Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.

[Packrat]

So regarding shopping carts, does the USA not have the thing where the carts have a chain and lock to each other, meaning you can only remove one from the stack by putting in a coin, that is then released when the cart is returned and chained back up again?

Here leaving a cart (or shopping trolley to use local parlance) rolling around the car park means you are leaving a £1 coin in it and so people rarely do such things.

[Too Old For This]

@packrat Nope! Here people actively steal shopping carts because our poor people will walk to the store, get their groceries, then wheel them home in the carts! You will find carts for Target in the Walmart parking lot. Carts for Petsmart in the Target parking lot, and there's always some unnamed shopping cart just sadly abandoned by the side of the roam. We believe in free range carts and in more recent times have turned to lo-jacking the carts to prevent theft of them.

But it does mean that they get left around the lot by assholes who can't be bothered to walk 5 yards to put it away.

[Grayson]

Some places here don't demand a quid in the trolley, @Packrat - but those places all have little brakes on one wheel of the trolley, IME these days, so if they go outside the range of the little transmitters in the car park they lock up and refuse to trolley (and occasionally lock up and refuse to trolley inside the supermarket too, though they've gotten better about that since the early days).

[Tributary]

@packrat Our local grocery (Publix FTW) has an employee offer to help you to your car with your purchases. This means you never have to worry about your cart, because the employee will take it with them when they return to the store. They'll often use the time to snag other carts that may have been abandoned in the parking lot. It's an excellent system.

[Roz]

I've seen the coin to get a cart thing in the US, but rarely. And actually the one that comes to mind first is Aldi, which isn't an American company, so I assume is probably just bringing over standards from Europe.

[Ganymede]

@packrat

[Grayson]

After Overheard in Waitrose, this was Overheard in Aldi:

This place is fantastic value for money, I got a shopping trolley that was on display outside for £1!

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@roz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I've seen the coin to get a cart thing in the US, but rarely. And actually the one that comes to mind first is Aldi, which isn't an American company, so I assume is probably just bringing over standards from Europe.

From Germany, more particularly. It's become common in Denmark as well, dunno about the rest of Europe. We have a lot of German discount chains here, they introduced the idea.

[Cobalt]

Whelp, I'm supposed to go back to work today. Wish my luck that I don't relapse back into pneumonia.

[faraday]

Just saying... The Shopping Cart Theory is Ableist.

There are many reasons why someone may be unable to walk the extra five yards to return a shopping cart that have nothing whatsoever to do with their character.

I myself have done it on occasion - for instance, when my kids were very little and it was winter out, I would buckle them into their car seats first and unload the groceries second. I wasn't going to then take them back out of the car and repeat the whole car seat shenanigans if the cart return was too far from the car. (I tried to park very close to the cart returns for this reason, but that wasn't always possible.)

There are millions of parents in this same boat. To say nothing of the other millions of people with chronic fatigue, depression, mobility issues, or a whole host other physical and mental challenges that might turn "push the shopping cart an extra 5 yards" into a monumental challenge.

Yes, it's nice to return the shopping cart when you can. But quit judging people when you don't know their struggles.

[Jeshin]

@faraday

Is the Shopping Cart theory even real, it seems like a kind of tongue in cheek this is something we see everyday thing to make a point. People don't take overly simplified examples as real do they?

[Grayson]

@jeshin They really, really do.

[Testament]

@jeshin said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@faraday

Is the Shopping Cart theory even real, it seems like a kind of tongue in cheek this is something we see everyday thing to make a point.

That's more or less how I've always read it. Wasn't inferring that anything seriously be taken regarding it. I figure that a story written on 4chan shouldn't be taken as some kind of great moral and philosophical thought experiment. For something like that, I'd just point to the Ship of Theseus.

I literally posted it because I was annoyed that leaving after leaving Target last week, someone left a cart directly against my driver's side door and I was mildly annoyed.

But really, it's the people that say jiff instead of giff who're the real monsters.

[Darren]

At least it's only 25 cents for the cart here in the US.

These days they have people cleaning and disinfecting the carts after each use so they don't bother locking them up anymore. Which is nice for people like me, who can never remember to bring a quarter for the cart.

[faraday]

@jeshin said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@faraday

Is the Shopping Cart theory even real, it seems like a kind of tongue in cheek this is something we see everyday thing to make a point. People don't take overly simplified examples as real do they?

I’ve seen it many times, often seemingly posted in earnest. And some of the comments when it’s shared are just vile. Which is why it bugs me.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@faraday said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I’ve seen it many times, often seemingly posted in earnest. And some of the comments when it’s shared are just vile. Which is why it bugs me.

Usually from the same crowd who will tell you not to let your illness control your life, that you choose whether you want to be a victim, and that where there's a will there's a way.

A.k.a. the 'never have been sick for real' crowd.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

There are millions of parents in this same boat. To say nothing of the other millions of people with chronic fatigue, depression, mobility issues, or a whole host other physical and mental challenges that might turn "push the shopping cart an extra 5 yards" into a monumental challenge.

Anything involving children sounds like a "dire emergency" to me, to say nothing of the situations above which all scream of "people are differently abled."

But this does not stop me from kicking the shin of my friend for not returning her cart because I know that bitch doesn't have an excuse.

[Missingno]

This post is deleted!

[Too Old For This]

@cassite said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

...I mean, I guess? I've got a whole slew of chronic illnesses, and if I'm well enough to push that cart around the store, I'm well enough to push it the ten-to-fifteen feet from my car to the return.

The intent of that copy/pasta isn't for your one-offs that you haven't done it, it's measuring the fact that you're capable of empathy for the person whose job it is to clean up after you. I have certainly not had enough spoons on given days to return the cart, but on those days, I felt like an asshole about it. Because it was an unspoken rule, because I was breaking it, and because I was making more work for someone.

As far as I can tell, that silly copy/paste isn't saying "If you ever see a shopping cart out of place, you know an asshole did it." It's saying, "Know the ramifications that your actions have on other people."

Or maybe this just pisses me off extra because the tiny grocery store I shop at has a cart-returner who's friendly as hell and in his seventies, and imagining him roaming through the rain in 2c weather for stragglers makes my heart literally break.

Anyhow.

^^This^^
Having worked at Wal-Mart and having to chase down carts, sometimes halfway across the parking lot, while being horrifically underpaid for any part of that job, AND dealing with my own issues? Sucks. More often than not, the people working AT Walmart? Also suffer from things like chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, etc. and we still have to schlepp our asses around and gather up the carts. It sucks. It sucks all around. I'm also a single mother. I've absolutely had to put my son into his car seat, load the groceries... and then I locked the car with my son securely fastened in his seat, so I could push the cart down to the return so I wasn't being 'that guy'. Because I've worked that job and had to deal with that hassle. The problem with 'but my X' is that everyone wants to be the exception. So whose 'X' is more important? Is your depression rating higher than my own? Is my fatigue worse than yours? We have to be willing to be decent people and allow that everyone has an 'X' and acknowledge that we need to be willing to push past it to do the right thing.

[Macha]

I'm the asshole that will call people out for not returning their carts. "Really? Just gonna leave it there?"

On another note - massive sugar crashes in the middle of the night /suuuuuuuuck/. My boss got a text left for him that I'm not sure was coherent, telling him I may not be up to working today. (I'm not. I'm maybe awake a half hour at a time). Because yes, Boss, I LOVE sugar crashing and making myself useless for a whole day. /s