I’ll never understand people who make doing free labor for a corporation some sort of top tier ethical standard.
Not lttering, following traffic rules, there are so many small ways we make our society better and yet people get so worked up over the one that is providing free labor.
Sounds like we’ve got a lazybones on our hands.
Not lttering
What do you think leaving a cart in a random spot is if not littering?
Not littering.
There is a specific place you are supposed to put the thing when you’re done with it. It’s basically littering to do otherwise.
Yes clearly that’s exactly the same as throwing trash around at a park /s
basically
exactly
🤡
Thank you!! I upvoted away one of your down votes. You have said what I was thinking!
Um, not free labor. Preventing that cart from damaging cars
There are some of you out there that really can’t return the cart. Maybe it’s your own mobility issues; maybe it’s children, animals, or something else that you can’t leave unattended in the vehicle; maybe you just ran out of spoons picking up your medical supplies; whatever reason–I got chu, fam.
When I turn around to return my cart, I always look for stragglers and bring them back. I’m forever alone, but healthy, so getting carts back to their “home” is the least I can do.
“We do what small things we can” gang
“A rising tide raises all ships” has become my mantra as I try to do small things for others and for my community
Really, really, really small
Better than nothing 🤷♀️
Feeling powerless and useless and shitty and need to do something to make the world a more positive place, no matter how tiny. I cast big squishy trans pride silicone six sided dice and gave them away at a board game convention and the happiness that brought some people is one of the things keeping me alive tbh, more literally than most people would like to know about.
So I used to put my cart back all the time but then I found out it creates jobs for people that cant get a job. Some one getting out of jail living in a half way home can use these jobs to get out of their situation. I no longer put it back.
It’s hard to believe that a reddit post about being able to tell if someone is a decent person based on whether or not they put a shopping cart away has stuck around as long as it has. It’s a pretty arbitrary metric.
My hot take is that there’s an assumption that the employees don’t want to go waaaaayyyyy out to get the carts.
When I worked at whole foods, I loved the outfield carts. I got to get away from the all seeing eye of management for a little bit, sometimes see a sunset, get to breathe some fresh air…
I know not everyone is like me, but not everyone is unlike me either.
Sometimes I still take a cart to the furthest possible space to give the poor cart worker a damn break.
Not only do I put my cart away, I will take a few extra seconds to organize a couple carts that have just been pushed in all willy nilly (my grocery store has 2 sizes of cart). Like if I can take 30 seconds out of my life to make some else’s day just a little bit easier, I definitely will.
Always cart corral or reserved police parking.
Nobody posted the copypasta yet? I guess it’s gotta be me, then.
Smug virtue signaling anyone?
Found the animal.
Of all the things to get your panties in a twist about. Oh, world’s on fire, I’m going to make cart etiquette a big thing.
Exactly, the world is on fire and www are verging ww3. People that can’t do the bare minimum can’t be trusted in current times.
Yeah, etiquette is important. I’ll tell you off for queue jumping too, if you like. Did your parents not teach you to pick up after yourself? Do you need to be sent back to kindergarten?
We’re all on the same side here — on Lemmy and the Fediverse.
This is something I care about.
I want people to abandon corporate social media and I want them to support and use Federared options run by cool people.
That’s you.
That you spend your time worrying about carts is not really relevant to what connects us.
I just want to let you know that I can be courteous and professional and interested and interesting and still believe that carts are not a big deal.
The topic of this post, on the memes community, is shopping carts. I think it is an okay place to share our opinions about lazy people.
My choice not to return those is a political decision to make corporations pay for their privilege.
I watched someone in a Costco parking lot shove his cart onto one of those berms at the end of a row, very obviously about to walk away from it. I was already frustrated, so I walked over and basically yanked it from him, saying something to the effect of “no don’t worry I’ll get it” in a very “you’re part of the problem” tone.
It felt nice, I’m not gonna lie.
Yes, smug self satisfaction at the expense of others feels nice. You do you bro.
My local Costco recently removed the coin locks. Almost immediately, trolleys were fucking everywhere except in the bay.
The coin locks never bothered me because I have a pick for them on my keys. And yes, I return the damn trolley every time.
Sounds like the other guy didn’t have to do Costco’s job, and you got to feel smug and superior without any real reason. Win win win
Maybe don’t be an asshole by lodging it on a berm behind another car and just walk the extra 20 feet to put your fucking cart in the corral.
Oh I didn’t do that. You’re confusing me with the person you met in the Costco parking lot. But I am not them!
We got a live one
A live one what? I don’t use shopping carts because I’m not a cuck.
What a wild sentiment haha. Guy’s so insecure that he thinks using a SHOPPING CART will make him less manly.
Why is being a cuck anything to do with manliness?
Ohhhhh so you literally mean that people who use shopping carts are in relationships where their SO is having sex with someone else behind their backs?
