I want others to return their carts so I expect the same from myself. Unironically, we live in a society, so that means cooperation for things to run smoothly
This is Contractualism. If anyone wants to learn more about this moral philosophy, you can read Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, or for a better time, watch The Good Place.
More generally, this is the philosophy of deontology, or the study of duty/obligations if anyone is interested in seeing the whole eco system
The Good Place taught me that the solution to this problem is to let the cart run loose and kill the guy pulling the lever.
BUt It’s soMEONe’s joB tO GeT tHE CARts, i’M jUST CReATING jObS For tHEm
The cart corral things were invented in my lifetime, before that we were expected to walk that shit all the way back into the store.
And don’t forget all the jobs you make at the auto body shops fixing damage from carts! And all the jobs at the shopping cart factories from having to replace broken carts!
This is why I always throw my cat into a ravine or pond when I’m done with it.
Reuse would be economically inefficient.
Edit: cart not cat, I do not throw my cat into ravines or ponds
Hi there, Jean Baptiste Emanuel Zorg
I don’t know what this comment means and I’ve been thinking about it all day
haha! that’s Gary Oldman’s character in The Fifth Element. One of the best movies and one of his best characters IMO. There is a scene where he’s dragged the priest into his office and after being accused by the priest of wanting to destroy life, as a rebuttal he breaks a glass on the floor which sets a flurry of automatic cleaning robots into action and says the destruction he caused creates work for robots which means work for the robot makers and enables them to have children. Something like that. I should have just linked the scene instead of trying to summarize from memory but of course who has time for a video link for everything? destruction creates life
You gain nothing, but you retain self-respect.
Its not often I get to enjoy the thought of being objectively better than THAT person
You gain the knowledge that you didn’t make a retail worker’s day even shittier.
I’ve done cart balancing enough times to say it’s really not a big deal. I’d rather collect stray carts than distribute the ones sticking out over three parking lot lanes to emptier cart sheds. I also used to feel bad for staff etc, our manager did carts a lot, other stuff etc again, but when I really think about it, fuck supermarkets.
As far as being a nice person or whatever, I will hand over the cart to someone arriving as I’m leaving. I will not take their coin because I use a shim that cannot be retained by the lock to unlock the cart rather than a coin.
As someone who’s had the job of bringing carts in before… why are you redistributing them instead of bringing them inside? Was that just the policy at whatever store you worked at.
There was no inside place for them, just the parking lot sheds.
Oh, I see. My experience is with a store that didn’t have enough carts, or a big enough parking lot, to justify sheds. The carts were all lined up at the front of the store, and that was it.
I guess a lot of stores have different methods. I can’t remember which but one had this crazy cart wash and dispensing machine. Ours were an afterthought and placed in the parking lot. A few times the whole stack would lose hold on the end chain in the shed and cars have been hit by runaway cart trains.
Return the cart and make sure they’re all nested with each other so the cart guy has an easier job
Return the cart and make sure they’re all nested with each other
so the cart guy has an easier jobbecause it’s satisfying.This maybe pick up a stray cart on the way too.
Yup. Or help somebody else out with their cart. Feels great.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who does this.
I just bring them all the way back to the store, is this psychotic behaviour?
Yes, because that’s where they go.
Wasn’t this a 4chan post about the cart being the ultimate litmus test for people in society?
Dang, did that emerge from 4chan? I thought it was from some psychologist or some shit like that
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The fuck? How many emergencies do you think people have immediately after exciting a store? The vast majority of people who don’t return their carts are just lazy.
Wow, you mean literally every single one of the hundreds of Walmart customers today had a life threatening accident, and had to leave their cart in the middle of the road, or absolutely anywhere other than the corral? Woah, that’s my bad for being judgemental!
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He doesn’t like to return his cart, that’s what
What’s the big issue?
He’s an idiot, that’s the issue.
You both are saying the same thing…
It literally accounts for emergencies.
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 started returning carts after seeing posts about this on that other site. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about being a good human in society, I just didn’t know it mattered and hadn’t thought about it. My mom taught me growing up to ensure that it wouldn’t roll away and hit anyone’s car and that’s as far as that topic ever went.
So I find it hard to blame people for not doing things like this, it takes time for society to grow and change. I think in many ways we are (and this is what has the right wing in a panic).
Now…what about people that back into parking spots when there are no “back in parking only” signs.
And what exactly is your concern about that?
found the asshole
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If you have time to pay for your groceries, wheel them out to the car and load them up, but you don’t also have the time to return the cart, it’s not an emergency. Either stop your shopping and hurry wherever you need to go asap or take the time to be a decent person.
Must be a lot of emergencies at my Costco.
Uh oh, one of our big giant bold huge gigantic large names has deleted an opinion…
You have failed the test.
