Anyone that uses putting a cart away as a test of moral integrity is automatically a fail for me.
Stores didn’t create cart corrals as a test of morality. They created them to save money. They had to pay people to keep the carts out of parking spaces and thus block paying customers from the store. It also cut down on cart theft by serving as a gentle reminder that the cart belonged to the store.
Having a centralized location and then mounting a propaganda effort to get customers to comply and put their carts there was/is a deliberate effort to save the store money by streamlining their operation.
It was much the same for the trash pickup industry. I grew up where you had your trash barrels (usually galvanized steel because of the practice of tossing out hot embers from coal burning furnaces) on the side of the house somewhere and the garbage man would come up to their location and get them. A slow and inefficient system to be sure.
Someone then got the bright idea of making customers bring their garbage cans to the road or their service would be discontinued leaving them only the options of burning their trash or taking it to the dump. Still there was no consistency to the garbage cans used.
Someone then figured out that it would be a good side revenue stream to actually supply garbage cans for a price. That way they could all be uniform and emptying techniques could be maximized for the greatest efficiency.
In the meantime truck technology was improving as well. They invented the automatic side loader...a device that can grab and dump a can. So one guy could now theoretically do garbage collection instead of a whole crew.
As these systems got more and more efficient they also got more and more demanding of uniformity. So now the garbage collection companies insist you use their wheeled large capacity bins. AND they train us to bring our garbage to the street and place it there in the ideal position for the automatic side loader to work the best.
Nobody in their right mind would insist that bringing their garbage to the road and putting it in the exact right position is a test of character and morality. We’ve been trained to do it for maximum cost savings for the company.
IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING WITH THE STUPID CART CORRALS! We’ve been trained to do this.
As opposed to leaving the cart anywhere in the lot for other people to traverse and maneuver round. It's not about morality testing, saving money, or stopping theft. It's about safety.
Yes, there is a moral component. Leaving your chart anywhere is like dropping your trash where you're standing. It shows you disrespect others and their property.
Social mores maintain social order.