• WorldwideCommunity@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    The shopping cart theory, as written here, starts as a litmus test for whether a person is capable of self governing and descends into two paths:

    1. If you do return the cart you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart and because it is correct; and
    2. If you don’t you are no better than an animal, a savage, who does what is right only because there is a law in place or you are forced to.

    Self-governance: Are you a good person or a monster? There is no middle ground.

    • theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Come on. I think we can assume that if someone is physically incapable of putting a shopping cart back, they’re not included in this. But then I do wonder how they were using the shopping cart in the first place.

      • GhostMatter@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        There are no situations except dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their shopping cart.

        It’s pretty clear to me.

        Disabilities of all kinds exist. There may be some that use the cart for balance or others that can’t easily navigate places where there are cars (visual disability for example). Leaving the shopping cart at exit is easier if you get into a vehicle or mobility aid right at the exit, rather than going around.

        It’s funny because I’ve seen this same post before and half the comments were about disabled people. And here I was the first.

        • theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz
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          6 months ago

          I think the shopping cart theory needs to be a bit more fleshed out.

          I had assumed it meant people leaving carts all over the parking lot, not right at the exit of the store. The problem is that carts being all over the lot often block spaces or can roll into people’s cars and damage them. If the cart is left right at the exit, those problems go away. It’s also very quick and easy for employees to grab them there. If the customer isn’t parked out in the lot, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be expected to take the cart farther away from the store just so that an employee can bring it right back.

      • Mnglw@beehaw.org
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        6 months ago

        given how often disabled people are yelled at for using disabled parking spots, I would not be as optimistic that we’d not be included

        As for how they were able to use it, maybe using it for a little bit is okay but it starts physically hurting after a while leading to them not being able to put it back, that has happened to me before. Or maybe the return cart area is a bit up a hill or otherwise inaccessible

        • unfnknblvbl@beehaw.org
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          6 months ago

          The clarifying statement I’ve seen elsewhere for this is that “…there are no impediments to returning the cart”.

  • wowwoweowza@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Every time I fail to return a shopping cart on a beautiful spring day, the grocery store’s Cart Gatherer thanks me kindly and calls, “Thank you kind citizen for giving me leave to leave the hellhole that I was stuck in because the world is filled with assholes who are stealing my job! I want to be in the sunlight! Don’t take that from me!!”

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    I return the shopping cart entirely out of the fact that ai fucking hate it when people leave the cart in the parking space. But yeah if theres a concrete sidewalk or something I may leave it there if the return area is a row of cars away.

  • cum@lemmy.cafe
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    6 months ago

    Not really. If you don’t put it away, you can hit it with your own car. So that means that even the most self-centered southern inbred has the incentive to put it away or it’ll hit their truck.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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      6 months ago

      $10 says Yankees, on average, leave more carts in the parking lot.

      This is not based on extensive travel and observation, and I am not planning on what do with your $10.

      (Nothing much, but $10 is $10)

    • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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      6 months ago

      My experience is as anecdotal as yours, but it seems to me that the typical conservative male is more likely to return the cart than not. Conservatives, as backward as they can be, typically have irrationally higher expectations for certain rules.

      These are the same people who would be ok with police brutality, but would be upset with swearing in front of an old lady.

      The people I see leaving carts more often than not are older people (perfectly capable of walking into, through, and out of the store but act like they’re too frail to return the cart) or two different groups of women (stuck up Karens or moms who are by themselves with children).

    • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but are you saying that it’s morally neutral to put others at risk as long as you’re putting yourself at the same risk?

      Cuz it’s not. Not at all.

      • cum@lemmy.cafe
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        6 months ago

        No, I’m saying even the self centered people have incentive to put back carts

    • MiddledAgedGuy@beehaw.org
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      6 months ago

      Working a customer facing job with poor pay and little to no benefits sucks. That’s why I do it, for those people, not the business.

    • cobra89@beehaw.org
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      6 months ago

      Nah, yours is the dumb take. I guess returning your 3D glasses at the end of a movie is too much “unpaid labor” for you. How about cleaning up your table at a restaurant that doesn’t have servers? I guess you just leave the mess sitting there huh?

  • Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    What if, hear me out, you return it where you found it? But, but, I found it in the back of the parking lot next to where I parked.

    Neutral good?

  • Sibbo@sopuli.xyz
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    6 months ago

    I disagree with returning the shopping cart being an act of free will. There is a lot of societal pressure to do it for some people, or to not do it for some other people. And there is always the risk that someone who you know will walk see you not returning, and tell all your friends about it. Or want if your boss happens to see you? What would happen then?

    So yeah, better quickly return it. Better than having to deal with all these unknowns.

