Posted on 11/28/2025 8:03:12 AM PST by MtnClimber
I arrived on the scene early one Saturday. The suspects were long gone, but the evidence remained. One cart was wedged into a curb, another sat toppled over in a parking spot, a third drifted like a metal tumbleweed across the lot. My question: Why don’t people return their shopping carts?
I’m a psychologist who has spent the past decade studying how we think about our own behavior in relation to others. Perhaps the choice to not return a shopping cart seems trivial, but what we do with our cart says a lot about how we think about others and what we believe we owe one another (or don’t).
I’ve never understood why people don’t put their carts away. In high school, I worked as a shopping cart attendant at my local grocery store, shepherding carts across the lot. Since then, for reasons I can’t fully explain, people’s failure to return their carts bothers me more than it probably should, with every trip to the grocery store a reminder of the special kind of havoc humanity is capable of.
Then last year, on a windy weekend morning in a Wegman’s parking lot, it hit me. Not a cart, but the realization that I can do something productive about it.
So I approached the question of shopping cart abandonment the way I would any puzzle about human behavior: I collected data. My evidence came from an unlikely source: Cart Narcs, a small group whose mission is to encourage cart return, sometimes gently, sometimes less so. They upload their efforts on their YouTube channel, which boasts hundreds of videos recorded between 2020 and 2025, taking place mostly in California, but also Nevada, Texas, Louisiana, New York, Canada, Australia, and England. Cart abandonment, it turns out, knows no regional bounds. As of September 2025, these videos have collectively been viewed over 90 million times. (See below for one of the tamer videos.) [Video at link]
I watched a total of 564 encounters between Cart Narcs and cart abandoners. These don’t represent a perfectly random sample of interactions, but together they capture a broad cross-section of everyday behavior. (And, as far as I know, it’s the largest archive of shopping cart behavior available.) Most interactions begin the same way: Someone leaves their cart and a Cart Narc requests they return it. At this point I documented what happened next, transcribing parking lot reactions word for unhinged word. To be clear, this was not a quick process. I spent dozens of weekend hours hunched over my computer pausing and replaying YouTube videos. People in my life called this “concerning” and a “waste of time.” I called it research.
My approach was inductive, which is a fancy way of saying that I had neither theory nor hypotheses. Instead, I let the data speak for itself, coding people’s raw (and wildly unfiltered) responses. Over time, patterns emerged, and eventually, I was left with a detailed catalog of behavior, complete with justifications, deflections, hostility, and, miraculously, humanity.
Why don’t people return their carts?
People had all sorts of reactions to being asked to do the right thing (see Figure 1). There were those who deflected, challenging the question itself rather than answering it. Do you work here? Are you the cart police? Do you represent this company? Who are you? Can I see your ID? Do you have any authority? Who do you work for? Who do you think you are? Why don’t you get a real job?
Figure 1: People’s responses to being asked to return their cart. Note: Responses are not mutually exclusive.
Some responded with anger and aggression. They yelled, cursed, and mocked. Some threatened to (or did) call law enforcement. Others escalated further, brandishing weapons like guns, tasers, or knives. “I’m gonna slash your face,” warned one man. “Why don’t I kick your ass?” asked another. A third shopper told the Cart Narc, “This is how you get killed.” If only returning the cart stirred as much passion as did refusing to.
Then there were the many, many excuses. In over half of the encounters I watched, shoppers provided at least one justification for their choice to abandon the cart (see Figure 2).
Many invoked entitlement, sometimes mentioning an identity they believed exempted them from common decency. “I worked at Safeway for lots of years and people left their carts all the time,” one man said. Another explained his choice to leave his cart by saying, “After 40 years of working retail grocery, I’ve earned it.” Earned what, exactly? The right to not pick up after yourself?
