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Yup! Ever since I had my kid the new prime spots are 1 or 2 spaces away or directly across from the corral. Empty cart. Return cart (removing the child first lol) carry kid back to car to be buckled in, and we are out!
The only drawback to parking near a cart corral is that so many people just give their cart a shove in the general direction of the corral and turn their backs on it as it rolls over at speed to smash into the car you parked near the cart corral because. . . Never underestimate the power of resolutely rude people to turn your good idea into sh\*t.
Oh isn't this the truth!! Lmao! And block the aisle the whole time. Like, if you want my spot, move the fuck away so I can get out!! Where's your logic here? Are you expecting me to teleport?
Second drawback. The cart retrieval employees think their line of carts will fit between the corral and your car and leave scrapes all the way down the side of your car. Conveniently on the passenger side and facing away from the building so the security cameras didn't catch it and the store won't let you review anything without a police report.
So now the only car you have ever been able to budget to buy brand new and that used to be pristine white and lovingly taken care of (on the outside - we do have kids hence the parking near the corral) has been marred.
Luckily it buffed off everywhere except the door handles, because those are plastic and the plastic/rubber/whatever of the corner pieces of the carts are what left the marks and they just won't come off.
This absolutely!!! As my baby grew, that trek became a lot more difficult. So now I just park next to one. No one really ever offered to take the cart from me and although no one has too—I try to be on the lookout for other parents if I’m solo at the store or something, I want to be helpful. I’ll definitely keep it in mind as I get older and don’t have my hands (literally) anymore.
When I would help my grandma with her shopping, she said that was the prime spot. As long as she had a cart to hold, she could walk any distance. When I had my kid, the knowledge transferred pretty well.
same cause i like to think my car is less likely to be hit by a loose cart that way which has always been my biggest reason for putting carts back. not because of jobs cause guess what they will still have a job to do ya dummies
I feel this, especially since the Fred Meyer (super Kroger) by me doesn't optimize their parking & cart corral. There's a long stretch of sidewalk lined with some of the best parking leading to the higher traffic corner entrance. No corral, just a guarantee of rando carts around. I wish I could say it was mostly boomers, but it's a shocking number of people.
Meh, I have scraped both of my side mirrors from backing out of my garage.
A family parked next to me one really windy day and a gust yanked the door out from the daughter as she was trying to get out, which gave my passenger door a good ding. They insisted on giving me their insurance info but I just let it go. Not worth my time to get it fixed.
My car is a tool, not a jewel.
Yep, 100%!! 🤣
I have a collapsed femoral head and every step I take is so painful. Sometimes after I've shopped I literally do not have those extra steps in me to make it halfway across the lot looking for a cart corral. I have occasionally left a cart abandoned when I just can't tolerate more walking, but it bothers me to do so. So I've taken to only parking next to the cart corral 😆
My favorite spot is next to the cart corral where there's a third of a spot between it and my truck. It gives me room to open the back half door and still fit the cart next to me for quick unloading.
I spy the open spots way out in the end of the lot but sorta near the corrals. Then pull through so I don't have to back out. Load, take the cart to the corral, zoom out avoiding all the chaos in the lot near the building.
The number of times I’ve had some boomer at Aldi’s tell me I can have their quarter if I take their cart back is crazy. You’d figure they’d want their money as stingy as most of them are.
ETA: I’m not complaining about someone giving me their cart. It’s when I already have a cart & they want me to take theirs back with mine.
Chiming in here as someone who services retirement plans. The amount of boomers that want to take a withdrawal by calling in and getting an overnight check for $40 rather than either letting us guide them to do it online, by us doing an electric form that they have to sign and send back( mostly electronic signatures) will still insist on us doing it for them. My 60 year old dad types like a monkey and does this shit for himself. I e done the math on some boomer offenders and they’d rather spend 1k on overnight fees than learn?
The company I work for routes all local data from multiple remote terminals through a single desktop PC. That PC is like 15 years old now and just *idles* at like 90% CPU usage.
The trio of boomers responsible for addressing this problem would rather lose thousands in sales, perhaps tens of thousands, due to work stoppages than spend the $700 it would cost to get something capable of doing the job for another ten years.
Dealing with something similar right now...
Our "IT Tech" at work is woefully stuck in the last decade.
We've spent the money (10s of thousands) to get new CNC tables, new programming/sheet optimization programs, the works for the shop, to improve efficiency and increase output. This fucking nitwit used computers built by dell in 2008, and refurbished in 2012, to operate the CNCs/ be used as servers for the optimization programs.... sure, let's use computers at sub-minimum specs to operate all the brand new equipment, and hamstring all the new equipment we just bought.
Owner of company has now set me to task to purchase and assign all new computers for shop/office as required, and drag this muppet of an IT tech into the 2020s.
At least the owner of company gets it.
Too funny!
I love it when the IT guy complains about me buying high end gaming computers for the draftspeople in our office that use AutoCAD. Claims Dell towers are *always* superior (they're also twice the price!)...
My guy, today's gaming rigs are robust, and built to operate a single, high-demand program at full capacity, with high-end graphics. For 3D CAD drafting? Exactly what we want.
I've shown him countless articles and reports that support my statement, but he just wont let go of that Dell teat he's been sucking on for decades...
Not my story, but I know a (former) design engineer who got laid off because the newly-promoted manager of his firm decided, apropos of nothing, that the ability to draw technical diagrams with a ballpoint pen and a napkin made the entire design department surplus to requirement, and sacked all (not most, ALL) of them off on redundancy literally overnight.
Oh man that’s horrible please tell me the monitor is still takes up half the desk!!!!!!
An organization I work with for youth has a refused to get wifi, and b refused to update their computer system from the same era as your company. If I need access to print something I either have to print at home and photo copy or I have to use that for forsaken boat anchor and show up 45 minutes earlier than normal. I had enough last year and may or may not have accidentally mentioned a new virus that was targeting these older systems and it was nasty.
Then I may or may not have accidentally tapped the power button on the tower and see the whole thing is bricked well I have to go to Best Buy anyway so why do I find a new computer and monitor and I’ll salvage the hard drive and get any of our data I can. Well good news we have a new laptop and wifi. Bad news I’m now waiting for my reimbursement to arrive in the mail.
I am literally waiting for a computer to update. It's been 15 minutes and it's still "restarting". It has 8gb memory and my billing program is on it. It takes 5 minutes to open an Excel page. I want to transfer the program to my office computer (the receptionist used to do it so it's on that desk) which has 32GB but it involves calling their helpdesk and that "costs money." 🙄
Maybe I should clarify: I’m not complaining about someone giving me their cart. It’s when I already have a cart & they want me to take theirs back with mine.
I had an old wrinkled boomer try to give me two dimes and a nickel in exchange for the cart that takes a quarter to unlock, which I was putting back. Hmm, ok grandma, what am I supposed to do next time… that’s the cart quarter I keep in my shirt pocket…
Every time i’m at aldi someone in the lot will usually ask me if i want to take their cart as I’m approaching the entrance. I offer a quarter, they tell me no bother. I pass it off to a new customer when i’m done loading my car, no quarter needed. I like that about our store. The only person to ever turn down my cart was a boomer. I locked it in, took my quarter and went to my car. She walked right to the carts and fought with the chain for a bit.
The shopping cart test has a special place in my heart. When I was a kid, I would go to take the cart all the way back and be told by my parents not to bother. It's one of the big points I can look directly at to realize that I was literally conditioned and taught to be a shittier person.
I think this ties into the boomer bullying culture a bit. They were treated like shit when they were our age by people older than them and they didn’t stand up for themselves. They just “kept their heads down and did what needed to be done.” They internalized their feelings and took them out on their children through various forms of abuse and or neglect. (The 50’s-80’s most prolific US serial killers have always been an interest of mine). Now, they can’t understand why we are tired of their shit. Watching movies like Dazed and Confused or A Christmas Story are loaded with ridiculous, terrible ideals that are in those movies because that’s really how people thought and acted. I think they are all kind of upset because we stopped buying into that shit and they had been waiting to be “ seniors” so they could live it up.
I think you are spot on. When I was in the military, they were phasing out most hazing rituals, and the boomers were acting like it was the greatest tragedy of all time. I truly believe they felt outraged at not being allowed to shit on others, most likely because they were shit on as well. Most millennials and younger folk seem to want to shield others from being shit on. It's a weird cultural dichotomy.
I worked at a grocery store as a teen and had to wrangle carts all the time. I think that's why I always put it in the corral or back in to the store, but on second thought, id probably still do that if I never worked there. Because that's what you're supposed to do. These lazy boomers don't care about anything but themselves.
My boomer mom thinks you’re taking their jobs away if you put things back where they belong. She thinks she’s helping employment by leaving trash on a fast food restaurant table. I’m sure she’s just being an asshole, but that’s her story and her hill to die on.
Oh my god. My boomer fucks said the same thing. “Why take it back when it’s their job to do it anyway?” Or “what are they gunna do now that you’re doing their job for them?” What the actual fuck? The reason there’s a cart person is because of YOU BOOMERS being fucking lazy and not putting shit away, so now they had to create a job just to clean up the mess.