Right. Of course that’s what you meant. Well obviously that would be a MUCH more normal thing to believe.
What does one’s kinks have to do with their shopping practices?
Our guy installed wheels on his arms and legs in order to get the fully uncucked shopping experience, like because he’s just built different.
You’re really weird
What dont ones kinks have to do with shopping?
Do you throw crash on the ground because it’s the custodian’s job to pick it up?
Can you explain why you believe this analogy is valid? I don’t think you can, but I’d absolutely love to see you try.
Just because it’s someone’s job to tidy up doesn’t make it okay to be messy.
And why do you see deliberately throwing trash on the ground as being analogous to leaving the cart near where it was needed, and will be needed again?
Because throwing trash next to a trash can is still littering.
Well done.
That time Cart Narcs got a gun pulled on them in Texas:
Assholes have guns and that’s all they need to think they’re right.
deleted by creator
I was fine with annoying guy calling out the dude for not putting his cart away. Until he pulled out a magnet, (at least it wasn’t a sticker). Don’t fuck with people’s property.
People that think gun is the appropriate response to magnet are a big part of why I want to leave this country.
The way he so quickly racked that slide is a huge tell that this isn’t his first rodeo. If you brandish on someone with a sticker or magnet, you know you’re not in any real danger. Dude is just a psycho nutbag who has never lost an argument because his retaliation is always gun.
This is the kind of guy to shoot at kids for knocking on his front door while his family tells the media he’s a good person.
I want to agree with this sooo badly. But I have some empathy for crazy gun guy. And in some dispicable sense, the gun guy is acting completely rationally, if being severely short sighted.
Hypothetical: You drop litter on the ground. On purpose because you’re a thoughtless asshat. Someone calls you on it. Shouting ensues. They slap a magnet on your car. You rip it off and throw it on the ground because you have already demonstrated your unwillingness to give a shit about leaving things to rot in mother nature. They, in response, give your car a nice new scratch with a key and the damage is now permanent.
What’s your next move? Walk away? Call the police? Try to get their license plate and submit to your insurance company? Shame them on Tik Tok?
You’ve lost because your opponent was willing to escalate to vandalism, a crime for which you suffer and that no one is likely to take seriously enough to bring justice.
Society has broken down in this little ecosystem of two. Anyone can injure you, threaten your livelihood. Take away your security. What’s stopping them?
Until you unholster that 1.5lb mechanism of steel, lead, and brass. Now, you’re back in control. You are secure. Things are certain again. No one will be scratching your car, breaking your window, stealing food out of the mouths of your children.
There’s a certain rationality behind it, is all I’m saying.
Of course, we as rational thinkers can see the folly inherent in this escalation. Every petty spat becomes a life or death scenario. If we assume the rule of law still punished outright murder, then you are right back to your original quandary of whether to walk away or be the ultimate kind of “right”.
This is where mores in a society become critical. Maybe we’ve lost our sense of right and wrong behind a veil of rule-of-law. Maybe we’ve become too virtual to truly have a society based on mutual values. Maybe I’m just high and should go stare out a window.
TL;DR: Don’t litter.
I agree the guy shouldn’t be so quick to pull a gun, but it also solved his problem very quickly. He was getting harassed, gun came out, he was no longer harassed. Nobody got hurt, nothing was damaged, and the situation was resolved quickly.
The Cart Narc guy was fine at first, but he should’ve said his business and left it at that. He kept arguing, pulled out a magnet and was just harassing the guy over a cart. The guy in the van has no idea when the dude will stop, so he stops him safely (for him). He didn’t jump out to fight. Is a gun an over reaction, absolutly, but the results speak for themselves.
How does this resolve in California? Same people, no gun? Do they all hug at the end?
I agree the guy shouldn’t be so quick to pull a gun, but it also solved his problem very quickly. He was making sure carts were returned, gun came out, no more carts in the parking lot. Nobody got hurt, nothing was damaged, and the situation was resolved quickly.
Does it sound insane yet?
Yes, its insane the most effective way to say “don’t put that thing on my truck and go away” is a gun, or in your version “put the cart away”. Both are in the wrong.
Cart guy should’ve left earlier, gun guy should never pulled a gun (and put the fucking cart away)
Wow USA is strange, how did calling the police after the vandalism become “losing” or “irrational”.
It sounds like the thought process is: just in case someone might commit a crime, preemptive escalation is the best choice.
Wild. I’d call that thought procecess verging on sociopathic not rational. If a person’s fear of crime is so crippling that they think society has broken down because they fear a crime that they dream might happen; that person was never a well adjusted member of society. I’d think anyone trying to do business with or interact with such people should be careful - they’re unlikely to follow predictable or normal behaviour patterns.
I’d get that mindset might be rational for the BLM-type victims in those states /areas where law and order does seem to systematically fail some communities. But if it’s based on fear rather than evidence of law and order having broken down then, it’s less rational.