There were those who cited physical limitations barring them from cart return. “I’m 72 years old. I can’t walk that far,” explained a man after pushing his cart to the furthest edge of the lot. Another shopper clarified her choice to leave the cart in the middle of a handicap parking spot by mentioning, “I’m handicapped myself.” And one woman, upon being confronted about leaving her cart, declared, “I have really bad vertigo,” before getting behind the wheel and driving away. To be clear: Disabilities deserve accommodation. But if you could push the full cart to your car, why couldn’t you return the empty one?
Figure 2: Excuses provided for not returning the cart. Note: These excuses are not mutually exclusive.
Other people were simply too busy to return their carts. “I’m over an hour late to my own kid’s birthday party,” revealed one hurried shopper. “We have somewhere we need to be,” another alleged, before spending the next eight minutes arguing with the Cart Narc about how he didn’t have time to return his cart. Some mentioned inconvenience. “Them carts don’t even roll,” one shopper complained, after going out of his way to dig the wheels of his cart straight into grass and dirt.
Many justified their behavior by invoking norms and pointing to other cart abandoners. “Everyone else puts them there,” one shopper said, leaving his cart with a gaggle of similarly unreturned ones. “The culture around here is doing it,” insisted another, as if not returning one’s cart were a local tradition. This reasoning—everyone else does it—pairs best with a juice box and a timeout. If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?
Another type of excuse invoked other people by shifting responsibility (or blame) to others. Many shoppers pointed to their choice to leave the cart as a form of job stability or creation. “They pay someone to collect them all” explained one man. Another insisted that returning the cart is selfish because, “You’re putting someone out of a job.” It’s true that many stores do employ people to gather carts, but the job is to collect them from designated return areas—not to chase them down across the lot like loose cattle........SNIP
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I don’t know, I am 69.
In my town, at both markets, carts are returned 100% of the time.
That was my cousin’s theory on whether or not tossing his empty beer cans on his neighbor’s front lawn was littering after the MI 10-cents per returnable bottle or can went into effect. He ‘reasoned’ that it was a fair deal since he was practically throwing his money out the window in exchange for the peace of mind of not having the empties rolling around on the floor of his or his buddies’ car. At first, I thought it made perfect sense. If I was 15 then, I probably would’ve said that just so I could tag along without them thinking I was some kind of “narc”.
Laziness...I choose to think cart return is part of my daily exercise...
Look at Aldi’s “25 cents” cart return setup: 100% success rate, no psychologists or manpower needed.
Flew into Vegas in 1987, to visit a pal. He couldn’t pick me up until he got off work at 5pm. During the interim period, I returned luggage carts, for the quarter reward that was dispensed. When I got to about $3.00, went back inside and played video poker, and won $75. By the time I left town, three days later, I had about $150 more in my wallet, than I arrived with,and the flight was $29 each way, from LAX. Only time I ever made a profit, in that town. Gave it all back, subsequently.
Costco’s has people they pay to return the carts.
I have a $100 EUFY that does decent vacuum job (we have cats)
And it mops, doesn’t just vacuum?
Sometimes I do, sometimes i don’t. I have no obligation nor am I required to do so. It’s my choice and if you don’t like it then that’s your problem. Not mine. Have a great day!! %^)
No home training and they think their mamas work at the store.
No...doesn’t mop...but they may have one now that does...mine is @3 yrs old
I could have saved the author the trouble of the study. They leave their carts because they’re inconsiderate lazy fat f*cks, that’s why.
We lean on the carts. It is a giant walker. Once shopping and unloading the cart is done, pain can be bad.
I do not park in handicapped spots, no tag. We park near the corrals. I have seen handicapped people leave their carts near the poles or in the loading zones. I do not blame them.
I was almost killed by a hit and run driver while I was returning a shopping cart in a supermarket parking lot.
Wonder if I could get a refund for the emergency room visit and hospital stay- it was a bit more that a quarter
I don’t return shopping carts anymore . It’s just not worth the risk . They pay people to do that
But when shopping carts in parking lots are the subject, EVERYONE has an opinion on that!
I always return them and when I get to the store I find a loose one and use it.
Yeah, it makes you OCD. There are many of us! 😀
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