People really should be taught rhetoric in schools.
You said heads, they said no tails…
It would seem to me they don’t realize you are all describing the same coin. Yet they downvote based on their emotional response and demonstrate their lack of reading comprehension.
Sad and hilarious.
People complain about capitalism but there is never a loose cart in the aldi parking lot.
Justify not putting the cart back without the root reason being that you’re selfish (too lazy, in a hurry, not my job, cart return is too far away, etc). Go ahead, I’ll wait.
i got hit by a car while trying to return the cart and the medics forced me to go to the hospital despite my dying wish being for someone to return the cart
The cart is probably either damaged, or has your blood all over it, or both, so it’s in no condition to be used right now anyways. Thank you for at least trying to return it, I’ll spread the word about your GoFundMe (for either your bills or funeral).
don’t worry about me. just get the fund set up for the replacement cart. that’s all that matters
If it’s a nice day it gives the employee in charge of rounding up carts a chance to go outside and no longer be under the direct eye of management, and maybe even get to see a beautiful sunset in the evening.
When I worked at Whole Foods I loved when a cart was way in the outfield. I got some fresh air and I didn’t have to deal with angry customers.
I’ll give you this one, because your intentions are good. I will suggest, however, that not everyone who is collecting carts has the same outlook. This would be highly season- and weather-dependent as well.
I frequently collected carts in the summer heat and it always resulted in me being a damp sweaty mess for the rest of the workday.
Haha thanks!
I don’t know the word for this argument, but I would say the “not everyone likes collecting carts” is kinda not the best argument only because you could say the same thing the other way. Like there are people who like collecting the carts and are sad to see them put away (like me).
I worked in the PNW when I was at whole foods, and summer in Seattle is phenomenal but I know it’s not always like that elsewhere.
So the new rule is “put the cart away unless you live in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, parts of Idaho and northern California, and southern Alaska, given that it is between the dates of June 1 through September 31st, and the weather is nice to help combat the Seasonal Affect Disorder”
This is the perfect rule of morality and I will not be taking questions.
I’m not into performing unpaid labor for for-profit companies.
I put the cart back anyway but I’ll never tell someone they’re wrong for not doing it.
You do gain something though. By not contributing to the problem the overall likelihood that other people also don’t contribute increases because they see a cart put away instead of a herd of them roaming the parking lot. Same as being polite when you aren’t required to be.
Society exists because most people choose not to be assholes.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” The categorical imperative, Immanuel Kant
Oh yeah smart guy? Then is it still a categorical imperative if returning the cart will somehow result in greater harm than good, say if the employees are paid based on the number of carts they retrieve from improper positions? If not, then what use are maxims if they cannot take into account the specifics of a situation? Are they just a matter of logical coherence, or can they be used for actual decision-making?
ANSWER THE QUESTION
I don’t “gain nothing” from returning the cart! It feels good to do the right thing!
How does that boot taste?
What are you talking about?
Oh, I thought that’s what people said to each other on Lemmy. Like a standard Lemmy greeting.
Uh-huh…
Always. While everyone tries to park close to the entrance, I park close to the stall. I park in the same spot at my grocery store 90% of the time.
I put the cart in the back of a random truck.
If they’re parked like an asshole taking up more than one space then I’d say it’s justified.
I get my 50 euro cents back
Is that half a euro?
I think it’s a milli-euro?
This, but for people who block traffic stopping on the curb instead of pulling into a parking space so they won’t have to walk a whole extra 50 steps.
The shopping cart thing is no longer a good test of character. The whole idea is there’s no reward for doing it and no punishment for not doing it. Now that everyone knows that there’s a large contingent of the population who could be judging them for their actions, it’s not the same thing anymore. It’s more like a test of how a panopticon situation effects people.
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ding ding
Id like to run a test where we silently observe cart return behaviour on hidden camera, and compare return rates with when we station people outside the shops to stare at cart users who are loading their shopping into their cars
Tldr funny cart moment from a guy who didn’t realize I could see him until too late
I was once chilling in the car for a second after putting groceries away when the guy adjecent to me finished unloading, pushed the cart about 2ft away, made eye contact with me, then proceeded to act like he was stretching and not stepping back toward his car. It was a comical amount of time between the stepping away, eye contact pause, awkward stretch and grab the cart again
I would not be surprised if you got different behavior at different stores and at different times.
Walmart would be way down there next to Dollar Tree. Aldi’s at the top because it requires a quarter - which is worth far more than $0.25 because who carries change anymore?
Unless you’re in Europe
These things aren’t just tests of characters. They also generate character. It’s a feedback loop, and it’s okay if you do things with a known context of judgment, because just adhering to the rules grows your credit with society.