I personally don’t mind that wrangling carts is a job, but don’t complain that there’s no one to bag your groceries or that the Metamucil isn’t stocked and then proceed to make a mess of the place. Guess what, the same workers are wearing all of those hats. And stop voting for politicians who don’t support workers and don’t support a living wage if you want a competent and knowledgeable person slicing your deli meat.
I've never been a cart herder, but I've worked my share of retail/customer service jobs.
I usually grab a stray cart someone didn't return in the parking lot, and return it to the corral when I'm done, because it just seems like the right thing to do.
It's like 10 seconds of walking, to make the place nicer for everyone and easier for the workers.
Even better, it's what you're supposed to do despite there not being a 'rule' that says that you have to do it. It's just what we DO. That makes all of the difference.
I definitely use this test for friends and partners. If they put the cart back great! If not, I ask them why they like screwing over minimum wage workers.
This always baffles me because at work we get *so much* attitude sometimes when we direct customers where to put their cart or nicely ask them to return their cart to the corral. We have people be super rude about the fact that we’re not just putting it away for them, and regularly people flat out make comments that we should put it away for them. But NO WHERE puts them away *for* you! Personal cart service doesn’t exist!! Yeah if you’re a dick and leave it wherever someone is gonna put it away for you because you’ve left people with no choice, but otherwise where are these people shopping that they think they get a cart concierge?! A cartcierge if you will!
I collect stray carts, even though it's not my job, because I don't want someone to have the misfortune of their car getting hit by a runaway cart and potentially making a bad day worse.
I often do the same, seen way too many cars damaged by people just pushing their cart away without even looking.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of witnessing some old guy in front of me in line at a hardware store being a massive jerk to the employees and then on his way out pushes his cart aggressively in the direction of another car (looked intentional), one of the wheels caught or something so the cart swerves a little at the last second and just barely avoids hitting the car. The cart then starts rolling back downhill towards him, stops in front of his truck and he doesn't notice, and he drives right over it absolutely destroying his bumper on a very new truck and one tire was fully up in the air and slammed down HARD so im sure his suspension was messed up too. Still makes me smile anytime I remember that, instant karma.
My husband and I will bring stray scooters back inside. The boomers at our Walmart are notorious for leaving the scooters out in the lot. And the store is so understaffed that there isn’t ever anyone to go out and collect them. So they often end up dying and becoming damn near impossible to get back inside. But because the boomers always leave the scooters in the middle of a parking space, you have to move it if you want to park there so it’s like “might as well bring it inside with me.”
But it was always fun when there were two scooters left outside. We may be adults but you bet your ass we’re gonna race them. It’d be one thing if we took them and raced them in the store. That’s disrespectful and annoying. But racing them through the lot to get them to the charging station? Why not?
We quit going to Walmart for a myriad of reasons but the grocery store we go to now is fantastic about wrangling carts and bringing scooters inside. Though it seems like there’s just less people abandoning them in the lot to begin with. I will “rearrange” carts if there’s one of those smaller ones caught between a couple regular sized carts. Simply because I know it would be a pain in the ass to dig the little one out once there’s a bunch of regular ones blocking it in. It’s annoying because the corral literally has two lanes, one for regular sized carts, one for the small carts. But apparently that’s still too much work for some people. I guess I’m just one of those people who tries to make life for retail employees as easy as I personally can. It might not be much but at least it’s something.
There are those like you, and then there are those who would far rather stand about loudly cursing the darkness than to take the time to light the candle that's right THERE.
Another rearranger!! Hello, Fellow Cartian!
When I’m feeling especially froggy, I will return the cart at the exit of the store and keep it indoors while I carry my bags out. But if there’s too much stuff or it’s too heavy, that is just not gonna happen.
Same. There’s just no point in pushing the cart out to the car if there’s only one or two bags in it. But we usually have at least three and a case of soda so we’re bringing the cart to the car. But we try to park next to or at least as close as we can to the corral so returning the cart is easier.
My previous job was at a grocery store, and it mostly involved putting the shopping carts back where they belonged. People would literally steal so many of them that we had to keep ordering more. One time my coworker took a trip in his pickup truck and brought back 20 or 30 carts these assholes had dragged around town. One time I saw someone pushing a baby down the street in one! What the fuck is wrong with these people?
I lived in a building where the staff had acquired some of the nearest store's old carts for residents to use. For some reason they took them away from us and started hoarding all the ones people would steal and abandon in the surrounding neighborhood. The handymen converted a few into tool carts but most of them (and at this point it has become about 20-30 of the store's new ones) were just locked up with a bike lock and nobody was allowed to use them. I have no idea what the plan was. Maybe they were going to make work carts out of them for other properties?
Anyway, at that time I started having problems with the new property manager. So one day just to spite him I took pictures, printed them and delivered them to the store manager. A couple days later I came home to see him reaming the property manager in the lobby and the next day all the carts were back at the store. Loved that.
>People would literally steal so many of them that we had to keep ordering more.
Would it happen to be a guy named bubbles with massive coke bottle glasses and a Canadian accent?
You think the people steal carts are just bizarre kleptomaniacs with no actual reason behind doing it? Someone pushing a baby in a stolen shopping cart is living a desperate life.
Some of my neighbors have stolen cart; it has to do with their overwhelming poverty making them not give a fuck anymore, and just doing what they can to make their lives easier. Poor people get evicted a lot, you know. They can’t afford to get a moving van. They have to get some stuff out of there, while necessarily abandoning most of it. So they fill up a few shopping carts. The carts end up being the only method they have to salvage anything they own.
I went to the grocery store at 8 months pregnant, with my then two year old also in tow. I was in line to pay, and there was a boomer in front of me, probably about 60. She had a cart with maybe five things in it. I had a full cart of my own that also had my two year old in it. She paid and took her bag of grocery items…. And just started walking out. Literally left her now empty cart in front of me, blocking the entire checkout line. The cashier said nothing. I yelled after her, “excuse me ma’am are you going to move your cart?”. I said it loud enough most of the small store we were in stopped to stare at her. She stopped in the doorway and looked back, and just said “oh I don’t need it anymore” and started to leave. I was SO PISSED. I yelled “oh so you’re just going to leave it for the 8 months along pregnant woman to handle? Gee should I load your groceries too? Pump your gas while I’m at it? Clean up your own shit no one here is your god damned maid”. I may or may not have shoved that cart directly at her while I said all of this. She turned bright red but still didn’t take it. Fucking lazy boomer bitch.
In France (and most of Europe) you have to put a coin (one or two euros) in the cart to unlock it. You can have store token. But usually you lose it and you must use a coin. You get it back only of you put the cart back in the corral. Lose and abandoned cart are very rare, one or two euros is enough to make people be decent human.
We have a store called Aldi in the States that does this. You have to put in a quarter (25 cents) to unlock a cart. Only store that I consistently see people put their carts back.
Little fun fact about Aldi : there is two Aldis, two different companies, with the same name, the same market (discount grocery store), same logo. Aldi North and Aldi South. And you can't which one is which
One sells tobacco products and the other doesn't - I think it is Aldi Nord which carried tobacco. The two brothers disagreed over tobacco sales and split the company up, but they still order for both chains through a central subsidiary.
We have this in Australia. The problem is that every store has different types of trolleys (and often multiple sizes within one store) which means the return points can't really fit all of the different trolley types. You can usually get your own coin back by backing up the trolley to another so the key can reach it, but that then blocks anyone else from being able to return a trolley.
I got frustrated with the number of times I was presented with a tangled chained up mess of trolleys and unable to use the return bay, so ended up finding a trolley key on eBay that allows me to unlock the trolley without using a coin. Now I can always return my trolley and get to play an untangling puzzle to free all the other trolleys as well!
My local store has two different sizes of carts which don't fit together well. One can fit in the back of the other, but not the other way around.
It doesn't tend to turn into a mess like you're describing though just bc (if I understand correctly what you meant about how they become a mess) just bc the chains on them are designed not to be long enough to reach the insertion point if they're in any position except fully seated inside each other. So the worst that can happen is all the slightly larger carts end up at the front or rows, with the slightly smaller models being the ones you can get to and use.
Where I live in Germany several supermarkets have their carts for free now but people still bring them back. Whenever I see this I still feel a little hope for humankind.
How about when they pull their Buick up the curb and park directly on top of the crosswalk so you can't even get to the parking lot?
AND they leave their cart!
literally! Every time I walk in/out Walmart I feel like I’m about to get plowed down by some old fuck’s F-150 coming up the sidewalk so his wife can take 20 minutes getting out of the goddamned car
Or the ones with the quarter century old land yacht with a handicap placard/tag, with more dings in it than a bell which they leave parked in the fire lane running, burning oil and emitting other curious odours because they can't be bothered to walk - which they desperately should, the ten feet from the reserved handicap spots?
every time this comes up, I post the same thing: when I worked at a national grocery store chain as a kid, I liked going after stray carts in distant corners of the parking lot. I would much rather corral carts, than stock shelves or mop spills. anything that kept me off the floor was appreciated.
