Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? A (Somewhat) Scientific Investigation

Behavioral Scientist ^ | 19 Nov, 2025 | Hannah B. Waldfogel

[Hot Tabasco]

That's a pet peeve of mine. I always grab a stray cart in the parking lot and take it in for my shopping at my local Meijers.

And I always say hi to the cart jockeys, who tend to be special needs folks, and give them a Christmas card with a generous tip at Christmas.

[bobbo666]

Oh, and while we are at it; “why don’t shoppers check out their own goods (and save the stores’ even more profits) ?

‘CAUSE I DON’T WORK THERE, YAH MORON. Hire some locals to do your work.

[Getready]

One b*d*ss driveby cat!

[Getready]

Very sweet and kind of you.

[rlmorel]

Hahahaha...I am obviously not tuned in to the current cultural trends! Which thread gets the most posts?

1. The effects of higher interest rates on individual freedoms
   
   
   
2. Cats on Roombas
   

[Hot Tabasco]

Very long article justifying taking jobs away from low income ppl during the holidays.

No jobs are being taken away, all the major chains have cart corrals around the parking lot that the cart jockeys have to collect from and take them into the store.

Appreciate your concern tho.....LOL!

[No.6]

That’s not a study, it’s a survey.

The difference is a study actually takes a random sample. These samples are already pre-vetted by these cart narc YTers and represent the examples they thought would monetize their channel.

Also a study would involve some cross-section of people and there you would find data about which sort of people do and don’t return the cart, which is meaningful because it’s a microcosm of how people behave towards others generally, aka if they’re a part of a functioning society or not.

Your ‘behavioralscientist’ clearly doesn’t wish to observe that data nor its conclusions.

[Cobra64]

Lazy slobs. The men probably piss on the floor at home too. They don’t care.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Very long article justifying taking jobs away from low income ppl during the holidays.

Pardon?

[MortMan]

I tend to park a ways out in the parking lot, right by a corral. It makes taking care of the cart easy and convenient.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Trolls gonna troll! You define yourself. 😆

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I’ll not only return my cart, but I’ll also reorganize the carts in the return corral so that the smaller carts are on one side and the larger ones on the other. Does that make me weird?

DH will do that.

He likes things neat and easy for the cart person to collect and roll back in the store.

[DouglasKC]

Using cart narcs for research is pretty stupid. That dude purposely goads and antagonizes people. The purpose isn’t to return carts or any such thing...but to get people angry so he has controversial content.

[Georgia Girl 2]

“I defined you”

You’re the “definer” like Bush was the “decider”. Two intellectual peas in a pod. 😆

[Georgia Girl 2]

Bingo! We have a winner!

[DouglasKC]

"Back in the day, nobody returned their shopping carts. The norm of returning carts emerged in the 1980s. Today, if there’s ample space in the parking lot, I leave it near my car. ********* That’s a total misconception. Returning shopping carts has always been a thing."

Not really. It used to be a standard thing for a person to take your cart out to your car for you and help you load your groceries. Then some accountant figured out if you made customers take out their own groceries you didn't have to spend money on employees to do it. Then there was nobody to bring the carts in so they had to have employees designated to go out and gather up the carts from all over the parking lot. Then some accountant figured out they could at least concentrate the carts in one area by building cart corrals and then making customers feel like they were helping reduce cost by returning their carts to cart corrals. Once people caught on to that the changed the tactic to it was kind to return the cart to the cart corral. It became a moral issue. Bottom line is this is and was always a way for stores to save money by reducing employees they had to hire.

[Don W]

Until the conditioning of “Pay-carts”, it was considered normal to leave the carts near your parking spot. There used to be a couple of cart-boys whose job it was to patrol the lot and corral the carts to bring them back to the storefront.

The number of cart-boy positions was greatly reduced for cost savings, so they had to train the public to return the carts by using a monetary cost for failing to obey the store’s edict.

Kids need jobs, and this was just another chip away at the foundations of good work ethic.

YMMV, JMHO

[Albion Wilde]

This chart is pretty much exactly the type and ratio of responses I get when I confront people for trespassing in my private property as a shortcut to a public facility. I guess it's a universal set of excuses for deliberate bad behavior:

Justification: “But I live here!" (somewhere else in my neighborhood) or “This is the official path!” (Uh, no, it's not.)

Anger/Aggression: “Shut up” / “Who the hell are you” (allows his/her dog to snarl / curses me or pushes me physically)

Silence: (continues trespassing to adjoining property)

Deflection: “I'm disabled” (but you're out walking around with no cane)
“Where is that posted?” (there are 3 no trespass signs)
“You have no right to insult me in front of my child” (her trespass role modeling is her right)
“I can see a path sign right over there” (back of an inapplicable sign 30 yards deep into the adjoining public property)

Apology: (Approximately 3% of trespassers over the past 30 years.)

[Mark]

I do it for the exercise.

[Mark]

I do it for the exercise.