Dude, going from my car got a removable magnet on it to my car got keyed to my children’s lives are at stake is an insane take, not a rational one. Justifying shooting someone because you’re generally scared is something cops do when they shoot an unarmed, handcuffed black man because an acorn sounds like danger. It’s not a defensible position.
Maybe I’m just high and should go stare out a window.
You’ve unironically provided verbal support for a guy wanting to use lethal force against someone causing no property damage while attempting to bring attention to anti-social behavior.
Yes, you should probably reflect some on why you believe that murdering someone over a magnet is appropriate (brandishing a firearm is assault with a deadly weapon, and in some places attempted murder for a reason).
Lol don’t tread on me, right?
fucking ALWAYS.
always and forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tKAVPLgPrI
This is such a weak post. You really wanna be a good steward of carts? Get one from the corral on the way in instead of using one from the inside. Especially if it’s not out of the way. Make the cart retriever’s job even easier. Especially on super hot/cold days.
This is the way.
Also, by taking a cart from the corral and bringing it in with you, you’re actively modeling a virtuous behavior you hope people emulate, which does more to correct the problem than whining online about it.
But it does make me wonder about us sometimes. How did we get this way? How did “Fuck everybody else; got mine” become the default way Americans think? Am I the weird one for being raised to be thoughtful about these kinds of choices?
I don’t claim to be perfect. I’ve had bad days when I take advantage that permissiveness-inconsiderateness that I see around me all the time, but I always know that it’s wrong, and that I’m doing an inconsiderate thing, but that my frustration affords me the grace to be selfish about this one thing.
One of the Academy Award nominated short films this year is Instruments of a Beating Heart, about a class of Japanese first-grade students preparing to perform Ode to Joy for the new first year students that will take their places. It’s primarily about the struggle of one girl, but set against the backdrop of Japanese grade school life, student responsibility and expectation-setting for young humans experiencing their first non-familial social environments. It made me think “Well, at least these kids are going to be alright.”
The most generous explanation I can get is that people who don’t put them in the corrals think they’re not as bad as other people not leaving them in the corrals because “hey, at least I put it on the curb,” or “hey, at least I didn’t didn’t leave it in the handicap area,” or “hey, at least I didn’t put it on a slope so it won’t hit any cars,” etc.
I also think there is just a ton of classism here. A lot of people feel better by belittling others. I think on some level the working class realizes they’re being taken advantage of, but rather than taking it out in those above them they make others feel lower than themselves. “I am a hard worker. I put in 60 hours a week. My body wasted away. I am honorable for doing this to support my family. I am not lazy. I have skills. Minimum wage workers at the shopping center are lazy and have no skills. I am doing them a favor. I will not stoop to their level by performing such tasks.” I think it makes working class people feel like royalty to belittle other working class people they view as less than themselves.
I don’t know how it got like this. I can make guesses all day long but I really don’t know.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Because otherwise the parking lot would just be a mess of carts randomly felt everywhere.
Yea, no such thing in my country. Practically everyone returns the cart.
I do this, not because I’m courteous but because if I take one from the outdoor corrals I don’t have to wait behind three grannies slowly selecting carts from the inside corral.
It doesn’t matter what the reasoning is. The net effect is positive.
It’s important to maintaining my self-image as a cool and aloof guy that you know I’m not doing the nice thing out of the goodness of my heart.
No problem, Han Solo.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Cart retriever ? Why is that even a job.
Dang dude that Wojack character went straight to Woah, Jack
Always! And I have those super sized insulated grocery bags so I can usually carry everything with both hands once I’m done checking out. So I just return my cart back in at the door and macho walk out of the store. 😤
Why is this practice promoted?
It’s someone’s job and they make their money grabbing those carts, aren’t we taking that away from them if all is perfectly arranged and they can just collect the carts in 2 minutes? This concept seems to only benefit the business in saving labor?
Coincidentally, I was checking out two days ago at a Costco and the manager came up to my cashier and said, “close up after this one, I’m going to send you home early okay?” The cashier said, “yeah, I guess…” But you could tell they clearly didn’t want to leave early. If there were a bunch of carts in the parking lot at that point, feels like that person might get an extra 30 mins or so on the clock… Why aren’t we supporting that? Manager would say, " let’s close you down after this one, and then please do a lap in the parking lot to grab carts before you go"
Us carefully putting the carts away as customers is just free labor that the corporation benefits from… Period. How does this help the worker making an hourly wage?
As someone who has previously put carts away for a job. No, not only does leaving carts out make it more annoying to pick up it can also damage other people’s vehicles, and take up parking spots. Carts roll around or are difficult to see and can get hit. This is the equivalent of saying to just knock stuff off the shelf as you walk through the store, an employee would have to pick that up and it would just cost the company money.