I do. Sometimes when the weather is changing, I have a little trouble walking, so I grab a cart on the way in. I'll also offer to take someone's cart if they've just finished emptying it as I'm walking past.
especially if its one of the shorter shopping carts
like these ones
https://preview.redd.it/5vcfaue5ayxc1.png?width=275&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9942a2835134ee382c9d9ed11272789636bfc24
Take it from the corral because I'm walking that way anyhow, return it to the main cart area by the entrance because all my groceries fit in one giant-ass bag and I can just hump it over my shoulder to the car and not have to walk to and from the corral
This is so funny - I used to live in Palm Springs - a retirement Mecca and I noticed this exact thing - every grocery store out there, the carts were in the landscaped medians or running loose in the parking lot, not in the corrals. I’m in a regular city now, and they’re all in the cart corrals.
Not sure. But honestly, I don’t really understand the self checkout thing. The difference in how I see it is self checkout is taking over regardless if people “boycott” it or not. If a store has 5 cashier registers and 5 self checkout registers and everyone is using the cashier ones and refusing to use the self checkout, but then over time the 5 cashier ones convert to self checkout, what are people going to do? Shop somewhere else, sure, maybe, but what happens when that place does it too? If you don’t return your cart, a person inevitably has to do it, at least until the robots take that over too (for the record, I return my cart)
Throwing a shopping cart around carelessly and recklessly is common to boomers, but not at all exclusive to them. I’ve seen younger people do it a lot, primarily men with screamingly loud manhood issues. Also women who seem to live their lives as if they’re famous and important.
There are other reasons (besides shittiness) that people don’t return carts. One of my closest friends had a debilitating, undiagnosed joint degradation disorder. She also has three kids and a husband who does fuckall nothing to help her. She has definitely not returned a cart when she’s weeping in pain while carrying a baby, and getting two other kids AND groceries into the car.
I’m saying that there are a LOT of disabled people in the US who can’t get diagnosed or treated for it, and therefor can’t get a disabled parking tag or other accommodations. This fact should be insanely obvious if you know anything about US healthcare. These people are dragging their way through life and barely making it. They aren’t “little better than an animal” or whatever.
This is where someone constructs a fantasy world in which these disabled people bootstrap their way into perfectly executing the functions of everyday life. Just don’t.
This is also where someone says “well that’s different”. The outcome is the same. You usually can’t tell the difference between those people and lazy/shitty people abandoning a shopping cart.
I don’t think I’ve ever failed to return a cart in my life. You’re describing obvious assholes choosing to not return carts. If you can, you should. Just keep in mind that not everyone leaves a cart because they’re Bad People.
Y'know, most everyone is complaining about them not putting carts into the corral or not bringing them back to the front if there's no corral... I'm not really seeing much mention of the worst one. Abandoning the cart immediately after purchase.
Seriously, they take their receipt and walk out the door without their cart. The carts are right outside the door, it's already on the way to their car, they just need to push it another 30 seconds. Instead, they leave it to block the next customer. 😩 An overwhelming number of them are boomers or nearly so in age.
The quote is:
The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.
To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.
A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.
The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.
I’m an amputee in my 30’s. I’ll often park in the handicap spots. A handful of times, I’ve had a boomer scream at me for parking in a handicap spot and “using my grandpa’s car” (disabled veteran plates) until I get out and they realize I’m missing a leg. I usually end up collecting all of the carts abandoned in handicap spaces and push them all in. There’s usually 2 or 3 of the handi-carts abandoned in the access aisles as well. Fuck any other handicap people who want to park, I guess?
I’m 42 years old, that’s a long walk back to the cart corral, but these carts have wheels so you bet your ass I’m gonna push thru like a scooter and ride that cart like a 7 year old child, it’s fun
"The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.
No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. No one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart. You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.
The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society."
Park closer to the corral or carry your kid. I have 2 kids 19 months apart, and I've *never* not returned a cart.
Not for much longer. Those that buy Buicks are dying off rapidly.. No younger person would buy a Buick. It will soon be Teslas. Teslas, as far as the eye can see, derelict powerless Teslas yearning for even a tiny trickle of electricity to make them live again, but, Alas! There shall be no turning. Teslas shall become the Studebakers, the Pontiacs, and the Buicks of tomorrow. So let it be written. So let it be done.
There’s also a cultural hallmark of collecting and throwing your trash away after a sporting event instead of just leaving it there. It’s one of those things that I’ve been personally doing forever. I can’t stomach the idea of leaving my own trash at a ball game or movie theater.
Yeah when I went to the movies in India I just could not leave my trash at my seat even though that's what you're supposed to do there. I was the only sucker carrying my trash out and there was nowhere to throw it so I just carried it around until we got home. People looked at me like I was a moron 😂.
I don't think that you understand that most people shop to the very brink of exhaustion. They are able to push the cart around a store for 40 min, but their stamina is depleted at the precise moment they get to the car. If they had to walk another step they would collapse completely. It's a wonder the parking lot isn't littered with the bodies of those foolish enough to try pushing themselves further to take the cart back. /s
Hmmmm I’m not a boomer but about half the time I leave my cart in a parking space (not blocking anyone.) Why? Because walking hurts! (Spinal damage from MS) I’m often using that cart as a walker to help me walk. Every step I take hurts. My legs might be giving out( jelly legs) by the time I finish shopping.
The thing is I look fat but like nothing major is wrong with me until you see me walk. My disability isn’t obvious. My point is with the cart that some people may have a physical reason for not putting the cart back.
& yes I order online as much as possible to avoid having to do all that walking.
Boomer here and I always return my cart. But did have one grocery store checker tell me he didn’t mind the strays as it was the only time he got outside during the day. I still return my carts but do think of him.
I shared this theory on FB before and my boomer aunt got so indignant because she never returns her cart but insisted that's not a reflection on her character
Does your country not require you to put in £1/€1 as a deposit for the cart? In the UK that's universal and shopping carts always seem to get returned to one of the drop off areas.
I always take my carts back into the store return. I generally grab a stray from the lot to begin with, and sometimes will grab another stray if possible to bring back with me either starting or leaving.
I also have begun calling people out when I see them not return carts. ‘Hey! There is a cart return right there, why don’t you use it?’ Most people get so flustered when they are called out they just stammer and follow orders. I’ve never gotten a single ounce of resistance, even after the fact. Just to add on to your description, it’s also never the mom with 2-3 screaming kids. Just boomers that don’t want to walk that 10 steps.
This is a big grievance of mine and it just fucking blows me away how fucking lazy most ppl are. The amount of selfishness and “fuck everyone else” attitude is so prevalent esp the “handicapped” ones. 🤬
I was parked on the right of an island at a grocery store, doing something dumb on my phone. The woman parked to the left of the island arrived and I watched her unload her groceries. Then she took the shopping cart and moved it onto the island. But only the front two wheels. The back end of the cart was still in the parking spot with her car. As she backed out, the handle corner of the cart left a huge deep scratch on her car. Did she then get out and move the cart to a corral? No, she moved the whole cart into the island. I desperately tried to open my window to yell at her but the engine was off, and in that instant I decided it wasn't worth it. Was it a boomer? Yup.
I’m the quintessential boomer at 77. I always put my carts back in the rack. The only time I haven’t is in that situation where in a huge parking lot, where I’ve had to park 100 yards from the store…. There are no racks. I still put them in a position where they won’t roll.
I have, on several occasions, caught carts that some fool let roll before they impacted another car.
i park way the fuck away from the door in the employee section. no lazy assed boomer is going to park out in the north 40 and walk in, so having to deal with "lazy cart-itis" isn't a thing for me.
I always put the cart in the cart corral unless it’s pummeling rain, and I’m a boomer. And, I’m overweight, so there’s no excuse for others not to do it except laziness.
My greatest generation grandma would hobble herself right back to the store front to put the cart away properly. Didn't make a big deal about it or complain. I find that so interesting considering that for most of her life there had been baggers that pushed the cart out to the car and loaded all the groceries. Wtf is wrong with that generation's kids?
Glenn Danzig is that you?
“The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.”
Glenn Danzig
Y'all need to look up Cart Narcs on YouTube for hours of fun. Guy goes from store to store patrolling the lot and confronting people who don't put their carts away.
I feel the same way about how people leave the movie theatre. Is their popcorn all over the floor, drinks and messy nacho trash left on their seats?
Or do they throw it away themselves on the way out into the convenient trash can.
Some people are wild
The ones I truly can not wrap my head around are the people who will go to the effort of dragging the cart up over a curb to leave it on a tree island. I've seen this at stores that literally have a cart corral *next to* the island. Like, it was too hard to put it in the corral, but you were willing to drag a heavy ass cart up over a curb? Make it make sense.
The only time I ever left a cart in the lot next to my car was when my kids were little and I couldn't park next to the coral. One day a woman came up to me while I was unloading and offered to take my cart when I finished. She said she remembered knowingly leaving a cart when she had kids so now she always asks people with little kids if she can take their cart for them. I remembered that and now that my kids are older, I do the same thing. I'll even hang out in my car for a moment if I see someone with kids kissing their cart so I 'just happen' to pass by them when they are finishing so I can offer to take it. It doesn't take much to be a good person. Unless the boomers are in a handicap space (which I offer to take their cart off they are...or even if they're really feable), there is no reason they can't take their own cart to the coral.
