Do You Put Your Shopping Cart Back?
I was at Lidl in Lanoka Harbor a couple of weeks ago, and as I was pulling into a parking space, a woman who just unloaded her groceries into her trunk dropped off her cart in the empty parking
space next to me. I looked at her with the “Are you kidding me” face. I got out of the car as she was getting into hers and said, “Really lady, you can’t walk a few hundred feet to put the cart back in the corral?” She gave me a dirty look and sat in her Mercedes watching me as I made my way the store entrance with the cart she left in the space. While I was walking towards the store, I grabbed another runaway cart and carefully wheeled it into the cart corral next to the entrance. That’s how I roll.
I came across an actual study that labels FIVE different types of shopping cart returners. Here’s how it breaks down . . .
1. People who always return their cart. They have a sense of obligation, or feel bad for making someone else do it.
2. Never Returners. People who never do it and feel it’s someone else’s responsibility. They might even justify it by saying something like, “It gives someone a job. If everyone returned their cart, that person would be out of work.”
3. Convenience Returners. People who only return their cart if the weather’s nice, or they’re parked close to where it’s supposed to go.
4. Pressure Returners. People who only do it if they know someone’s watching. Like an employee or someone parked right next to them.
5. Child-Driven Returners. Meaning parents who make their kids do it, or trick them into thinking it’s fun.