I’m sure that in a previous post in this very thread I said that I wheeled my cart as close to the exit as I could and popped the wheels over the curb so it wouldn’t roll away. You should try reading for comprehension.
Admittedly, it does make it slightly easier for me, but it’s the better part of a mile from the store to my home, so an extra 100 feet or so is not a big factor. Your assessment of my motivation is incorrect, but I’m sure you’re used to that.
I’m curious–who does collect the carts that people have stolen and left all over town, in alleys and streets and yards? When do they do this? Does the store provide a pickup truck or something? Does the collector make overtime?
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, then. Are you saying that the parking lot does not have corrals (i.e. metal enclosures designed to hold carts) at regular intervals throughout the lot? If so, then I see no problem with what you’re doing. What I have a problem with are people who can’t walk 20 feet to a corral, and leave carts scattered throughout the lot.
Around here I’ve heard of retired people gathering abandoned shopping carts from around the neighbourhood and returning them to the store for payment. I don’t know how common that is though, I just heard about it recently when one of the suburbs proposed a bylaw that would deprive them of that source of income.
Sears started providing shopping carts for its customers about a year ago. Since then, carts have been found not only all over the mall, but all over the parking lot, and sometimes even in the adjoining town. In my own personal experience, I’ve had to collect carts from all over the store and the mall. But hey, that’s my job, right?
No, it isn’t.
I once found a dirty diaper left in a shopping cart in the middle of the store. Guess who had to clean it up? But hey, that’s my job, right?
No, it isn’t.
It’s not going to break your delicate little hands to push the cart back where it belongs.
When we had no car and lived within a mile of the grocery store, we asked the store if we could take the groceries home and then walk back the cart. They always said yes, and that is what we did. Not everyone you see wheeling the cart across town is a theif and not everyone will leave it abandonded.
You left it lying unattended on the ground and the wind blew it into my yard. I picked it up and used it to wipe my ass.
Then I threw into your yard, asshole.
Ok, are you aware that most “cart gatherers” are not hired for the express purpose of gathering carts? Maybe this is a difficult concept for you to grasp, but “cart gatherers” are more well known as BAGGERS. Yes, that’s right, in between running around and getting the damn carts from the entire parking lot, these poor kids getting paid minimum wage are expected to bag groceries and escort people to their cars, and load the cars with groceries.
I bet you bitch if all the baggers are too busy pushing carts to bag your groceries too…
Apparently this is the only post in this thread that Bill Door has not read.
Yes, if the town is populated completely with lazy assholes then the stores probably must employ full-time cart-gatherers. This means EXTRA people on the payroll to collect carts left all over the place by lazy assholes. That means that my food/clothing/whatever is more expensive because of the lazy assholes.
If the town only has a FEW lazy assholes, then they may not have a full-time cart gatherer. They may assign this job to a bagger. So while said bagger is out collecting the carts of the lazy assholes, I end up bagging my own groceries or spending ten minutes in the express lane because the cashier has to bag everyone’s groceries. So the few lazy assholes in town make my shopping experience worse.
Either way, I call Bill Door a lazy asshole. No matter how you slice it, my shopping experience is lessened because of you.
Once when leaving Target I loaded my stuff into the truck and then proceeded to return my cart to the collecter (a good distance away). When I got back my GF asked me why I did that. I answered “Because we live in a society, and this is one of the things that greases the wheels of society.”
You can choose to be the grease, or you can be the sand that grinds up and slows the gears of society to a halt.
Speaking of baggers, couldn’t all of the arguments used against people who don’t return their carts* be used against people who don’t bag their own groceries? After all, if everyone did it themselves, they could lay off all those baggers, which would save shoppers way more money than they’re spending on having some guy run around the parking lot every couple hours gathering carts. It might even add up to a whole cent per shopper! Imagine that!
*Except the car damage arguments, of course.
That’s right, Bill. You not returning your cart to the corral is going to lead directly to the collapse of Western civilization. It happened to the Romans!
Not directly. Indirectly.
Lazy assholes are the same the world over.
I stand corrected. Improper shopping cart storage indirectly led to the fall of Rome.
Sure did. All those barbarians were coming and the Romans needed to gather up their arms and armor, but some selfish fucker had left the shopping carts all over, so it took em forever, and then they were overrun.
Actually alot of discount groecery stores do exactly that. They even charge you for bags. Save-a-Lots is a local example.The prices are pretty good too.
That dirty diaper that butthole left in one of those carts was how the plague got started.
Exactly. If Rome had had keyboards, all of those lazy assholes would have been online defending their actions in the parking lot rather than defending the empire.
Since we have no written evidence of this, we can assume they spent their time bitching verbally about the shopping cart situation up until Rome was overrun.
Why is this so hard to understand? 
P.S. I’m done here, but I still think that people who leave their carts laying around are lazy assholes. Roman or not.
You’ve trotted out this bold faced, plainly damned stupid lie in two threads now.
You aren’t saving any job, you’re making the job more difficult and less efficient than it needs to be because you can’t get common courtesy or basic concepts of a fairly simple work process through your damned thick skull.
Clearly not, as it isn’t common courtesy or generally accepted that Americans bag their own groceries. They aren’t comparable issues.
It’s not primarily an issue of cost, it’s an issue of being polite, of being a good member of the society in which we all must live. It’s about not creating unnecessary work for poorly paid store employees and not creating a dangerous situation for other shoppers who face damage to their cars from carts drifting around all over the lot. Is any of this getting through?
The way this problem has been dealt with in the UK , especially over carts ( or trolleys as we call them ) being taken off site , is to make the store responsible . This then makes the store put in place measures to ensure that the carts are not taken off site. This is an extract from the relevent law :-
*Section 99
Where any shopping or luggage trolley is found abandoned, the local authority may remove the trolley.
Local authorities can collect abandoned shopping (and luggage) trolleys, store them and charge owners for their return. Adopting a deposit system, installing obstacles which prevent trolleys being taken off the site or publicising a trolley collection service will help control this problem and prevent retailers being charged for trolley collections.*
I didn’t realise that most Americans don’t bag their groceries themselves, we have the option here but it is generally only taken up by the elderly or lazy. I’d feel like a bit of a plum if I requested my bags were packed for me plus they’d probably bugger my system up.
With regards to trolley deserters, I think this is just plain laziness. Yes you don’t have to do it; in fact you don’t have to do anything - that includes being a lazy asshole.
Bill Door used the example ‘When you stay in a hotel, do you make your own bed?’ Well, as a matter of fact I do and I also have a quick tidy up as I was brought up to clean up my own mess and also to treat others as I want to be treated myself. Just because it is someone’s job it doesn’t mean you have to make it as hard as possible then try and convince yourself that you are somehow doing them a favour by giving them a job in the first place.
The Martin’s just two blocks away had this feature when it first opened, and AFAI can tell, this is how it worked: One of the rear wheels of the cart had a little flashing light (sensor) of some kind that was receiving some sort of “signal” from special lights in the store and around the parking lot, to the perimiter of the parking lot. Once the flashing light could no longer sense the special lights in the store or parking lot, that wheel would stop spinning, making pushing the cart very difficult. Well, the way some of the folks in this neighborhood got around that was to pry the box that was attached to the shopping cart wheel off with something. I’m guessing replacing them wouldn’t have been cheap, and the store never bothered. By the time about half of the carts didn’t have the sensors any more, the store just deactivated them all, and now the carts, with and without sensor boxes, are seen all over the neighborhood.
I apologize for the atrocious English in this post. I was up very early this morning.