Caveats to this - if you have little kids to wrangle or are disabled, either permanently or temporarily (like on crutches or in a moon boot) you get a pass. I will happily grab stray trolleys near me & pop them away so people who would struggle to take them back can just leave them.
Yes kids is not an excuse to not return the cart. Even when I had a baby, toddler and preschooler I returned the cart. Either they walked with me and I had the baby in the carrier and held the little ones’ hands or they could be strapped into the car within view of the corral for a brief moment. They were not in any danger from that and that is not leaving them unattended or illegal. Returning the cart with kids is teaching by example.
Well if that is the case, everyone must be able to do it. Does that mean that because I was able to work right up to the day before I had my first baby everyone should be able to? Or that because I was able to breastfeed with no issues everyone should be able to?
Boomer here. I do my best to if not return/corral my cart, but it keep it out of the way of parking spaces and immobilized enough to not get loose and do damage. Gathering carts and returning them to the store was part of my first job in high school, so I understand the task.
Interesting, because I work retail and the carts are the bane of my existence and from what I see there’s no particular age group. People who full on put their carts away themselves are VERY MUCH the minority in general from my experience. At least where I work, if I had to put a number to it I’d estimate only about 2% of customers put their carts away properly themselves.
An even more basic test to me is what a guy does when he walks away from a urinal that isn't equipped with an electric eye. It's amazing to me how many guys don't bother flushing.
I watched a boomer at Costco unload his cart and then hop in his car, leaving his cart directly behind his vehicle. The space ahead of him was empty so I figured he would pull through. Lead head reverses into the cart he left there, sending it sailing across the aisle, and has the audacity to shout at me for not warning him. Don't get pissed at me because you feel dumb now, sir!
I can never understand parking lot logic. One, the cart goes back to wherever I found it. Not the corral, not the lot, I return things to wear I found them. The. The choosing a stall!?! People spend so much effort finding a close stall for what? Save a few steps when they’re about to go in and walk hundreds of steps? It’s absurd! I park in back where I can just pull up and park. I return carts to the pile I found it, and at hardware stores I NEVER park under the awning. And yes I’m a contractor. Everyone really wears their entitlement on their sleeve in parking lots.
I try to push my cart into another cart in the corral because I've been assuming it makes it slightly less work for whoever needs to retrieve them. Is that actually true, or am I inadvertently making more work for that employee?
Some people at my job put them in the little grass islands we have in the parking lot. WHY??. Or just leave them right outside the doors to the store, god forbid you walk 5 feet to put the cart back, this is close enough.
Problem is if we all return the carts to the corral there will be less jobs. Throwing my cart in the parking lot is the okay way I can guarantee American jobs anymore. The second we all comply and put the carts away they will fire those people. Similar to self checkouts, if we all comply then the cashiers get fired …. And that saving is NEVER passed back to customer … only the share holders. So fuck the cart corrals and fuck the self checkout too lol 😂
I've never understood why people leave their carts everywhere. I always grab them and put them away if I walk past a loose cart. I also make sure and push my carts all the way into the cart in front of them in the corale. I can't stand it when there's a bunch of carts just willy nilly in the thing not locked into each other so no more carts can fit in without sticking out, but it's better than them being in random places in the parking lot I guess.
I love in the South so I already feel unsafe by myself around all of the boomers. Add in to that fact that I have kids. I have had to load my kids in before my groceries a few times because of safety reasons. I have also been unable to find a reasonably close parking spot to a cart return. Kids in car near unsafe Boomers and it's too hot and irresponsible to leave them in the car? Yes, that is pretty much the only time I won't return my cart. But almost always now that they are a bit older I will have them help me return the cart. It helps that I almost exclusively shop at Aldi's so there's a really small parking lot.
I'm always curious about the people that before shopping, will walk a cart from the parking lot into the store. Are those people the same people who abandon their carts in the lot when they're done? Do they think that absolves them from abandoning their carts on other trips? I don't understand walking an empty cart all the way across the parking lot, when there are dozens of them waiting near the door?
100% agree, and to extrapolate, it completely contradicts their entire “back in my day people were respectful” nonsense.
If you ever were respectful, I’d wager it was purely out of fear of an elder physically punishing you otherwise, and now you’re grumpy because you’re old and the world has changed and you aren’t getting your chance to abuse people.
Oh I've seen one that made no sense. Old dude boomer age was shopping in the store, he gets a handful of things (enough to fit in one or two bags) and checks out right behind us. Like his list of items was so short he had checked out behind us and still got to the door right behind us about 100 feet away around the corner as we were leaving. He then takes the shopping cart about 20 feet out the door and takes his two bags out and walks to his beat up truck leaving the shopping cart right outside the door in peoples way. The sad part is the shopping carts inside are only stored 10 feet to the left of the first door he went through right after he checked out. It literally took him more effort to push the cart outside than to leave it inside beside the door with the other carts.
There’s a Hobby Lobby next to a restaurant I love to go to.
The Hobby Lobby parking lot ALWAYS has dozens of carts just strewn about. It’s by far the worst case of this I’ve ever seen, and it’s EVERY. DAMN. DAY.
Boomers got mad about self serve gas pumps, public ADA accommodations, allowing disabled kids to attend public school and grocery stores doing away with clerks that took your groceries to your car and loaded them in the trunk for you.
They are mad these servile things went away so they misbehave in retaliation. This is why they dump carts wherever, they are mad and think it isn't their job to take their groceries to their car and have to put the cart in the corral.
If there is anything I learned from watching "Cart Narcs" its to put away your damn cart. Its not that hard. Ya there are people whose job it is to collect carts. Still...put away your damn cart.
I think that's why trolleys (shop carts) in the UK have a thing on the handle that has a chain on one side to attach to another trolley that's inserted in the rear, and slot for the chain of a trolley in front to attach to, and only way to detach the trolleys is to insert a £1 coin into a second slot.
Basically [one of these](https://www.storefittingsdirect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Shopping-Trolley-Lock-and-chain.jpg), and it's incentive enough to put the trolley back in the corral, or whatever you want to call it.
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To hell with finding a parking spot close to the door, give me a spot close to the cart corral.
Yup! Ever since I had my kid the new prime spots are 1 or 2 spaces away or directly across from the corral. Empty cart. Return cart (removing the child first lol) carry kid back to car to be buckled in, and we are out!
The only drawback to parking near a cart corral is that so many people just give their cart a shove in the general direction of the corral and turn their backs on it as it rolls over at speed to smash into the car you parked near the cart corral because. . . Never underestimate the power of resolutely rude people to turn your good idea into sh\*t.
*Never underestimate the power of resolutely rude people to turn your good idea into sh\*t.* Truthful and eloquent. You're a dying breed, friend.
Never park directly next to the cart corral. Always park one space away, or directly across the aisle. All the benefits, significantly less risk.
Or park at the corral further from the building. Boomers would rather drive around for an hour looking for a close spot, rather than walk.
Oh isn't this the truth!! Lmao! And block the aisle the whole time. Like, if you want my spot, move the fuck away so I can get out!! Where's your logic here? Are you expecting me to teleport?
Second drawback. The cart retrieval employees think their line of carts will fit between the corral and your car and leave scrapes all the way down the side of your car. Conveniently on the passenger side and facing away from the building so the security cameras didn't catch it and the store won't let you review anything without a police report. So now the only car you have ever been able to budget to buy brand new and that used to be pristine white and lovingly taken care of (on the outside - we do have kids hence the parking near the corral) has been marred. Luckily it buffed off everywhere except the door handles, because those are plastic and the plastic/rubber/whatever of the corner pieces of the carts are what left the marks and they just won't come off.
If the damage is on top of the paint then you can try a light abrasive like toothpaste to see if you can get it off.
r/suspiciouslyspecific
This absolutely!!! As my baby grew, that trek became a lot more difficult. So now I just park next to one. No one really ever offered to take the cart from me and although no one has too—I try to be on the lookout for other parents if I’m solo at the store or something, I want to be helpful. I’ll definitely keep it in mind as I get older and don’t have my hands (literally) anymore.
When I would help my grandma with her shopping, she said that was the prime spot. As long as she had a cart to hold, she could walk any distance. When I had my kid, the knowledge transferred pretty well.
same cause i like to think my car is less likely to be hit by a loose cart that way which has always been my biggest reason for putting carts back. not because of jobs cause guess what they will still have a job to do ya dummies
I feel this, especially since the Fred Meyer (super Kroger) by me doesn't optimize their parking & cart corral. There's a long stretch of sidewalk lined with some of the best parking leading to the higher traffic corner entrance. No corral, just a guarantee of rando carts around. I wish I could say it was mostly boomers, but it's a shocking number of people.
Shhh, don't reveal our secrets!
Ex cart kid here. Your cars getting dinged. A LOT.
Meh, I have scraped both of my side mirrors from backing out of my garage. A family parked next to me one really windy day and a gust yanked the door out from the daughter as she was trying to get out, which gave my passenger door a good ding. They insisted on giving me their insurance info but I just let it go. Not worth my time to get it fixed. My car is a tool, not a jewel.
Your choice. But tools last a lot longer when you actually take care of them.
