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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Jim
Exactly.
I have seen it too and saved mine in a nick of time once. It wasn’t me, I always return it. It’s the normal and mannered thing to do.
Make the shoppers rent the cart for 25 cents.
ALDI does that and there are no stray carts in the ALDI parking lot.
It does not take a DEI Psychology Professor to solve the problem.
Wait a second. This article is asking the wrong question.
I never return the cart to the STORE. Practically all grocery stores have the various corrals scattered across the parking lot so you DON’T have to return them to the store. The exception is Aldi. This is a big difference
Sure, it’s every now and then a pain when someone doesn’t use the corrals. But would I do a video on it or write an exposition on it?? NO!!!
Talk about hyper anal.
I gave up long ago trying to find close up parking spot at Costco and now look for 1 next to a cart corral.
I have heard the “job creation”excuse. In Phoenix, high correlation between cart abandonment and being Mexican. Compare the Food City lot with Basha or Safeway.
Extreme laziness.
The customers do not comprehend that unreturned carts = higher prices to them due to increased costs to the store of paying staff to continually have to round up and bus carts.
If I’m on my way in, I’ll often intercept someone returning a cart, and take it inside.
I like the idea of giving the Working Class exercise, and jobs.
CHAPTER TEN: WHEN IT’S ONLY YOUR SOUL WATCHING
The true test of a soul’s character is what he or she does when no one’s looking. Do you always do the right thing when it’s just you, knowing you won’t get any credit for your good behavior?
Not too long ago, a personality model built around a simple shopping cart began circulating through social media. The short, written piece was titled, “The Shopping Cart Theory.” In this theory, the anonymous author posited that returning or not returning the cart when done shopping was the ultimate test of good versus bad moral character. You be the judge.
The Shopping Cart Theory
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 anyone who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with 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.
--------------------------------
While the end of the theory gets a little heavy, there’s value in the overall concept. When no one’s looking and no one but you can judge your good or bad deeds, what do you do?
Well, return the cart.
There’s absolutely nothing better than doing the right thing, especially when it’s only your soul watching.
Being in Excruciating Pain
One may Not Properly return
A shopping cart.
.
Because they’re lazy and inconsiderate.
Where I shop, cart returns have two aisles: one for long carts and the other for short carts. Of course, the aisles aren’t labeled. But that’s okay because the first cart returned to either empty aisle determines the sorting for subsequent returns.
Naturally, if they are returned at all, both aisles fill with an intermingling of both kinds.
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 Too.
Add D. U. M. B. I’ve seen people let go of full carts, on a slope, and be utterly shocked when it rolled away. And the only reason one woman even noticed it rolled away was the noise it made when it hit my truck.
I usually take them back. Exceptions are when the store makes it difficult for a cane user to do so.
Eating clockwise is...weird.
My father always said that people who did not return shopping carts were products of bad breeding. I do like the Aldi solution.
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