When people talk about returning the cart after shopping, does that include putting it in a corral, or do you have to take it all the way to the front of the store to be a good person?

HandwovenConsensus@lemm.ee to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 80 points –
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Unpopular opinion: If the parking lot is uncrowded then there's nothing wrong with leaving your cart in an empty spot. Its not like the workers are gonna be given an extra breaktime if they don't have to collect carts, the store is paying the workers per hours and will always make sure they have tasks to do 100% of the time no matter what happens. I've even heard online multiple store workers say they prefer collecting carts over many of the other tasks they have to do.

So if you aren't giving the workers more work to do, and you aren't inconveniencing other parkers, then i don't see any harm in leaving a cart in a random empty parking spot of an uncrowded lot.

EDIT: just for the record, i do always return my carts, but i also think in some situations it's completely pointless

I guess that might be fine if you live somewhere were weather doesn't exist...but runaway shopping carts slamming into vehicles and causing damage is a real problem.

He doesn't care about his car, so why should he care about somebody else's property? Way to many people think like this, that's why they fail the shopping cart test.

Do you just throw your garbage on the ground so janitors have something to do too? Pat yourself on the back while doing it?

The point is to not be blocking a spot or if heavy wind picks up having the shit fly across the whole parking lot.

I hope a loose shopping cart almost hits your car just enough to give you that jolt of adrenaline from thinking your stuff is about to get ruined.

As someone who had that job as a teenager, saying it's better than other tasks is not a high bar. Yeah sure, it sucks less than cleaning the bathrooms or dealing with particularly shitty customers, but that doesn't mean I was pumped to have to walk the whole fuckin lot to gather all the loose carts that lazy assholes couldn't be bothered to put back. Gee thanks for the extra work for the lowest paid person at the store, how generous.

How is it extra work? If you weren't spending the time doing that task, wouldn't you be spending the same time doing a more disliked task instead?

Do you think we never got to stop working for a second? Yeah, retail is notorious for the whole "time to lean, time to clean" thing, but we actually did get to chill out if we were caught up. But we were almost never caught up because some people are jerks who leave their carts all over the lot.

Randomly placed carts are in the way and there is no reason ever to not put them away.

At the Walmart, I am careful to leave them in the center of the parking spot designated for our law enforcement partners. I'm sure our law enforcement partners find this kindness to be convenient, and time saving for them.

I've even heard online multiple store workers say they prefer collecting carts over many of the other tasks they have to do.

Oh, a random person asserted a claim based on nothing? Well then, point well proven

EDIT: just for the record, i do always return my carts, but i also think in some situations it's completely pointless

Still wrong. It's been well demonstrated that there is always a point, be it courteousness or safety. Even if someone thinks it's doing some kind of favour for the workers, it's still creating an obstacle and/or hazard for other people using the parking lot.

A lot of people are saying they did this job as a teenager, I did it mid 20's and yes, I liked the job. I never had to deal with customers, I just pushed carts. But people leaving carts in the middle of nowhere were a babe on my existence.

I don't know how many carts there were in or store but on a normal day and especially a busy day they would be constantly used. Our corrals would all overflow simultaneously if not emptied. And then you have some dipshit who decides they can't be asked to walk a little further. I had to have a route in order to collect carts and keep our corrals under control. If I had to walk an extra 10 minutes out of my way to get a cart it would set me back 20+ minutes of work, without fail. And if I didn't collect it then carts would start piling up, without fail. Then you'd get the mixed cart bullshit and you can only push so many mixed carts.

Putting your cart makes the job actually reasonable. You can plan and coordinate and organize yourself to know where to go when to pick up carts. It allows you to predict where carts will end up and efficiently walk so you're not destroying your body. When people screw with that rhythm the whole thing goes to pot.

As an occasional cart pusher, I'd absolutely agree when the weather is nice. Being able to chill for a second as I walk to get the straggling cart is nice. If it's raining or extremely cold/hot out tho, fuck anyone doing that; I wanna get as many carts in as I can as fast as I can.