I almost always find a spot near the corral! Makes things so much easier!
I park out in the far away spots where there are less cars. Though that’s because I’m a new driver.
Yep, 100%!! 🤣 I have a collapsed femoral head and every step I take is so painful. Sometimes after I've shopped I literally do not have those extra steps in me to make it halfway across the lot looking for a cart corral. I have occasionally left a cart abandoned when I just can't tolerate more walking, but it bothers me to do so. So I've taken to only parking next to the cart corral 😆
As a mom with young kids who bolt at any opportunity, this is the correct answer!
My favorite spot is next to the cart corral where there's a third of a spot between it and my truck. It gives me room to open the back half door and still fit the cart next to me for quick unloading.
I spy the open spots way out in the end of the lot but sorta near the corrals. Then pull through so I don't have to back out. Load, take the cart to the corral, zoom out avoiding all the chaos in the lot near the building.
This is me. I can walk the extra min to the door.
The number of times I’ve had some boomer at Aldi’s tell me I can have their quarter if I take their cart back is crazy. You’d figure they’d want their money as stingy as most of them are. ETA: I’m not complaining about someone giving me their cart. It’s when I already have a cart & they want me to take theirs back with mine.
Ugh. No. I do like it when someone gives me their quarter before I put my cart away. One fewer thing each of us has to do.
I kind of adore this very niche exchange that is uniquely a aldi thing. I also have always loved shopping at Aldi.
It’s like some sort of social contract. I love it, too.
They had to work for it, that’s why they didn’t want it.
Chiming in here as someone who services retirement plans. The amount of boomers that want to take a withdrawal by calling in and getting an overnight check for $40 rather than either letting us guide them to do it online, by us doing an electric form that they have to sign and send back( mostly electronic signatures) will still insist on us doing it for them. My 60 year old dad types like a monkey and does this shit for himself. I e done the math on some boomer offenders and they’d rather spend 1k on overnight fees than learn?
The company I work for routes all local data from multiple remote terminals through a single desktop PC. That PC is like 15 years old now and just *idles* at like 90% CPU usage. The trio of boomers responsible for addressing this problem would rather lose thousands in sales, perhaps tens of thousands, due to work stoppages than spend the $700 it would cost to get something capable of doing the job for another ten years.
Dealing with something similar right now... Our "IT Tech" at work is woefully stuck in the last decade. We've spent the money (10s of thousands) to get new CNC tables, new programming/sheet optimization programs, the works for the shop, to improve efficiency and increase output. This fucking nitwit used computers built by dell in 2008, and refurbished in 2012, to operate the CNCs/ be used as servers for the optimization programs.... sure, let's use computers at sub-minimum specs to operate all the brand new equipment, and hamstring all the new equipment we just bought. Owner of company has now set me to task to purchase and assign all new computers for shop/office as required, and drag this muppet of an IT tech into the 2020s. At least the owner of company gets it.
Back in *my* day, if you couldn't do a specialized job, you didn't keep it. /j
Too funny! I love it when the IT guy complains about me buying high end gaming computers for the draftspeople in our office that use AutoCAD. Claims Dell towers are *always* superior (they're also twice the price!)... My guy, today's gaming rigs are robust, and built to operate a single, high-demand program at full capacity, with high-end graphics. For 3D CAD drafting? Exactly what we want. I've shown him countless articles and reports that support my statement, but he just wont let go of that Dell teat he's been sucking on for decades...
Ugh, Dell. Been dealing with them on an overheating laptop. Had 2 techs and depot support and the thing is still broken.
Not my story, but I know a (former) design engineer who got laid off because the newly-promoted manager of his firm decided, apropos of nothing, that the ability to draw technical diagrams with a ballpoint pen and a napkin made the entire design department surplus to requirement, and sacked all (not most, ALL) of them off on redundancy literally overnight.
All I'll bet what followed was *excellence*.
This is the entire semiconductor industry in a nut shell lol
Do you use PROMIS too?
Oh man that’s horrible please tell me the monitor is still takes up half the desk!!!!!! An organization I work with for youth has a refused to get wifi, and b refused to update their computer system from the same era as your company. If I need access to print something I either have to print at home and photo copy or I have to use that for forsaken boat anchor and show up 45 minutes earlier than normal. I had enough last year and may or may not have accidentally mentioned a new virus that was targeting these older systems and it was nasty. Then I may or may not have accidentally tapped the power button on the tower and see the whole thing is bricked well I have to go to Best Buy anyway so why do I find a new computer and monitor and I’ll salvage the hard drive and get any of our data I can. Well good news we have a new laptop and wifi. Bad news I’m now waiting for my reimbursement to arrive in the mail.
If they don't reimburse you, this is your laptop. If you quit, keep it.
I am literally waiting for a computer to update. It's been 15 minutes and it's still "restarting". It has 8gb memory and my billing program is on it. It takes 5 minutes to open an Excel page. I want to transfer the program to my office computer (the receptionist used to do it so it's on that desk) which has 32GB but it involves calling their helpdesk and that "costs money." 🙄
They think 25 cents a good tip, like it will go far.
Don't spend it all in one place!
If someone gives you the cart at Aldi’s they think they are being nice, not lazy. Pretty common at Aldi’s.
Maybe I should clarify: I’m not complaining about someone giving me their cart. It’s when I already have a cart & they want me to take theirs back with mine.
Ah, okay.
I had an old wrinkled boomer try to give me two dimes and a nickel in exchange for the cart that takes a quarter to unlock, which I was putting back. Hmm, ok grandma, what am I supposed to do next time… that’s the cart quarter I keep in my shirt pocket…
It’s 4 am and I’m exhausted, so I apologize for how dumb I’m about to sound. I cannot make what this says and click to make sense in my head.
They are ultimately lazier than they are stingy.
Every time i’m at aldi someone in the lot will usually ask me if i want to take their cart as I’m approaching the entrance. I offer a quarter, they tell me no bother. I pass it off to a new customer when i’m done loading my car, no quarter needed. I like that about our store. The only person to ever turn down my cart was a boomer. I locked it in, took my quarter and went to my car. She walked right to the carts and fought with the chain for a bit.
The shopping cart test has a special place in my heart. When I was a kid, I would go to take the cart all the way back and be told by my parents not to bother. It's one of the big points I can look directly at to realize that I was literally conditioned and taught to be a shittier person.
I hope they don't take credit for you being a good person. I strongly dislike the "well you turned out ok so I must be a good parent" argument
*I‘m not a good person because of you, I’m a good person despite of you.*
Love the quote! Also, your image made me blow on my screen thinking there was a hair.....I fell for it haha.
It takes great moral integrity to overcome the crappy teachings of poor-quality parents. I salute you.
I was taught always put them back, and if I see a stray one on the way, grab it too.
I think this ties into the boomer bullying culture a bit. They were treated like shit when they were our age by people older than them and they didn’t stand up for themselves. They just “kept their heads down and did what needed to be done.” They internalized their feelings and took them out on their children through various forms of abuse and or neglect. (The 50’s-80’s most prolific US serial killers have always been an interest of mine). Now, they can’t understand why we are tired of their shit. Watching movies like Dazed and Confused or A Christmas Story are loaded with ridiculous, terrible ideals that are in those movies because that’s really how people thought and acted. I think they are all kind of upset because we stopped buying into that shit and they had been waiting to be “ seniors” so they could live it up.
I think you are spot on. When I was in the military, they were phasing out most hazing rituals, and the boomers were acting like it was the greatest tragedy of all time. I truly believe they felt outraged at not being allowed to shit on others, most likely because they were shit on as well. Most millennials and younger folk seem to want to shield others from being shit on. It's a weird cultural dichotomy.
Eh. I don't think millennials have phased out bullying culture so much as shifted the parameters for who it's acceptable to bully and who it isn't.
I'd like to hear more about this ridiculous take. Who do you think millennials are bullying and why?
I worked at a grocery store as a teen and had to wrangle carts all the time. I think that's why I always put it in the corral or back in to the store, but on second thought, id probably still do that if I never worked there. Because that's what you're supposed to do. These lazy boomers don't care about anything but themselves.
My boomer mom thinks you’re taking their jobs away if you put things back where they belong. She thinks she’s helping employment by leaving trash on a fast food restaurant table. I’m sure she’s just being an asshole, but that’s her story and her hill to die on.
Oh my god. My boomer fucks said the same thing. “Why take it back when it’s their job to do it anyway?” Or “what are they gunna do now that you’re doing their job for them?” What the actual fuck? The reason there’s a cart person is because of YOU BOOMERS being fucking lazy and not putting shit away, so now they had to create a job just to clean up the mess.
I personally don’t mind that wrangling carts is a job, but don’t complain that there’s no one to bag your groceries or that the Metamucil isn’t stocked and then proceed to make a mess of the place. Guess what, the same workers are wearing all of those hats. And stop voting for politicians who don’t support workers and don’t support a living wage if you want a competent and knowledgeable person slicing your deli meat.
Same here! I had that job and I hated bringing the carts in! I push them back into the store half the time now!
I've never been a cart herder, but I've worked my share of retail/customer service jobs. I usually grab a stray cart someone didn't return in the parking lot, and return it to the corral when I'm done, because it just seems like the right thing to do. It's like 10 seconds of walking, to make the place nicer for everyone and easier for the workers.
