It seems like a basic courtesy to others: you get a cart at the supermarket, use it to get your groceries and bring them to your vehicle, and return it for others to use. And yet, many people ignore the cart receptacle entirely and leave their carts next to their cars or abandoned haphazardly all over the parking lot. The Cape Charles Food Lion makes it very easy and convenient to return the cart, providing two corrals within easy walking distance from anywhere in the parking lot. Still, people just leave the cart right in the middle of a parking space.
Where does this disregard come from? More than likely, it is the same type of people that just throw trash out of their car windows, somehow unable to make it to a trash receptacle.
The essence of “shopping cart theory” proposes that an individual’s moral character can be determined by whether they choose to return a shopping cart to its designated spot after use or whether they simply leave it wherever it suits them, “The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing, the post states. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.”
The author of The Shopping Cart Theory continues, “No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you, or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.” The theoretician then goes on to make some rather radical statements about those who do not pass The Shopping Cart test. “A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it,” they state.
Does Food Lion need to hire a Cart Narc?
“Americans are facing an epidemic perpetuated by the laziness of their fellow citizens,” Cart Narcs, a segment on the YouTube channel The Woody Show, states in one video. “We’re talking about the dicks who don’t put their carts back into the corral.” They decided to take matters into their own hands by publically shaming people who leave their carts in the parking lot to ding cars and take up precious parking spots.
Just put the cart back where it belongs.
What a great commentary on life in America today and those who live in it.
Garl Gustav Jung missed his time!
These people didn’t exist back then, and what a field day he would have today psycho-analyzing all these various people out there today, like the ones too weak, too tired, too whatever, to put a shopping cart in a space designated for shopping carts to be placed after use.
It really isn’t hard to do, put a shopping cart in a corral for shopping carts – no special skills are involved, or at least I don’t think they are special skills.
Not like your trying to maneuver a battleship into a tight berth or anything like that.
I’m well over 70, but I still put my cart in the corral when done with it.
But of course, this is now not only a democracy, but a sacred democracy, and in a sacred democracy, everybody gets to manufacture their own laws, rules and regulations, and the result is as this article clearly demonstrates – shopping carts left all over God’s creation instead of being put back where they belong.
I AM 76 AND ALWAYS PUT MY CART BACK. I ALSO SEE OLDER WOMEN STRUGGLING TO TAKE THEIRS BACK AND I OFFER TO TAKE THEIRS BACK FOR THEM. THIS ASSHOLE BELITTLES PEOPLE WHO ARE WEAK AND SICKLY. HE PESTERED A WOMAN WHO HAD JUST FINISHED HER FINAL CANCER TREATMENT. HE NEEDS A GOOD ASS KICKING.
BILL
I’m 76, Bill, and a permanently disabled combat veteran with spinal damage that makes it difficult to walk, so I use the cart as a walker, and when done with the cart, I return it, like a civilized person, to the place where carts belong.
And I am weak and sickly, you **** moron.
And still I can manage to put my cart back.
If the woman just finishing her cancer treatment can’t muster up the energy to put the cart back, then how on earth does she have the energy in the first place to stop her car, get out, walk over, get a cart, take the cart inside the store and push it around and do her shopping, and then wait in the check-out to cash out, then take the cart with groceries to her car to unload, at which time her energy is gone so she can’t put the cart back, but can still drive home with no trouble to unload the groceries in her house?
Riddle us that if you can, because I think you’re making up tall tales here.
If she is that sickly, why not use one of those electric carts for disabled people the stores provide?
And Bill, seriously, dude, you need to lose your writers and hire on a whole new set.
Look at the stilted lines they have left you with in a drama with no real plot and a contrived story line that frankly is implausible.
According to your writers, we, who actually know better, especially us older people who have been observing who leaves shopping carts out in the parking lot, are to believe that the culprit is a sick, weak woman who has just finished her cancer treatment, which in and of itself is a tear-jerker, and would have remained as such, a sure sympathy factor, which was lost when your writers had this woman, who if she was real, not made up for theatrical reasons, would have parked right in front where the handicapped parking slots are located with handy access to carts right outside the door so she wouldn’t have to walk out to the middle of the parking lot, instead parking out in the lot somewhere far from the store, just so she could then leave her cart somewhere other than where it belongs!
