Do your part, return your cart: https://behavioralscientist.org/why-dont-people-return-their-shopping-carts-a-somewhat-scientific-investigation/

@epilepticrabbit Uh, becasue the supermarket employs people to look after the trolleys?

In fact, unless it's pissing it down, getting assigned outside work in the car park is considered a good shift according to my mates who work at supermarkets?

I assume this is a US study?

@epilepticrabbit I can so relate to this, as my teenage years were also spent working at a grocery store.

The behavior that gets me the most is when the cart corral is full of randomly-placed carts taking up four times as much space as they should, spilling out into the driving area between the parking spots. When another shopper comes to return their cart, rather than spending 30 seconds to organize the mess a bit to make room for their cart, they will instead leave their cart on the edge of the mess, and as long as their cart is *touching* one of the other carts they feel they've done their duty.

An interesting phenomena at the only EV charging location near me. It's in the parking lot of a grocery chain (owned by a large national conglomerate). If you back car in (which for cable to reach, you must do for some chargers), & you take the cart to the back of the vehicle, it passes the electric fence & cart wheels lock.

I admit I then lay the car in the parking strip behind the chargers. I don't think it's my obligation to *carry* the locked cart back. YMMV.

Cc: @kevin @epilepticrabbit

@bkuhn @epilepticrabbit Ouch. Lovely design flaw.

@kevin

What I never understand about the cart wheel locking systems is why it's a 1-way turn off & then needs a special tool to turn it back on?

IOW, if you cross back across the geofence, why won't the wheels turn back on automatically? My speculation is *something* makes that feature substantially more expensive per-cart, but why?

(I have tried carrying the cart 300-350cm back toward the geofence, but it doesn't unlock automatically).

Cc: @epilepticrabbit

@bkuhn @kevin @epilepticrabbit I do not need to be thinking about why this is .... Maybe to avoid extra clever people from using the auto turn on to get the cart free outside the fence?

@Crofton

I am not sure how this could be. The cart is already free to use inside the geofence. (Most USA grocery stores don't require paying to use carts¹.) So, the most you could do is drag back a cart someone else took to far & bring it back close to the store, which is the Right Thing™ to do anyway.

Maybe it's just I'm a bad person because I'm unwilling to carry a grocery cart back, & I'm influenced by fact I wouldn't even shop there if they didn't have the EV charging! 🤣

Cc: @kevin

@epilepticrabbit interesting to read this. In Germany, everybody returns their carts. Maybe it's because you need to insert a coin to release the cart (and bring it back to get your coin back). How does it work in other parts of the world?

@thomas @epilepticrabbit the coin system is mentioned in the article (search the bit about Aldi). normally you just take the cart and are expected to return it to designated corrals because that’s the rule

@kittylyst @epilepticrabbit My job in the US as a teenager was pretty much exclusively gathering up the carts at a Wal Mart. I think I would have liked it a LOT less if I were spending my shifts inside doing something else.

I still will go out of my way to return my cart to the right place, though (except in rare circumstances where I am alone with my kids and it would be a huge pain to leave them alone to drop it off but also a huge pain to get them out to take them with me).

In any case as long as the carts aren't blocking parking spots or sidewalks and they aren't in particular danger of blowing around dangerously in the wind I don't really judge other people for their cart behavior.

@opticron

Thanks. I won't do it, but I admit upon reading this, it made me think that as a method to get the attention of the store that their geofence is too tight, I want to unlock to return it to the cart corral & *then* lock it again in the corral with a note that says “I had to do extra work to get this back here because it locked at the geofence by the EV chargers. Please increase geofence slightly!”

But I'll probably just play the sound and bring it back.

Cc: @kevin @epilepticrabbit

@chrisamaphone @thomas I'm an expat living in Germany and the coin based system was one of the first things I thought was truly brilliant in the haze of my serious culture shock.