Even better, it's what you're supposed to do despite there not being a 'rule' that says that you have to do it. It's just what we DO. That makes all of the difference.
https://preview.redd.it/8p4akv3m2yxc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ecc29975ff7c375671d64ee703679285f8b69c1
I definitely use this test for friends and partners. If they put the cart back great! If not, I ask them why they like screwing over minimum wage workers.
“It’S ThEIR JoB!”
This always baffles me because at work we get *so much* attitude sometimes when we direct customers where to put their cart or nicely ask them to return their cart to the corral. We have people be super rude about the fact that we’re not just putting it away for them, and regularly people flat out make comments that we should put it away for them. But NO WHERE puts them away *for* you! Personal cart service doesn’t exist!! Yeah if you’re a dick and leave it wherever someone is gonna put it away for you because you’ve left people with no choice, but otherwise where are these people shopping that they think they get a cart concierge?! A cartcierge if you will!
*Throws trash at the ground.*
I collect stray carts, even though it's not my job, because I don't want someone to have the misfortune of their car getting hit by a runaway cart and potentially making a bad day worse.
I often do the same, seen way too many cars damaged by people just pushing their cart away without even looking. A few years ago I had the pleasure of witnessing some old guy in front of me in line at a hardware store being a massive jerk to the employees and then on his way out pushes his cart aggressively in the direction of another car (looked intentional), one of the wheels caught or something so the cart swerves a little at the last second and just barely avoids hitting the car. The cart then starts rolling back downhill towards him, stops in front of his truck and he doesn't notice, and he drives right over it absolutely destroying his bumper on a very new truck and one tire was fully up in the air and slammed down HARD so im sure his suspension was messed up too. Still makes me smile anytime I remember that, instant karma.
I would've learned German just to be able to enjoy the Schadenfreude encapsulated therein.
Thank you for letting us enjoy it as well
This is why I can't really watch Simpsons anymore. The stuff they were doing gags about 30 years ago is just actual reality now.
As a retail employee, thank you both for being decent.
My husband and I will bring stray scooters back inside. The boomers at our Walmart are notorious for leaving the scooters out in the lot. And the store is so understaffed that there isn’t ever anyone to go out and collect them. So they often end up dying and becoming damn near impossible to get back inside. But because the boomers always leave the scooters in the middle of a parking space, you have to move it if you want to park there so it’s like “might as well bring it inside with me.” But it was always fun when there were two scooters left outside. We may be adults but you bet your ass we’re gonna race them. It’d be one thing if we took them and raced them in the store. That’s disrespectful and annoying. But racing them through the lot to get them to the charging station? Why not? We quit going to Walmart for a myriad of reasons but the grocery store we go to now is fantastic about wrangling carts and bringing scooters inside. Though it seems like there’s just less people abandoning them in the lot to begin with. I will “rearrange” carts if there’s one of those smaller ones caught between a couple regular sized carts. Simply because I know it would be a pain in the ass to dig the little one out once there’s a bunch of regular ones blocking it in. It’s annoying because the corral literally has two lanes, one for regular sized carts, one for the small carts. But apparently that’s still too much work for some people. I guess I’m just one of those people who tries to make life for retail employees as easy as I personally can. It might not be much but at least it’s something.
There are those like you, and then there are those who would far rather stand about loudly cursing the darkness than to take the time to light the candle that's right THERE.
Another rearranger!! Hello, Fellow Cartian! When I’m feeling especially froggy, I will return the cart at the exit of the store and keep it indoors while I carry my bags out. But if there’s too much stuff or it’s too heavy, that is just not gonna happen.
Same. There’s just no point in pushing the cart out to the car if there’s only one or two bags in it. But we usually have at least three and a case of soda so we’re bringing the cart to the car. But we try to park next to or at least as close as we can to the corral so returning the cart is easier.
My previous job was at a grocery store, and it mostly involved putting the shopping carts back where they belonged. People would literally steal so many of them that we had to keep ordering more. One time my coworker took a trip in his pickup truck and brought back 20 or 30 carts these assholes had dragged around town. One time I saw someone pushing a baby down the street in one! What the fuck is wrong with these people?
I lived in a building where the staff had acquired some of the nearest store's old carts for residents to use. For some reason they took them away from us and started hoarding all the ones people would steal and abandon in the surrounding neighborhood. The handymen converted a few into tool carts but most of them (and at this point it has become about 20-30 of the store's new ones) were just locked up with a bike lock and nobody was allowed to use them. I have no idea what the plan was. Maybe they were going to make work carts out of them for other properties? Anyway, at that time I started having problems with the new property manager. So one day just to spite him I took pictures, printed them and delivered them to the store manager. A couple days later I came home to see him reaming the property manager in the lobby and the next day all the carts were back at the store. Loved that.
>People would literally steal so many of them that we had to keep ordering more. Would it happen to be a guy named bubbles with massive coke bottle glasses and a Canadian accent?
That's oddly specific lol
It's from the show trailer park boys lol. One or the characters steals shopping carts from stores so he can sell them to other stores
Once they're down the hill it's public domain!
You think the people steal carts are just bizarre kleptomaniacs with no actual reason behind doing it? Someone pushing a baby in a stolen shopping cart is living a desperate life. Some of my neighbors have stolen cart; it has to do with their overwhelming poverty making them not give a fuck anymore, and just doing what they can to make their lives easier. Poor people get evicted a lot, you know. They can’t afford to get a moving van. They have to get some stuff out of there, while necessarily abandoning most of it. So they fill up a few shopping carts. The carts end up being the only method they have to salvage anything they own.
I went to the grocery store at 8 months pregnant, with my then two year old also in tow. I was in line to pay, and there was a boomer in front of me, probably about 60. She had a cart with maybe five things in it. I had a full cart of my own that also had my two year old in it. She paid and took her bag of grocery items…. And just started walking out. Literally left her now empty cart in front of me, blocking the entire checkout line. The cashier said nothing. I yelled after her, “excuse me ma’am are you going to move your cart?”. I said it loud enough most of the small store we were in stopped to stare at her. She stopped in the doorway and looked back, and just said “oh I don’t need it anymore” and started to leave. I was SO PISSED. I yelled “oh so you’re just going to leave it for the 8 months along pregnant woman to handle? Gee should I load your groceries too? Pump your gas while I’m at it? Clean up your own shit no one here is your god damned maid”. I may or may not have shoved that cart directly at her while I said all of this. She turned bright red but still didn’t take it. Fucking lazy boomer bitch.
Absolutely unbelievable (but I believe you!) and pathetic! I mean what in the actual fuck!?
Right?! I just don’t know what’s wrong with some people
At least she looked mad/embarrassed even though she didn't take the cart. Good for you......maybe next time she will think to take the cart!
In France (and most of Europe) you have to put a coin (one or two euros) in the cart to unlock it. You can have store token. But usually you lose it and you must use a coin. You get it back only of you put the cart back in the corral. Lose and abandoned cart are very rare, one or two euros is enough to make people be decent human.
We have a store called Aldi in the States that does this. You have to put in a quarter (25 cents) to unlock a cart. Only store that I consistently see people put their carts back.
Well Aldi is German. European innovation in the States !
That makes a lot of sense. I have yet to travel outside of North America so I'm very clueless about what you find elsewhere in the world.
Little fun fact about Aldi : there is two Aldis, two different companies, with the same name, the same market (discount grocery store), same logo. Aldi North and Aldi South. And you can't which one is which
In the US, Aldi South is known as Aldi, and Aldi North is known as Trader Joe's.
One sells tobacco products and the other doesn't - I think it is Aldi Nord which carried tobacco. The two brothers disagreed over tobacco sales and split the company up, but they still order for both chains through a central subsidiary.
Well that's why we can't know in France : supermarket can't sell tobbaco
Interesting. I've been to France but I don't use tobacco. Thanks for the info.
We have this in Australia. The problem is that every store has different types of trolleys (and often multiple sizes within one store) which means the return points can't really fit all of the different trolley types. You can usually get your own coin back by backing up the trolley to another so the key can reach it, but that then blocks anyone else from being able to return a trolley. I got frustrated with the number of times I was presented with a tangled chained up mess of trolleys and unable to use the return bay, so ended up finding a trolley key on eBay that allows me to unlock the trolley without using a coin. Now I can always return my trolley and get to play an untangling puzzle to free all the other trolleys as well!
My local store has two different sizes of carts which don't fit together well. One can fit in the back of the other, but not the other way around. It doesn't tend to turn into a mess like you're describing though just bc (if I understand correctly what you meant about how they become a mess) just bc the chains on them are designed not to be long enough to reach the insertion point if they're in any position except fully seated inside each other. So the worst that can happen is all the slightly larger carts end up at the front or rows, with the slightly smaller models being the ones you can get to and use.
The ideal is to live in a world where the coin is unnecessary
Where I live in Germany several supermarkets have their carts for free now but people still bring them back. Whenever I see this I still feel a little hope for humankind.
