I remember those days. They offered to load up your car, but some people (like my parents) preferred to do it themselves. Nowadays, I think the baggers can’t even offer to help with the bags.
Also, about as many people drove up then as drive up now. I saw it now and then, but it wasn’t a thing people did on the regular.
Ah good. That base is covered. Carry on.
When did you start thinking I was publicly shaming not returning a cart? My objection was to the attitude that there was no responsibility to do so and that somehow NOT doing so was somehow laudable.
There have been plenty of times I have not returned my cart-- being late, being hassled, having screaming kids that need to go home, being tired, being injured…
When did you start thinking I was going to look over my half-rimmed glasses at you and call you out in public if I saw you not returning a cart?
Is ok. The grumpy able-bodied drone-flyers complaining at you here don’t have the gumption to say nothin to your face. Plus, the store doesn’t care in the slightest.
If you don’t want people describing how they make behavioural judgements, perhaps you shouldn’t ask questions like “When did we accept [X] as a social norm?”
If you’re trying to imply that every behavioural judgement amounts to “look[ing] down on people that behave a certain way,” then I don’t think that any human being is exempt (including yourself, as you seem to look down on “self-righteous online social warriors”).
I deny that that is the case, though: it is certainly possible to disdain a behaviour without thinking less of the person.
On the other hand, I did literally fall in love with my wife when, during our fourth or fifth outing together, I witnessed her return a shopping cart. Seriously!
Eh, everyone not returning your carts? Aldi’s will gladly take that quarter you paid to use their cart in the first place. In fact I’ve seen people give others their cart just because they don’t want to walk it back to the store and get their quarter back. One gentleman even tried to pay the woman a quarter and she wouldn’t take it…
Fair enough. I projected the apparent attitude of some posters onto you. I apologize.
I’m not so sure. If I “disdain a behavior” it’s going to turn into disdain for the abstraction of “people that behave like this”. If we’re not talking about disdain for real people, why is there no discussion around helping people who appear unable to return their own carts? If we actually respect those people, that’s where the conversation should be.
I did that when I was in high school, bagging groceries and hauling them out was the job. Usually got $1/load tip, sometimes more, sometimes nothing. And sometimes those stupid religious tracts that look like a folded $20. But I made a killing doing that, and in addition to minimum wage. Good times.
If the cart is in perfect operating condition, I not only return it to the front of the store, but I compliment the grocery store staff on its excellent performance. If it has one of those irritating gammy wheels that goes all cockeyed and makes me bump into things, I assume it needs to be retired and I take it to the back of the grocery store parking lot to live out its days.
How much discussion does that warrant? All in favor of helping those people? [Chorus of Ayes] All opposed? [Crickets] Oh, unless you want to make the case that that, too, is solely the store’s responsibility?
I don’t care about the majority who don’t return the carts. Ain’t my job to parent them. They have their reasons, whether justifiable by my standards or not. I’m not the boss.
But I always return the cart because I want to live in a world wherein people’s first instinct is to put in a little extra effort to be courteous and considerate, so I model that behavior when I can and hope against hope that the effect spreads. Haranguing over courtesy accomplishes nothing.
My mother used to live near a Harris Teeter grocery store. Their carts have a mechanism that lock the shopping cart wheels if you try to push the cart beyond the parking lot.
I disagree. I can point to at least a dozen of my own behaviours that I disdain, and I don’t feel disdain for myself. Feeling it for others for their disdainful behaviours would be hypocrisy of the highest order. And when you count family, friends, coworkers… I can’t really think of anyone that doesn’t have at least one behaviour that I disapprove of. I don’t spend my life in a state of perpetual disdain for everyone and everything, because that’s just not productive to a happy life. Instead, I focus on the positive behaviours, try to judge them on those, and try to excuse the others.
You’re a participant in this conversation; steer the conversation in that direction, if that’s the direction you wish it to go. Make an observation, or ask a question, or respond to @Max_Blancke’s comment about how he does exactly this. But helplessly sitting by and asking “Oh, why, oh, why aren’t we discussing this instead?” while not actually making an effort to start that discussion, doesn’t do much to get that discussion started.
You are a kind and good fellow. But, until all others are like you, we must muddle as best we can through this thing we call “society”.
That’s the thing right there. I usually make the effort to return the cart. But if the anti-theft device randomly triggers, the cart is thereby abandoned where it rests.
Nope, I never take the cart beyond the confines of the lot. But I’ve had the anti-theft wheel stopper go off on me multiple times. When that happens, I feel a surge of generosity and civic pride for not simply kicking the cart over where it stands.
I think there’s two basic reasons:
(The latter is also easily observed by watching for people who won’t move two feet to drop something in a trash can or who stand next to an ash tray but flick ashes and butts on the ground.)
Roger That!
Definitely, but not always possible. Some of the grocery stores have “expectant mother” or “parent with toddlers” parking spots right next to the handicap spots, which are a convenience. And with lots of kids, sometimes getting help out from a bagger is an even bigger help. Then they just take the cart and there’s no faux pas.