  • meep_launcher@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Counterpoint:

    The Wholefoods in Redmond, Wa is known as Hellfoods by their employees because of how cold people are there and how overbearing management can be. It also is in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. When I worked there, I love the warm summer evenings when I could go out to the outfield to fetch a cart because I got to be outside and no longer under the micromanagement that is retail.

    When I would clock off, sometimes I’d nab a cart and send it out on purpose for the guy behind me to give them an escape.

    • OatChalice@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      I’ve been on both sides of this and it really depends on what management is expecting at the time. If “cart run” is a considered a task unto itself then it can be bliss, but if you’re short staffed then management starts to look at “cart run” as a means to an end. When the expectation becomes that you’ll be back on register in 10-15 minutes (but all the corrals out front are now full and no customers are complaining about it), then all those wayward carts mean you gotta hustle.

      When I eventually found myself in a supervisory role, I remembered that and tried to equitably rotate between everybody that I knew liked doing carts (or offer when I could tell someone was getting burnt out/long day and needed to go outside for a while) and just let them do their thing. Mostly people really appreciated that and in those cases it was gratifying to be the cool supervisor, but I hated that my responsibility had become to ensure that the front carts were acceptably full at any given time rather than to gather the carts – all it takes is a random rush and suddenly there are no carts and a micromanagey shift lead is chewing you out because they only appear at moments like these (or immediately after the rush while everyone is catching their breath to ask why you can’t find something to do) and your guy outside was just standing in the back of the lot smoking a cigarette, the shift lead doesn’t care that there were carts mere minutes before they arrived on the floor, nor that he only just started that cig after gathering all the carts strewn into bushes and discarded between cars or down the sidewalk…

      god I don’t miss retail lol

    • Laticauda@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Did every other employee feel the same way as you? Because otherwise that’s not a counterpoint.

      • meep_launcher@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        But you could say the same for the original premise- not every employee hates getting rogue carts, in fact many like getting them.

        I gave an anecdotal point, but the broader argument simply questions one of the assumptions of OP.

        • Laticauda@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Their job is already to gather carts from the corrals. Putting carts in the corrals allows employees to gather carts if they enjoy it without it being an extra inconvenience if they have a time limit. Also like 99% of employees would say they dislike people who leave carts everywhere, especially when they, you know, are a threat to cars if they roll into someone’s vehicles, hence why cart corrals are a thing in the first place. I certainly don’t want carts taking up parking spaces or rolling into my car if it gets windy.

  • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    A long time ago I worked at a grocery store and I preferred it when people didn’t return the carts. Would you rather spend your day gathering carts outside or gathering carts for 10 minutes at a time and then having to deal with customers?

  • Rolder@reddthat.com
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    6 months ago

    I go to Buehlers where my stuff gets conveyor belted outside and they put it in my car for me. I need not return the cart because it does not leave!

  • ZILtoid1991@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    That original 4chan post is like Jordan B Peterson level, which says more about JBP than the 4chan poster.

    Maybe we should make a game show titled “Are you more intellectual than a right-wing grifter?”.

  • morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    It’s surprising to me US carts don’t have to be unlocked by a coin (which you get back when you lock your cart again), it’s like that in every supermarket I know in France and Germany and probably many other European countries.

    You can misbehave but it costs you a little bit, and if you do someone has the opportunity to make a buck off you by cleaning after you.

    • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Stores have tried it. Customers hate it. Chiefly because many people simply don’t carry any coins on them. You can’t have all of your store’s registers set to card only mode (yes this is very common for some reason) and then expect people to have a coin on them at all times, so they don’t bother.

      It also seems trivially easy to circumvent. Easier than remembering to bring a quarter with you when you go to the store.

    • MudMan@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      In fairness, that’s been phased out in many places.

      I suspect less out of faith in humanity and more out of the reality that many people don’t carry cash, much less change, anymore and they kept annoying the cashiers.

      • morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        Yeah it’s hard to justify carrying coins around, they’re not worth much, whereas euro coins still carry some value (1€/2€).

        When I arrived in NYC a few years ago, I got cash from the ATM and then tried to take a bus to our airbnb in Brooklyn, it was $2.75 per ticket, only payable in coins… like we’d have 44 quarters in our pockets :-)

        • Neato@ttrpg.network
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          6 months ago

          I keep a few quarters in my car for ALDI specifically. If I forget: I don’t get a cart and put the groceries in my reusable bags. Or nab those giant cardboard containers ALDI employees stock with and leave around.

  • cobra89@beehaw.org
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    6 months ago

    InB4 “If everyone returned their shopping carts it would eliminate jobs” idiots come into the thread.

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      6 months ago

      The people putting the carts back are spending what, 1-2hr/8hr shift doing carts? The rest is either cleaning or stocking so it’s not like they won’t just do more of that.