One of the places i shop, an employee pushes the cart to your car. So i just leave it in his hands.
Another place i shop i can always get a spot near the door, and I leave my cart with the pile of carts other people left near the door. It’s not actually a cart corral, but it seems like the best place. That’s in an indoor parking garage, without a lot is extra space, and most of it is sloped. No one leaves carts randomly there, as anyplace other than “by the door” is really horrible.
Another place has a corral, but it’s so close to the stack at the doors that i always bring the car back there, and hand it to the employee who seems to be in charge of organizing them.
Another place i shop I’m lucky to get a parking space that’s not way in the hinterlands, and there’s never a spot near the cart corrals. I groan, and drag the cart to the nearest corral.
I don’t have little kids, and the ice cream won’t melt THAT fast. So i can put the cart away.
I do this. My store also has two types of carts that don’t nest together. Sometimes I’ll rearrange the carts so the two different types are separated.
My grocery store hires several cognitively disabled people and I see them out getting the carts often. I figure I don’t mind making their jobs a little easier once in a while.
Eh, I’ve left both my cousin and my niece in the car buckled in to their car seats, while I returned a shopping cart in the rain. On a hot day I’d just take them with me to return the cart. It only takes a few seconds to run the cart back and I’m not shopping in an area where I think there’s a significant likelihood of a kidnapper hanging out in the parking lot in the rain just in case.
I’ve abandoned carts at Costco during a torrential downpour (without a baby). Costco cart corrals are obnoxiously far apart, so I figure this is the price they pay for providing insufficient access. But in a moderate rain or less I’ll return the cart and I don’t think I’ve ever abandoned a cart anywhere else as literally every other store I shop at has sufficient cart corrals.
I leave my kids locked and buckled in the car now, but back then I had raging mama bear hormones and was certain something terrible would happen.
Postpartum creates a really weird alternate reality.
Will add: that day I had parked at the far side of the target parking lot, trying to shed a few of the pregnancy pounds. The nearest corral was several rows away. Far enough that it made me feel really uncomfortable, rainy enough that taking him with me would have been really difficult. We also live in a very urban area. Stolen cars are not unheard of, lots of mentally unstable underhoused people hanging around. I wouldn’t say it’s unsafe, but if I heard a story of a car being stolen with a newborn inside in that area, I wouldn’t be totally shocked.
Yeah, I think there is some onus on the store to provide sufficient cart corrals. If they don’t I will still suck it up and walk the cart back unless it is raining really hard. Like so hard it hurts. Or maybe if it was super duper hot (over 100 outside and the car was significantly hotter) and I was worried about ice cream melting.
Then it’s the store’s fault for not supplying sufficient corrals, in my view.
I used a cart for the first time in almost 16 months yesterday.
My preference is to leave the cart inside/at the entrance if possible. I mostly use the corrals BUT I will admit that if there are lots of carts strewn about (as is frequently the case when out with my wife - she has a handicapped placard), I’ll neaten the mess and add to it.
Extra credit because of OCD? (At least I say my OCD is showing when I do that)
I very rarely fail to return carts (can’t remember last time, but I am sure I can’t claim to be perfect). I try to park next to a corral if I will be using a cart. My dad was less of a stickler about it, which seemed strange to me since I got my attention to detail from him. He felt if the store didn’t put in enough corrals and made it difficult, that was the store’s mistake.
Bonus points if it causes several carts to then nest.
This. The corral is wide enough for two rows. It only seems logical to have one row for short carts and one for regular. The kiddie car carts can burn in hell.
I most often do it when there’s threat of overflow or the carts are already sticking out of the corral. I’ll leave it alone if there’s only a few carts. But admittedly sometimes the chaos just bugs me.
I always kept my son in the cart while I returned it to the area, then put him in his car seat last step. I’m confused that people would do it any other way. Even in the rain.
“The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing, the post states. 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.”
i bring my own shopping cart and take it with me because i’m the most considerate human who ever lived.
also, it’s different in manhattan. people don’t bring the shopping cart to their car because people generally don’t have cars and there isn’t a parking lot. you leave the shopping cart at the register for the staff to deal with.
