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“The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them a law and the force that stands behind it. The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.”
Noted Philosopher G. Danzig
Agree with the above. Another test is at a fast food restaurant where the patrons decide to clean up their table, removing food / condiment wrappers that were consumed. I have seen some parties walk away, leaving others to clean up after them.
ReplyDeletejrg
Glen Danzig of Misfits fame?
ReplyDelete-rightwingterrorist
The one and the same.
Deleteobviously whoever wrote this hasn't spent a summer in north texas...
ReplyDeletepanzer guy...
Eh, I'm 4 hours south of the metroplex and McThag is further south than me, and surrounded by water... Neither McThag nor I are the most mobile of people, but I can tell you that I return my carts, even when it is 110 in the shade. But yeah. G. Danzig grew up in Lodi, New Jersey and I believe he lives in Southern California now. On the other hand, both of those places are full of the kind of asshats that are probably just too lazy to do the right thing.
DeleteAldi has this figured out. To get a grocery cart there you need to put a quarter into it. You don't get the quarter back until you return the cart. It is pretty amazing how effective a quarter is at getting people to return their carts. You rarely ever see any carts left in the lot at the Aldi near me. You never see an Aldi cart left down at the nearest bus stop like you do other grocery stores. They are never out of carts when you go to Aldi, no matter how busy they are... And unlike the other chains, Aldi doesn't take up 5 or more parking spaces with cart returns, you have to return them all the way up to the front of the store. People still do it. It shows that capitalistic forces work.
ReplyDelete@G. Danzig,
ReplyDeleteNatzsofast, Shopping Cart Socrates.
Isn't it true that the carts were provided in the first place as a none-too-subtle subterfuge by the store to generate more revenue, particularly more impulse revenue, by making it easier for people to cart off more goodies than one could comfortably carry in their hands and arms, and allow them to shop for longer periods of time unhindered and unencumbered, and isn't the store therefore wholly morally responsible for their safe and convenient retrieval, as part of the cost of them doing business in this manner, thus making any effort contributed to return the carts a boon to them purely at the whim of one's own beneficence, and not instead an absolute moral obligation non-consensually laid on everyone else's shoulders??
Return it where?
Isn't it just as much their property anywhere in their lot?
(We're not attempting to justify stealing it outright from the premises.)
To the front of the store?
Inside, or outside?
Am I morally obligated to sanitize it after use as well?
Why or why not?
To the cart return rack?
To the cart return rack that is 200 yards from the only available parking spaces, because management was too lazy or cheap, or both, to put the return collection rack(s) spaced equally about the lot, rather than all the way to the front door?
Stipulating that when it's only a 20' walk to Do The Right Thing it ought to be done, what about when it's 100' away? 300'? 500'?
Where is the line between "moral duty" and "undue burden"?
What about when it's a busy shopping season, and every minute I'm cart jockeying the Jericho Mile to the return rack rather than departing expeditiously another interminable minute of torture laid upon someone else who's frantically searching for the parking space I could have already been vacating?
At that point, doesn't doing anything become the Kobayashi Maru scenario?
Is that fair and just?
What about when it's 105°; or during a torrential downpour; or when people are driving through the lot like it was qualifying heats at Daytona; or when it's after dark, and the local Yute Diversity Association is holding a victim selection meeting over by the cart rack?
What about when I have to get home to pee, because the store has thoughtfully closed the required customer restrooms, and posted a "No public restroom" sign? Can't I return the cart, and pee in the corner by the locked restroom door, and retain my moral credentials?
What about if they employ a flunkie to collect the carts left all the way yonder?
Is it right to deprive them of employment?
Don't I merit a piece of their cart jockeys' salary for doing their job for them? (Don't get me started on "self" scanning my purchases, and doing my own price checks, because they'd deliberately rather not hire enough cashiers for the customers they attract, yet offer no discount to me for performing workmen's job functions uncompensated.)
Is there any moral discount for age, disability, or infirmity?
It turns out, yet again, that this morality is just as gray, and no more absolute, than any number of similar questions.
And I'm not sure, but it looks like the umpire in charge of calling out Virtue Signalling has his hand twitching over his penalty flag.
Just saying.
Inquiring minds want to know.
That said, there is some room for common ground on the topic of Shopping Cart Ethics beyond simple piracy of same: leaving your cart totally blocking a parking space out of easily mitigated laziness, turning it loose with wanton disregard to damage other people's cars downhill or on windy days, leaving it blocking the driving lanes, or leaving your entire ploughman's lunch leftovers, discarded alcohol containers, and/or wadded up overfull baby diapers remains unquestioned douchebaggery deserving of a brief but motivated flogging and time in the public stocks.
Because if the thing rolls into my car and dings my door I will perform such rites which will make the Gods happy that THEY always return their cart to the proper receptacle.
DeleteI think the actual point of his post is about manners.
It's rude to leave the thing wherever you finished unloading it.
Point taken, and I have similar thoughts under the same circumstances, but IMHO it's not quite so cut-and-dried. I think there's plenty of room for shared blame there.
DeleteMy favorite Stupid Human Story was once, while pulling into a lot at Le Boutique Targét, I witnessed the Exorcist-bidden shopping cart being blown slowly across my bow, so I slowed down to let it pass unhindered by my bodywork, before pulling into a space.
It subsequently hit a driver downhill not so situationally aware, who charged over, accused me of pushing it into his car, and wanted my information with a view to ringing me up for the substantial scuff to his bodywork.
I politely (seriously, I was) explained to him the reality of the situation he only knew the half of, and explained to him that in lieu of pounding sand, he have a chat with the store management about their security videos, both to ascertain my utter blamelessness, and perhaps track down the actual culprit.
That was the end of that.
I completely understand the rage and annoyance he felt, and agree about the douchebaggery of the person responsible, but given the dearth of any cart corral for most of half an acre in any direction, even they aren't entirely to blame for the situation.
People who don't put the cart back, when doing so is a trifling thing, remain wholly to blame, exactly as Philosopher Danzig suggests.
But that's not always the case.
So, before covid-19 and our entire family self-quarantining for the last 16 months, (seriously, every bit of shopping we do is either curbside or online), not only would I typically return the cart INSIDE THE STORE to the rack, but I might even grab one left in the middle of the parking lot by someone from Florida (yeah, that's a thing where I live) and push it inside as well. No one ever thanked me, or even acknowledged me, and I never stopped doing it, because that's not why I did it in the first place. But to leave a cart taking up a parking space (or in some cases, two) is the epitome of being unilaterally self-centered with absolutely no concept of decency and less than zero class... especially when they do it RIGHT NEXT TO THE FRACKING cart return.
ReplyDeleteThere's some effin' lame excuses here. If you can push the cart full of shopping to your car, you can push it back empty to the store. This is why government and law is so intrusive and bloated. Losers want their 'rights' but not their responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteI call horseshit. Most of the time the cart I pick was already abandoned out in the parking lot. I have no responsibility to trundle it back to their storefront after I use it. Particularly when they don't provide a corral in the parking lot to safely place them.
ReplyDeleteThe cardinal rule is "Put things back where you found them." Anything else is egotistical BS.
The quote is about manners and doing the right thing when you don't receive a reward.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed at the lengths some are going to justify avoiding doing the right thing.