If everyone took a shit on the floor of McDonald’s, their cooks would be out of work.
Certainly, because willfully performing a repugnant or destructive action is precisely the same as not moving a shopping cart from one location to another. Bravo, philosopher.
I’ve conceded the point that not corralling carts isn’t justifiable on employment grounds – that was an overstatement for effect. This is not the tragedy of the commons, or a broken window, or anything like a moral question. If you think it makes another person’s day or it just makes you feel good, corral away. But please spare us the moral equivalences.
I am so considerate of the store and its employees that I just go into the back room and take my merchandise directly from the cardboard boxes that they are shipped in. While I am there I check out the restroom and clean up if it is necessary.
Future goal; send a check to the store before going directly to the farm to pick my own food. Why do I do this? Because I am better than you.
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Out of the (currently) 77 people who have commented in this thread, at least 3 of us grown-ass adults are willing to state publicly that we are motivated less by social norms than fun. (Or possibly that we are happy mutants who enjoy riding the cart back to the store-front or cart corral. whatever.) Fun being a motivation distinctly absent from the writeup, and also from the experimental design. (Keizer, Kees, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Linda Steg. "The Spreading of Disorder.” Science (33) 12 Dec. 2008: 1681-685.)
Despite the inherent bias in self-selection, 3 out of 77 suggests this may be a flaw large enough to drive a study through. Since you and @knoxblox are the other two internet weirdos involved, I wanted to extend the invitation to you two first. What do you say?
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I have been thinking about your response. I think once you establish for yourself or your kids the basic moral framework, it is not impossible to simplify the explanation for specific acts with the statement “because it is the right thing to do”. That is how I was raised.
Not too long ago I had a business deal that ended up, through the magic of depreciation, costing me a lot of money. When my dad asked me why I went through with the deal, which was done without contracts or paperwork, I answered him “because I said I would do it”. That was enough explanation for him. I could have said “because it was the right thing to do”, and that would have been just as good an explanation. Because we share a basic moral framework.
Part of the shopping cart dilemma is after you divide the people who return the carts from those who do not, you can further subdivide the people who do return them into those who would or would not return them if nobody was watching. That might indicate motive.
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I’m unsure what you mean. Another study, or a challenge to this study?
I think technically you’d need seven more to reach the ten successful trials basis.
I too still ride carts, although it’s not why I return them (but I do do it when returning, the best is when you have a nice slope to race down!)
I also ‘drift’ carts around turns, though I might modify that behavior- last week I clipped a soda display and wound up with a fizzy soda jet in my wake. The pure embarrassment painted on my face maybe been quite a sight, and an older guy was laughing his ass off about it. Ooof.
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LOL
Thank you for spreading joy and sugar wherever you go
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I have to put my native clumsiness to good use somehow!
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Since the category of fun was not included as a possible option in the original study, it would have to another study.
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When I see people doing that at the Costco lot - every time I go there - it’s really weird. I get it if you’re old and don’t have a placard for a blue spot, but I see mostly perfectly healthy people sit and wait for a spot literally 50 feet from one that’s open. On a Costco trip, 50 feet won’t even get you past the guys trying to sell you cell phone plans near the front door.
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Confirmed.
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I’m kind of amazed, 192/193 comments about cart return, but here I am, posting about cart return.
When I was little, returning carts was fun, and it tidied up the place. Now, I see it as part compulsion, part positive effort. I’ve done it as long as I’ve been able, so I don’t believe my posting here is a significant factor towards my action, I don’t do it for the recognition, beyond myself. However there here been a few arguments brought up in this thread that rub me the wrong way.
Equivalence: taking a cart to a corral vs taking it back to the store
As someone who, on average, parks towards the back of the parking lot, taking the cart to the corral takes a lot less time and energy than taking it back to the store.
Also, the time it takes to return carts that have been abandoned is significantly more than the time it takes to go to the corral, because a corral, corrals them in one place. Wrangling the carts, you have to go from parking space to parking space, align the carts, and once you get three or more, you have to strap them to avoid losing one and potentially causing a traffic accident. Then you have to repeat those steps at the next parking space and so on till you get a decent enough train to take back to the store. The time spent in each space, particularly on a busy day, doing all these tasks, costs potential customers time, + when the train goes back, it blocks traffic for some amount of time, adding to the cost. So for each person that abandons a cart, the time increases, potentially for me, trying to get a parking space.
As far as job security; my efforts to return my cart, and other carts in the vicinity if I have the time, will not render the job pointless, because I am not the only customer with a cart. There will be people who put there carts back, and people who don’t, and a balance is formed that drives the necessity of a certain amount of cart wranglers.
There are factors which influence this balance: coin systems, corrals, parking space available, and the presence of cart wranglers + others not listed here
-Coin systems add a monetary cost to failing to return a cart
-Corrals decrease the effort required to return a cart ( for all parties involved)
-Parking space determines the number of customers and carts at a given time
-Cart Wranglers decrease free carts and ultimately return carts from corrals to the store
Theory: The increasing presence of free carts contributes to a chaotic environment, which in turn decreases the rate of cart return because of social factors in a way akin to littering.
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I was on the outskirts of a grocery store parking lot and I saw cart that had a coupon book from the store and some food wrappers. I thought I would be a good citizen and got yelled at by the cart coraller. Turns out the cart was from another store in the strip mall. He said they had called the store but no one came to pick it up. This cart was in the no-man’s land.
but mostly the latter.
Aldi requires a simple quarter dollar to get a cart… and I see very few carts left abandoned. it doesn’t take a dollar, it takes someone willing to leave more than a quarter… and americans are cheap bastards.
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Not alone mate. I wheel one back to its rack, or right into the store to use, simply because the sum of my doing it is positive. I am walking that way, I will use/benefit from it being there to use, at a future point, and it costs me nothing to do . . . I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be natural for everyone to do so.
If I see one abandoned loose in the parking spaces, I will always go get it, to not do so is to be complicit in any potential damage to someones car that might eventuate. Though it is very rare to see one that has not been returned to the small, scattered holding pens, when things are busy you will see the pens full, and someone might then park a cart outside the pen . . . but even this is rare in my part of town.
In the article the “scientist” seems not to imagine some people live their lives following their own rational, thought out behaviors. I don’t litter, but not because of “injunctive norms, which drive our responses based on our perception of how others will interpret our actions”, I don’t litter, because long ago I decided it is our duty to tread lightly on the earth we all share, in our collective self interest.
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For the special spots, they’re up at the front and other people snag them when they’re coming into the store, so it balances out. Plus, when driving my mom, who needs a stick or walker for any great distance, it saves me dashing out to a corral or into the store to get one for her to use as a walker. (The store has complimentary electric scooter/carts, but they drive like a truck.)
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Hmmm… Not sure I agree with that. I wouldn’t trade artful packed groceries for being a considered an adult in my own right for anything.
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You mean like in downstate Illinois in the 1990s, to give one relatively recent example I’ve experienced myself?
It wasn’t an elegant practice, it was a time when manual labor was cheap and equipment like metal shopping carts were relatively expensive. Now that shopping carts are mostly plastic and companies are trying to whittle employee costs down to a stick, it’s cheaper to rotate the job of occasionally rounding up carts to the lowest paid employees, along with their other responsibilities.
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