I don’t know if you quite got there.
For me, retuning carts or holding doors is not about what others think, but about what I think of myself
8 Likes
The trend around here seems to be that every chain grocery store has a “discount” counterpart owned by the same company: Loblaws has No-Frills, Metro has Food Basics, Sobeys has Price Chopper and FreshCo. The bigger chain grocery stores have free-to-use grocery carts; the discount stores demand the loan of a quarter (here) or a dollar (where I used to live).
I think the idea behind it is that the money saved from lost/damaged carts and the salary spent to retrieve them is passed on to the consumer through lower food prices. Or, conversely, “This is a luxury grocery store. Enjoy the luxury of not having to scrounge for a quarter to obtain a cart, or to put your cart away to retrieve it.”
Ah. I get it now. I apologize for misunderstanding.
Yes, I agree that the article missed out on that point of view entirely.
3 Likes
Exactly. Well said.
4 Likes
When I borrow stuff I return it, or, why I carry 10 bags across the parking lot.
3 Likes
I think we’re in the same place, but looking at different layers.
My thought process is “Why am I doing this?” → “Because it means a fair bit less work for the employee, and only slightly more for myself.” → “And because of that, I’ll feel slightly better about myself for having done it, and I’ll feel slightly worse for having not done it.”
Yours seems to be “Why am I doing this?” → “Because I’ll feel slightly better about myself for having done it, and I’ll feel slightly worse for having not done it.” → “And I’ll feel that way because .”
I’m putting the logic of why it gets cognitively reinforced as good behaviour as the cause; you seem to be substituting the cognitive mechanism itself as the cause, by rewarding the good behaviour.
It’s all part of the same cycle of Behaviour → Rationalization → Reinforcement → Behaviour. I think that there’s more than one right place to stop on that cycle. I don’t think there is a “there” to get, because it loops back on itself.
5 Likes
People get so shocked when you call them out, like how dare you question their laziness/assholishness. Same thing with people dropping their towel on the floor in the gym locker room, when there’s a towel drop less than 10 feet away, and another that you pass right by on the way out the door. Fucking heathens, the lot of them. I’d hate to see their houses.
Maybe you live in an area where what nimelennar (below) implied applies. Nimelennar didn’t quite say it but the implication was clear - low-cost stores have less trustworthy/responsible customers (borne out by higher rates of trolley ‘leakage’?) and slightly more upmarket ones feel they have a better class of clientele they can afford to trust, or at least cover the cost of fewer stray trolleys via higher prices.
Or maybe your Sainsbury’s has some new-fangled trolleys whose wheels lock up if taken beyond the perimeter. As per this story from 2002.
So nobody else takes the trolley to empty bit of the car park and races it up and down then? You don’t know the fun you’re missing out on.
I assume this is my folks being clever (perhaps because they were both teachers), by making ‘return the trolley’ into a game that us kids wanted to play. I remember fighting over who got to ride the trolley back to the trolley area place.
That way, the trolley got put back and my folks didn’t have to do it, they could use the time to stow the shopping, or strap my little brother in, plus we’d get a bit more exercise and hopefully wouldn’t fight all the way home.
2 Likes
Um, that wasn’t what I was getting at, at all…
What I was trying to say was that lost or misplaced carts are a cost of business for a grocery store, so, as a consumer, you either have to be willing to eat the cost (through higher food prices) or to put up with inconveniences (like coin locks) which dissuade people from taking or misplacing the cart.
If someone is actually untrustworthy and wants to steal a cart, the cost of a quarter isn’t going to stop them.
5 Likes
They need self-driving shopping carts that migrate back to the store.
(There could be a future Disney movie in that.)
2 Likes
As a teen in the 80s it was my JOB to collect the carts from the lot. There was no such thing as designated areas to return carts to. Those were introduced to reduce labor costs and liability. When did we accept working for the store by returning carts as a social norm?
2 Likes
Or maybe the lower cost store wants to give the impression that they pass savings on to customers?
That’s certainly possible.
4 Likes
I’m not leaving my little kids in the car unattended while I walk a shopping cart across a busy parking lot to the corral.
2 Likes
I split the difference, really. I always return my own cart but I’ll also return abandoned carts if convenient.
2 Likes
It’s not job security because these jobs typically have a high turnover anyway. Not returning the cart just adds to a worker’s day when they could be using their time to help other customers or keep the store stocked and tidy. I worked retail and i hated having to round up stray carts from the parking lot.
I always return my cart, as much as i want be lazy and leave it wherever.
6 Likes
Dipping back into my cart-fetching days, I remember the only things that really bothered me were when people would leave carts far away on rainy days. Otherwise, cart-fetching was great in that those were minutes spent away from managers. If you smoke, it can serve as a useful paid smoke break too.
Objective #1 of all menial grocery store jobs is to stay the fuck away from managers as much as possible. Especially at lower-tier grocery stores where they barely make more than the stock crew and are extremely bitter about it.
Edited to note that my experiences do not prevent me from returning carts to their designated space. I do not wish to add anymore than necessary to someone else’s labor.
8 Likes
If your economy/social structure is based upon “acculturate people to make unnecessary messes so that the lowest rungs of society will have busywork to do” you’re doing both economy and society wrong. And by you I mean I, well, we, we the people, the United States. But also Downton Abbey style golden-hearted aristocrats with that noblesse oblige “If I dressed myself, we wouldn’t be able to save all these beloved servants from destitution!” bullshit.
7 Likes
Someone doesn’t understand how economics works, especially when drunk.
Cart returner isn’t even a job. The people who return carts have other duties as well. Otherwise, they would be roaming the parking lots taking all the carts back before the cart has the chance to be abandoned. Usually, what happens is the newbies get sent out to get the carts… especially when it’s raining.
Also, following that line of reasoning, why not just leave colossal messes wherever you go, just to give cleaning people work to do?
People think they can be borderline abusive* to people working these jobs, then act like they’re doing them a favor because otherwise the workers would have nothing to do 
*or maybe more than borderline
13 Likes
I guess that’s valid in a universe where the time and attention of customers spent returning carts has no value. It’s the store’s job to provide this service. It isn’t some noble social sacrifice to take it on.
1 Like