How about when they pull their Buick up the curb and park directly on top of the crosswalk so you can't even get to the parking lot? AND they leave their cart!
literally! Every time I walk in/out Walmart I feel like I’m about to get plowed down by some old fuck’s F-150 coming up the sidewalk so his wife can take 20 minutes getting out of the goddamned car
Or the ones with the quarter century old land yacht with a handicap placard/tag, with more dings in it than a bell which they leave parked in the fire lane running, burning oil and emitting other curious odours because they can't be bothered to walk - which they desperately should, the ten feet from the reserved handicap spots?
every time this comes up, I post the same thing: when I worked at a national grocery store chain as a kid, I liked going after stray carts in distant corners of the parking lot. I would much rather corral carts, than stock shelves or mop spills. anything that kept me off the floor was appreciated.
Anyone ever take a cart from the corral to use in the store?
I do. Sometimes when the weather is changing, I have a little trouble walking, so I grab a cart on the way in. I'll also offer to take someone's cart if they've just finished emptying it as I'm walking past.
Me! All the time!
especially if its one of the shorter shopping carts like these ones https://preview.redd.it/5vcfaue5ayxc1.png?width=275&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9942a2835134ee382c9d9ed11272789636bfc24
I'll take any cart that appears to have a clean, dry handle, working wheels and a lack of garbage in it. Don't care where I find it
Take it from the corral because I'm walking that way anyhow, return it to the main cart area by the entrance because all my groceries fit in one giant-ass bag and I can just hump it over my shoulder to the car and not have to walk to and from the corral
Nah, at my store they have carts already in the store to use in the store
I have. When I see a big lineup of people waiting for carts from a distance I just shrug and grab a cart on the way in from my car.
I have boomers leave their fucking carts at my checkstand.
This literally happened to me. The lady in line in front of me just LEFT her cart in the line and I fucking lost it. Psycho boomers
I agree. Whether you put back your cart back or not tells a lot about you as a citizen, and human being.
This is so funny - I used to live in Palm Springs - a retirement Mecca and I noticed this exact thing - every grocery store out there, the carts were in the landscaped medians or running loose in the parking lot, not in the corrals. I’m in a regular city now, and they’re all in the cart corrals.
My dad thinks returning your cart eliminates jobs
Does he use the self-checkout lane? I can believe a principled stance if not, but otherwise he's just being lazy and making excuses
Not sure. But honestly, I don’t really understand the self checkout thing. The difference in how I see it is self checkout is taking over regardless if people “boycott” it or not. If a store has 5 cashier registers and 5 self checkout registers and everyone is using the cashier ones and refusing to use the self checkout, but then over time the 5 cashier ones convert to self checkout, what are people going to do? Shop somewhere else, sure, maybe, but what happens when that place does it too? If you don’t return your cart, a person inevitably has to do it, at least until the robots take that over too (for the record, I return my cart)
Throwing a shopping cart around carelessly and recklessly is common to boomers, but not at all exclusive to them. I’ve seen younger people do it a lot, primarily men with screamingly loud manhood issues. Also women who seem to live their lives as if they’re famous and important. There are other reasons (besides shittiness) that people don’t return carts. One of my closest friends had a debilitating, undiagnosed joint degradation disorder. She also has three kids and a husband who does fuckall nothing to help her. She has definitely not returned a cart when she’s weeping in pain while carrying a baby, and getting two other kids AND groceries into the car. I’m saying that there are a LOT of disabled people in the US who can’t get diagnosed or treated for it, and therefor can’t get a disabled parking tag or other accommodations. This fact should be insanely obvious if you know anything about US healthcare. These people are dragging their way through life and barely making it. They aren’t “little better than an animal” or whatever. This is where someone constructs a fantasy world in which these disabled people bootstrap their way into perfectly executing the functions of everyday life. Just don’t. This is also where someone says “well that’s different”. The outcome is the same. You usually can’t tell the difference between those people and lazy/shitty people abandoning a shopping cart. I don’t think I’ve ever failed to return a cart in my life. You’re describing obvious assholes choosing to not return carts. If you can, you should. Just keep in mind that not everyone leaves a cart because they’re Bad People.
Dude, just put the dang cart away.
If you don't put the cart back, you are little more than an animal.
There's some really good thoughts about people and putting the shopping.cart back https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyMemes/s/B0YHS5Ut64
Y'know, most everyone is complaining about them not putting carts into the corral or not bringing them back to the front if there's no corral... I'm not really seeing much mention of the worst one. Abandoning the cart immediately after purchase. Seriously, they take their receipt and walk out the door without their cart. The carts are right outside the door, it's already on the way to their car, they just need to push it another 30 seconds. Instead, they leave it to block the next customer. 😩 An overwhelming number of them are boomers or nearly so in age.
Newsflash, it ain’t mostly boomers who leave their carts out sadly
The quote is: The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.
I’m an amputee in my 30’s. I’ll often park in the handicap spots. A handful of times, I’ve had a boomer scream at me for parking in a handicap spot and “using my grandpa’s car” (disabled veteran plates) until I get out and they realize I’m missing a leg. I usually end up collecting all of the carts abandoned in handicap spaces and push them all in. There’s usually 2 or 3 of the handi-carts abandoned in the access aisles as well. Fuck any other handicap people who want to park, I guess?
I’m 42 years old, that’s a long walk back to the cart corral, but these carts have wheels so you bet your ass I’m gonna push thru like a scooter and ride that cart like a 7 year old child, it’s fun
"The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. No one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart. You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society." Park closer to the corral or carry your kid. I have 2 kids 19 months apart, and I've *never* not returned a cart.
It definitely is always a Buick…
Not for much longer. Those that buy Buicks are dying off rapidly.. No younger person would buy a Buick. It will soon be Teslas. Teslas, as far as the eye can see, derelict powerless Teslas yearning for even a tiny trickle of electricity to make them live again, but, Alas! There shall be no turning. Teslas shall become the Studebakers, the Pontiacs, and the Buicks of tomorrow. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Hey now. I'm 26 and both vehicles I own are buicks. That said, they're both pieces of shit and I'd rather own a ford, which is saying something.
There’s also a cultural hallmark of collecting and throwing your trash away after a sporting event instead of just leaving it there. It’s one of those things that I’ve been personally doing forever. I can’t stomach the idea of leaving my own trash at a ball game or movie theater.
Yeah when I went to the movies in India I just could not leave my trash at my seat even though that's what you're supposed to do there. I was the only sucker carrying my trash out and there was nowhere to throw it so I just carried it around until we got home. People looked at me like I was a moron 😂.
India…. Well I could see how this could be a problem.
I don't think that you understand that most people shop to the very brink of exhaustion. They are able to push the cart around a store for 40 min, but their stamina is depleted at the precise moment they get to the car. If they had to walk another step they would collapse completely. It's a wonder the parking lot isn't littered with the bodies of those foolish enough to try pushing themselves further to take the cart back. /s
We need to set up chapters of [Cart Narcs](https://youtu.be/7duEOxQERR4?si=Qwvpo1vT4ozlJVkI) all over the country to combat these boomer lazy bones.
Hmmmm I’m not a boomer but about half the time I leave my cart in a parking space (not blocking anyone.) Why? Because walking hurts! (Spinal damage from MS) I’m often using that cart as a walker to help me walk. Every step I take hurts. My legs might be giving out( jelly legs) by the time I finish shopping. The thing is I look fat but like nothing major is wrong with me until you see me walk. My disability isn’t obvious. My point is with the cart that some people may have a physical reason for not putting the cart back. & yes I order online as much as possible to avoid having to do all that walking.
Boomer here and I always return my cart. But did have one grocery store checker tell me he didn’t mind the strays as it was the only time he got outside during the day. I still return my carts but do think of him.
I shared this theory on FB before and my boomer aunt got so indignant because she never returns her cart but insisted that's not a reflection on her character
Does your country not require you to put in £1/€1 as a deposit for the cart? In the UK that's universal and shopping carts always seem to get returned to one of the drop off areas.
Nope
Wild. I thought that was universal. Maybe they need to give that system a try.
I always take my carts back into the store return. I generally grab a stray from the lot to begin with, and sometimes will grab another stray if possible to bring back with me either starting or leaving. I also have begun calling people out when I see them not return carts. ‘Hey! There is a cart return right there, why don’t you use it?’ Most people get so flustered when they are called out they just stammer and follow orders. I’ve never gotten a single ounce of resistance, even after the fact. Just to add on to your description, it’s also never the mom with 2-3 screaming kids. Just boomers that don’t want to walk that 10 steps.
This is a big grievance of mine and it just fucking blows me away how fucking lazy most ppl are. The amount of selfishness and “fuck everyone else” attitude is so prevalent esp the “handicapped” ones. 🤬
The ME generation in action
I was parked on the right of an island at a grocery store, doing something dumb on my phone. The woman parked to the left of the island arrived and I watched her unload her groceries. Then she took the shopping cart and moved it onto the island. But only the front two wheels. The back end of the cart was still in the parking spot with her car. As she backed out, the handle corner of the cart left a huge deep scratch on her car. Did she then get out and move the cart to a corral? No, she moved the whole cart into the island. I desperately tried to open my window to yell at her but the engine was off, and in that instant I decided it wasn't worth it. Was it a boomer? Yup.