Leaving a shopping cart near your car is the same as deliberately causing damage to products in the store? Very very interesting point of view, if completely unhinged.
You have strong opinions on this topic for there being “a million more urgent matters” or whatever you said in your other comment.
I don’t think this comment actually responds to my points. I’ve worked many hourly retail and restaurant jobs myself. In many there was a regular struggle to hit minimum hours per week to qualify for benefits and managers were instructed to cut people during perceived slow times - none of this considering that I sat in an hour traffic to show up for my scheduled 8 hour shift that I need to meet to make my rent.
I was happy when gobacks piled up, shelves needed to be faced, tables needed to be bused and yes, to carts needed to be collected. When that was the case, I typically made my hours in those common, “we’re going to need to cut someone” moments.
Again, this entire conversation seems biased to the business owner, the corporation’s labor cost, and not the employee. Saying “all the carts are going to hit cars” is a false premise, in my opinion. And what I’m arguing for is the “good trouble” version of this. Place the carts safely away and maybe near the corral, but not in the corral.
Near the corral doesn’t take a lot more time to pick up from in the corral. I agree that leaving then in the corral is fine, someone still has to pick them up from there. But leaving the cart randomly outside has the potential to cause issues for others, completely ignoring the business owner.
As stated previously, doesn’t seem you’ve ever worked an hourly job where management was actively working against that 29 hour threshold and sending people home early from scheduled shifts to make you avoid qualifying for expanded employees benefits.
I definitely have and that doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather not risk damaging others property for an extra 15 minutes of work.
Sounds like we’ve got a lazybones over here.
I hope you hit a shopping cart in a parking lot.
Oooh I can escalate this one. I hope you learn to drive, so you can get safely home rather than hitting very large, often brightly colored baskets with padding on all four corners.
So that you can cut your foot in the shower, get a disease, and have to have it amputated. See it escalated!
Tee hee?
Escalated from consequences for your actions to a deranged death fantasy. Must be disturbing to be around you.
Wait does amputation mean death?
Shit I had the wrong definition all along 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Def my b 4sūr
Also, we’re all just mechanicals. There is no moral high ground where you’re reaching.
I hope you learn to consider nuance and stop arguing against the interests of workers in favor of heartless corporations.
That’s a nice excuse. Whatever you gotta tell yourself, I suppose. I doubt you even believe it though. At least I hope you’re smarter than that.
Wow that’s solid condescension. What would probably help though is if you made it more clear that you think you’re superior to the other poster. Maybe you could say “don’t worry, you’ll get there”? Or perhaps “we’ve all been there, I’m sure you’ll be fine when you grow up”?
As a person who did this for a job in my youth, may I first say, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
As a worker, collecting stray carts that people left around the parking lot ate up the most time and was the least productive time I’ve ever spent while working. Also, at the store I worked at was fairly popular, on busy days, just collecting carts from the corrales took up enough time that I didn’t really have time left over to make up for you being a lazy asshole.
As a consumer, I put away other people’s stray carts, not only for the reasons above but because I don’t want the cart demon to direct the carts into my car and cause it any damage. I also don’t want my discarded cart to end up causing damage to anyone else’s car. So fuck you for creating an easily avoidable problem that has the potential to damage my property. You suck.
Objectively, returning your cart is the correct, and proper path to take. However, nobody will arrest you, or fine you for not doing it. It is purely voluntary, but universally recognized as the right thing to do. Since you do not do it, what does that mean about you as a person? I think it means you’re a dickhead.
Stop being selfish and lazy, then justifying it with “someone gets paid to do that”. No, that’s not the reason. The reason is that you’re a terrible person, an asshole, and a dickhead.
So I reiterate: fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.
Again, not addressing the valid points I’ve introduced. Also, very odd phrasing throughout…
“Did this for a job in my youth?” We humans don’t speak like that? Also, “in my youth” sounds like the shopping cars you were collecting were horse drawn.
“the least productive time I ever spent while working?” Who the fuck worries about productivity in a minimum wage job like this? “Yeah, I don’t know Dad… I’ve just been really worried lately that my productivity is down this quarter. I’m cleaning up less vomit per hour at Weiner Hut than typical and I’m just worried the business owner isn’t extracting as much profit from my labor as they could be…”
This is like saying we should throw our litter on the floor because it keeps people employed to pick it up.
It’s labour that doesn’t need to exist in the first place because people can’t be considerate of others.
“labor that doesn’t need to exist” feels like it’s from a very privileged POV. what if those 30-40 mins here and there are the difference between me meeting the 29 hour a week threshold required to qualify for health or education benefits?
I’m commenting from a US biased perspective where you seem to be commenting from a European perspective based on your spelling. If that’s the case, you already have your core needs met through your government, we do not in this flawed country.
You literally said the labor does have to exist
It’s just who is doing the labor.
