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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THIS. Grocery stores are the worst. I do not blame people for not taking carts back in those cases.
Why do we sin. Psycholigist tries to figure it out.
I’ve never even thought about not returning the cart. I just do it.
if everyone returns them they will end the jobs for countless high school age employees hired for that task increasing the unemployment numbers. These unskilled jobs allow these kids to get job experience and a little spending money. What most consider worthless menial work is actually a first step in the job market for many.
So do we.
Nope. Makes you helpful. When you see something that needs done you do it. You don’t need to be ‘invited’ to be helpful. A person who sees what needs done and does it is a rare bird. Thank you!
I wouldn't assume laziness. Trader Joe's has a younger and healthier clientele. Trader Joe's also has smaller parking lots.
I see a lot mostly elderly and infirm folks leave the cart close to their car.
It does seem to be a function of cart corral proximity: if there are many such corrals, they do (in my unscientific survey) seem to be used more frequently. My go-to market has more than the usual, and only very rarely (almost never?) do I see a renegade cart. At the Bargain Hut in my town, the corral/parking space ratio and the number of feral carts are both much higher.
Also, I love Free Republic for exactly this kind of intellectual stimulation...
Mine too!
It simply another sign of a high-trust, cohesive, high functioning society vs. a low-trust, chaotic society.
Visit Japan and look at any number of indicators - carts, random trash on the streets, public transport, etc..., and then visit Haiti or South Africa and you will have your answer.
Honestly, it’s such behavior that has allowed Western Civilization to advance ahead of all others. Contributing to the order and cleanliness of our civic/shared spaces is an admirable trait that lifts up the human spirit. And just as with sloven, destructive practices, it is contagious.
I once took a lengthy course at Disney about how they design their “service” at the parks. (This was long before they went woke.)
They had studies on all of this stuff. The one that I remember was that a person will take six steps with trash in their hands. Then it will likely be tossed. So they put cans within 5 steps. No littering issues!
I always put my cart back. But mostly it has to do with how easy it is to return a cart to a collection point. I despise carts roaming free in the wind.
I do it the easy way. I don’ return my cart, but I bring one in with me when I arrive, even if I don’t need one. Sometimes two.
I always put away a cart if I use one, even if it means walking all the way across the parking lot to put it away.
I would consider it selfish and rude to leave one floating in the parking lot.
Anyone who would just leave one free to be hit or to float into another car is a selfish dickhead. And it is true that the world is full of them.
I do the same thing.
The added benefit is that the carts sitting outside have been able to be somewhat disinfected by the sun during the day.
Hahahahahaha!
It’s sad that I feel guilty when I don’t wash my own dishes after a meal at a restaurant. They have to pay someone to wash them.
HAHAHA! Just kidding.
This is actually a non-issue. If a store wants you to return a cart, they need to incentivize it. Like Aldi apparently does. They pay people to do it, just like they pay people to ring you up, and restaurants pay people to bring you your food.
Next question...
No reward for doing the right thing.
No consequence for doing the wrong thing.
It’s a character test right out in public.
*pregnant women, those with children to secure, handicapped and elderly are exempt*
In such exemptions the second character test is if you’ll help them with their shopping cart.
Not an issue in Germany. The carts are in a rack. The only way to get one is to insert a coin. You get your coin back when you return the cart to the rack.
I know why. People are fat, lazy, irresponsible bums that’s why.
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