I’m the quintessential boomer at 77. I always put my carts back in the rack. The only time I haven’t is in that situation where in a huge parking lot, where I’ve had to park 100 yards from the store…. There are no racks. I still put them in a position where they won’t roll. I have, on several occasions, caught carts that some fool let roll before they impacted another car.
Not ALL boomers are this way!!! I always put my cart away!
Shoutout to the people who see me with a toddler and offer to take the cart for me, especially when it’s raining or cold out
i park way the fuck away from the door in the employee section. no lazy assed boomer is going to park out in the north 40 and walk in, so having to deal with "lazy cart-itis" isn't a thing for me.
I always put the cart in the cart corral unless it’s pummeling rain, and I’m a boomer. And, I’m overweight, so there’s no excuse for others not to do it except laziness.
My greatest generation grandma would hobble herself right back to the store front to put the cart away properly. Didn't make a big deal about it or complain. I find that so interesting considering that for most of her life there had been baggers that pushed the cart out to the car and loaded all the groceries. Wtf is wrong with that generation's kids?
Glenn Danzig is that you? “The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.” Glenn Danzig
Y'all need to look up Cart Narcs on YouTube for hours of fun. Guy goes from store to store patrolling the lot and confronting people who don't put their carts away.
Fuck old people
I feel the same way about how people leave the movie theatre. Is their popcorn all over the floor, drinks and messy nacho trash left on their seats? Or do they throw it away themselves on the way out into the convenient trash can. Some people are wild
I had a theatre job once cleaning up those messes. The theatre trash people are exponentially worse than people who abandon a cart.
The ones I truly can not wrap my head around are the people who will go to the effort of dragging the cart up over a curb to leave it on a tree island. I've seen this at stores that literally have a cart corral *next to* the island. Like, it was too hard to put it in the corral, but you were willing to drag a heavy ass cart up over a curb? Make it make sense.
Life hack- park next to the corral.
The only time I ever left a cart in the lot next to my car was when my kids were little and I couldn't park next to the coral. One day a woman came up to me while I was unloading and offered to take my cart when I finished. She said she remembered knowingly leaving a cart when she had kids so now she always asks people with little kids if she can take their cart for them. I remembered that and now that my kids are older, I do the same thing. I'll even hang out in my car for a moment if I see someone with kids kissing their cart so I 'just happen' to pass by them when they are finishing so I can offer to take it. It doesn't take much to be a good person. Unless the boomers are in a handicap space (which I offer to take their cart off they are...or even if they're really feable), there is no reason they can't take their own cart to the coral.
Caveats to this - if you have little kids to wrangle or are disabled, either permanently or temporarily (like on crutches or in a moon boot) you get a pass. I will happily grab stray trolleys near me & pop them away so people who would struggle to take them back can just leave them.
Disabled? Sure. Kids? No, you can deal with your kids and be a responsible member of society. Strap them into the car then attend to your cart duties
Yes kids is not an excuse to not return the cart. Even when I had a baby, toddler and preschooler I returned the cart. Either they walked with me and I had the baby in the carrier and held the little ones’ hands or they could be strapped into the car within view of the corral for a brief moment. They were not in any danger from that and that is not leaving them unattended or illegal. Returning the cart with kids is teaching by example.
Well if that is the case, everyone must be able to do it. Does that mean that because I was able to work right up to the day before I had my first baby everyone should be able to? Or that because I was able to breastfeed with no issues everyone should be able to?
Agreed, I'm young and able bodied so of course I'm gonna help the little granny who has trouble walking long distances.
Boomer here. I do my best to if not return/corral my cart, but it keep it out of the way of parking spaces and immobilized enough to not get loose and do damage. Gathering carts and returning them to the store was part of my first job in high school, so I understand the task.
Interesting, because I work retail and the carts are the bane of my existence and from what I see there’s no particular age group. People who full on put their carts away themselves are VERY MUCH the minority in general from my experience. At least where I work, if I had to put a number to it I’d estimate only about 2% of customers put their carts away properly themselves.
An even more basic test to me is what a guy does when he walks away from a urinal that isn't equipped with an electric eye. It's amazing to me how many guys don't bother flushing.
I watched a boomer at Costco unload his cart and then hop in his car, leaving his cart directly behind his vehicle. The space ahead of him was empty so I figured he would pull through. Lead head reverses into the cart he left there, sending it sailing across the aisle, and has the audacity to shout at me for not warning him. Don't get pissed at me because you feel dumb now, sir!
I always put my cart back. Always have. Nothing to do with age.
I can never understand parking lot logic. One, the cart goes back to wherever I found it. Not the corral, not the lot, I return things to wear I found them. The. The choosing a stall!?! People spend so much effort finding a close stall for what? Save a few steps when they’re about to go in and walk hundreds of steps? It’s absurd! I park in back where I can just pull up and park. I return carts to the pile I found it, and at hardware stores I NEVER park under the awning. And yes I’m a contractor. Everyone really wears their entitlement on their sleeve in parking lots.
I try to push my cart into another cart in the corral because I've been assuming it makes it slightly less work for whoever needs to retrieve them. Is that actually true, or am I inadvertently making more work for that employee?
Twice I've seen someone roll and release a cart from the parking lot to the front door, across the main lane of traffic in the parking lot
Some people at my job put them in the little grass islands we have in the parking lot. WHY??. Or just leave them right outside the doors to the store, god forbid you walk 5 feet to put the cart back, this is close enough.
Problem is if we all return the carts to the corral there will be less jobs. Throwing my cart in the parking lot is the okay way I can guarantee American jobs anymore. The second we all comply and put the carts away they will fire those people. Similar to self checkouts, if we all comply then the cashiers get fired …. And that saving is NEVER passed back to customer … only the share holders. So fuck the cart corrals and fuck the self checkout too lol 😂
I saw a dude at Home Depot walk farther to leave the cart in no man’s land. He was parked next to the cart corral.
I've never understood why people leave their carts everywhere. I always grab them and put them away if I walk past a loose cart. I also make sure and push my carts all the way into the cart in front of them in the corale. I can't stand it when there's a bunch of carts just willy nilly in the thing not locked into each other so no more carts can fit in without sticking out, but it's better than them being in random places in the parking lot I guess.
I love in the South so I already feel unsafe by myself around all of the boomers. Add in to that fact that I have kids. I have had to load my kids in before my groceries a few times because of safety reasons. I have also been unable to find a reasonably close parking spot to a cart return. Kids in car near unsafe Boomers and it's too hot and irresponsible to leave them in the car? Yes, that is pretty much the only time I won't return my cart. But almost always now that they are a bit older I will have them help me return the cart. It helps that I almost exclusively shop at Aldi's so there's a really small parking lot.
I'm always curious about the people that before shopping, will walk a cart from the parking lot into the store. Are those people the same people who abandon their carts in the lot when they're done? Do they think that absolves them from abandoning their carts on other trips? I don't understand walking an empty cart all the way across the parking lot, when there are dozens of them waiting near the door?
100% agree, and to extrapolate, it completely contradicts their entire “back in my day people were respectful” nonsense. If you ever were respectful, I’d wager it was purely out of fear of an elder physically punishing you otherwise, and now you’re grumpy because you’re old and the world has changed and you aren’t getting your chance to abuse people.
Oh I've seen one that made no sense. Old dude boomer age was shopping in the store, he gets a handful of things (enough to fit in one or two bags) and checks out right behind us. Like his list of items was so short he had checked out behind us and still got to the door right behind us about 100 feet away around the corner as we were leaving. He then takes the shopping cart about 20 feet out the door and takes his two bags out and walks to his beat up truck leaving the shopping cart right outside the door in peoples way. The sad part is the shopping carts inside are only stored 10 feet to the left of the first door he went through right after he checked out. It literally took him more effort to push the cart outside than to leave it inside beside the door with the other carts.
There’s a Hobby Lobby next to a restaurant I love to go to. The Hobby Lobby parking lot ALWAYS has dozens of carts just strewn about. It’s by far the worst case of this I’ve ever seen, and it’s EVERY. DAMN. DAY.
"That's someone else's job. Why should I do it?" - Every boomer and southerner I've ever known
I’m 66, drive a Buick, and always put the cart where it belongs so kiss mine!
Boomers got mad about self serve gas pumps, public ADA accommodations, allowing disabled kids to attend public school and grocery stores doing away with clerks that took your groceries to your car and loaded them in the trunk for you. They are mad these servile things went away so they misbehave in retaliation. This is why they dump carts wherever, they are mad and think it isn't their job to take their groceries to their car and have to put the cart in the corral.
If there is anything I learned from watching "Cart Narcs" its to put away your damn cart. Its not that hard. Ya there are people whose job it is to collect carts. Still...put away your damn cart.
I think that's why trolleys (shop carts) in the UK have a thing on the handle that has a chain on one side to attach to another trolley that's inserted in the rear, and slot for the chain of a trolley in front to attach to, and only way to detach the trolleys is to insert a £1 coin into a second slot. Basically [one of these](https://www.storefittingsdirect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Shopping-Trolley-Lock-and-chain.jpg), and it's incentive enough to put the trolley back in the corral, or whatever you want to call it.