You see what I am saying here, Bill?
What your writers have you saying is simply not a realistic scenario.
Especially when we all know from years of astute observation just who the real culprits really are, and it is not weak, sick old women just finishing cancer treatment.
Just saying, Bill, because all in all, you seem nice, especially since you are one of those who does the right thing, not because somebody in a parking lot with some authority told you to, but because deep down inside, you know it’s the right thing to do, which is a testament to your upbringing.
Why isn’t the author of this article identified?
Why does the article refer to some unnamed individual as the author of The Shopping Cart Theory?
To date I don’t believe anyone has come forward to take “credit” for writing TSCT and f he is smart he will remain unidentified.
The Shopping Cart Theory was posted to the internet by an anonymous user a few years ago. The actual creator of TSCT is unknown. In case the fact that TSCP is anonymous doesn’t raise any red flags for you, consider the following.
Credible theories are based on a body of facts that are supported by citations to the work of competent researchers. TSCT does not support any of the facts it relies on to form a theory.
TSCT author falsely claims “we all recognize” that returning a cart is the correct, appropriate thing to do. If that were true it would mean that every shopper who abandons a cart believes it is wrong but does it anyway.
The truth is many people do not believe there is a single “appropriate thing to do” with a cart. In fact there are several good arguments for leaving carts scattered around parking lots. Therefore there is no reason to assume that a person who abandons his cart was refusing to do “the right thing” or that his action is any indication of his character.
CART NARCS!
TSCT is a hoax. It is so ludicrous I suspect it was written to show how little people care about the accuracy of information that appears to support their opinion. People who have a pet peeve about abandoned carts now cite TSCT as if it is irrefutable proof that people who fail to return their carts are bad members of society.
TSCT is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is responsible enough to check the source of something before republishing it as if it has any merit.
The author of this article, clearly failed that test.
Note: Shut up. Human bots.
They need to do what ALDI does and charge a quarter for using it. You get your quarter back when you return the cart. I’ve never seen a cart in the Aldi parking lot!
May have to follow Aldi stores
You have to pay for the cart upfront then get the refund after the cart is returned
As far a trash being thrown out of vehicles
Possibly the police ( instead of only setting up speed traps) set up litter traps. I believe the fine ranges from 250.00 to 1,000
Certainly could add the much needed revenue in local towns as well as county and state .
Iv watched it work in Colorado . Fines for littering are handed out with a no tolerance policies. Don’t even try to bribe Barney Fife .
It really is a great test to see what is inside a person’s heart.
Love this post
A great Sunday chuckle
To scientifically determine where the disregard comes, whether a genetic trait of some kind, or something learned, or some kind of class thing, and we really should be following the science here, because it is the right thing to do, it would be a great sociology project to put a bunch of observers with clipboards in the Cape Charles Food Lion parking lot to come up with some vital statistics and demographics and personality traits of those who, despite the Cape Charles Food Lion making it super easy and convenient to return the cart, providing not one, but two corrals within easy walking distance from anywhere in the parking lot, ignore the cart receptacle entirely and leave their carts next to their cars or abandoned haphazardly all over the parking lot, or right in the middle of a parking space.
When an observer sees this happen, they should go up to the person and ask them for a brief biographical sketch of themselves, why it is that they feel some kind of psychological need to rebel, to buck the system, to lash out at conformity, by not returning the cart to the corral.
It would be interesting to see if they are even aware of what they are doing.
It would also be interesting to see if they voted for Joe Biden and vote the straight Democrat ticket in every election.
And what kind of cars do they drive?
Are people driving a Lexus, or Mercedes or a BMW the ones doing this?
Do they feel a class superiority or something, that it should be somebody else’s job to park their cart properly for them?
Are they the same ones doing the littering, as well?
It would indeed be an interesting profile of people in America today, alright.
Etiquette and does not exist. Refined, many are not. The local yocals.
Snitches get Stitches….
I love this post as well..I do not litter, I do not spit my gum out for someone to step in, and I most definitely ALWAYS return my shopping cart.