I never return my carts. I used to bag groceries in a grocery store and whenever I got sick of customers and/or coworkers I'd go get the carts. The more carts far out in the parking lot the better, I could an entire shift without being inside talking to customers.
My dad never returns carts. He also worked at a grocery store when he was young and had the same mentality as this. He also said that he is "creating work" for these young kids and it's good for them ha.
Personally, I return carts - because when I worked in a service job, I always had more "important" things to do than clean up after slob customers.
I liked getting carts too, but I return mine, because no one else I worked with liked doing it. I’m not going to force someone to do work they might not want to do. I don’t know them, and statistically (from my n of probably 50), most people don’t want to do it… especially in the winter.
Most of the time I will leave my cart inside and carry my bags to the car. I use the small carts and they run out a lot, so I like to leave it there for other people who like the small carts.
I question this assertion. What 'out of the way' exists in the parking lots you frequent? Every one that I can think of offhand consists of parking spaces, areas for people to walk from their cars, driving lanes and little else. Anywhere you could leave it other than the designated place is causing a problem for someone.
I'm now completely torn! I always return carts just out of habit as a nice thing to do, but I totally see this as a legitimate reason not to return them! I never worked at a grocery, but I have worked at other jobs where there was that one task that got you out of sight of management so you could take your time and mentally relax for a while. Taking the trash to the dumpster way out back, restocking the walk-in fridge from the basement, etc. It was less about not working, as it was about the freedom.
Then again, they still have to go out to the cart return areas to collect them which takes time, so in that sense leaving carts around just makes their job a bit harder. Hmm. Not sure now!
You're onto something. It's an almost perfect autistic/introvert "slap on some headphones and do something to feel productive without having to engage with humans" task.
But most people hate it, so my wife and I try to show consideration.
I return carts, but I too worked at a grocery store and so did a fair amount of cart wrangling, a lot of it during the Phoenix summer. It was very zen, watching the monsoons build. Certainly didn't mind it.
Stores in the US provide a lot of services to shoppers; bagging groceries, taking them out to your car for you, etc. I don't see why collecting your cart can't be part of that. The exception here is stores like dollar tree, where employees are treated like absolute trash by corporate.
>I don't see why collecting your cart can't be part of that.
The tech equivalent of this is "registers and RAM are so fast, why can't the Har drive just be all RAM?"
Baging groceries is centralized in a specific spot. Taking groceries out is a rare task you can expend a few employees for. Having people dedicated to collecting every single cart in real time is expensive. At that point it's easier to designate a garbage collection time and make laps around the property .
You have to be out there getting them from the corral anyway. There's no people dedicated to collecting carts, it's just a periodic task.
Know what's super annoying and time consuming? Facing product. Yet no one gives people shit because they don't face product after they take it and expect employees to do it. The cart thing is just mental gymnastics to make people feel like they have self worth and are better than others. Ya single young dude, you're so much better than the mom with the bum knee and two kids that put her cart off to the side rather than taking it to the corral.
There's a million such services provided for you when you shop at a grocery store, wrangling carts is an extremely minor one.
Here in the States, when I go to the store I don't just face the aisles -- I do it right and make sure I pull all of the product forward, and that it's all facing the right way all the way back. I check the dates and rotate stock where that's necessary. If stock is running low of an item, I make a note of that.
And I don't mean just for the stuff I touch -- I do it all. There's a glorious spectacle of unbridled order on the supermarket shelves that are left in my wake.
After I'm done shopping, I bag my own groceries and roll them out to the car in the cart. And then I return the cart and any others I see all the way back to the front of the store for shoppers to use directly so that nobody else is burdened by this task.
And since I'm already back to the store, I find a drymop and make a quick pass of every aisle, while making a note of anything wet or sticky. The wet stuff gets flagged right away for safety, and both the wet stuff and the sticky stuff gets a solid scrub with a wet mop.
When I return the mop bucket I check the backstock against my notes for anything that was running low, and bring that out and shelve it so other customers are best assured of a good selection.
After I close and wash down the deli, I make one final check of the cooler temperatures and I thank every single employee by name for helping me today. I feel like I should be thanking them each at least thrice per visit for all of their hard work, but I don't want to appear to be over-appreciative.
And -- finally! -- on my way out, I vacuum the rugs in the entryway. On my watch, not even a footprint is left behind.
I don't know why more people aren't like this. We all know that in a truly functional society, it is everyone's job to help out.
I really wish I could do more, but I only have time to run the floor machine, sort produce, and help the manager with scheduling on Wednesdays and Sundays.
(I guess some people are just indefensibly narcissistic or something.)
>There's no people dedicated to collecting carts, it's just a periodic task.
There is, but at that point you're in luxury stores and probably aren't pushing the carts yourself anymore to begin with.
>You have to be out there getting them from the corral anyway
Yes, and the idea of "returning a shopping cart" includes corrals too. That'd the crux of the argument here, people can't even find spots down and put it in the corral.
>The cart thing is just mental gymnastics to make people feel like they have self worth and are better than others.
I can't speak for everyone. But I see it as an exercise in self reflection and tending to your environment. Youre not a better person for doing so, but you contribute to a worse environment if the care isn't there. These little things add up to a broken society.
The mentality that we all need to constantly compare ourselves to one another is in fact another community building exercise. And why hyper individualism is doomed to fail. I simply want to try and understand why the windows are broken and try to take steps to fix it.
Ok, but why does not putting a cart in a coral equate to a broken window, but not facing product does not? As the person collecting carts it took me less time to collect 10 "free range" carts than it would have taken those 10 people to return those carts.
>why does not putting a cart in a coral equate to a broken window, but not facing product does not?
1. Ones an obligation, the other is a duty. The metaphor is about what little things a person does to contribute to society, not what someone is paid to do
2. Unless your full time job is collecting shopping carts, leaving time windows for carts to crash into cars or people or blocking parking spots is what makes the broken window. Picking up the glass shards is something, but not everything when a frsutrated shopper never comes back.
And since I see more confusion here, keep in mind that the US has several shopping cart carrals at any major store. Those corrals still count as "returning your shopping cart". I don't think the article is asking people to put it back in the store. I haven't seen that expectation in the modern day
Ok, so is your primary issue that people don't take the cart all the way to the coral or that they leave them in places that cause problems for people? Because that's two different things.
