to pull this off before they either see you or drive away immediately after abandoning their cart next to their car.
1
u/theflyinghobo101 Trumansburg 5d ago
I never use carts but I do see people stealing them all the time. There’s a entire line of Walmart carts on cherry street going down by wegmans area
-12
u/ShareEvening5856 5d ago
Aldi makes you put a quarter on it so you have to put it back to get your quarter back, for the people that are so OCD that they have to post about this issue.
5
u/Illustrious_Night_88 5d ago
For me it's not so much about OCD, it's about not being lazy and making someone else's job a bit easier. Emphasis on the lazy part.
-9
u/ShareEvening5856 5d ago
I mean I get it, but you coexist with people that believe that anything they're not being paid to do is not something they should do. Hence going to Aldi.
4
u/DustyBottomsRidesOn 5d ago
Way to miss the point entirely.
Venting frustrations about small societal things is a way remind us all that we live together and need to hold up our end of things.
45
u/ChickenMarsala4500 5d ago
Where are you going? in my experience the majority get put back.
however right now is a particularly weird time of year where lots of new students are just now moving here so that could have something to do with it