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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Exactly why I never shop at Aldi’s.
Excellent.
My cat runs away from it. I tried to get her to ride on it once, but she wasn’t having it.
1. I blame the store. If there is a cart corral nearby I use it. If not, THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN. I always try to park next to one.
2. They hire low IQ people to gather the carts. They need jobs too.
3. I’m not their employee. Not only do they not pay me to wrangle carts, they try to CHARGE ME 5 cents for a worthless paper bag that rips.
Cats...
You Can’t figure them out.
I have a Motel 6 between my place of work and a large grocery store.
The Motel 6 was converted to shelter for illegals and folks on welfare
Every morning, several shopping carts on the grass in front of the Motel 6
Looked like a small tornado picked up and scattered shopping carts at the Motel 6 each day
I like the idea of giving the Working Class exercise, and jobs.
“This isn’t so bad, huh? Making bucks, getting exercise, working outside.”
“____in’ A!”
Does anyone have experience for one of those robot things that actually cleans the floor? I’ve been thinking of buying one for my kitchen floor...
Integrity is doing the right thing when no one looking.
OK first if you are standing around like a high school hall monitor asking people to return their carts you have waaay too much time on your hands. Get a job or a hobby.
Second its not a crime to fail to put the cart back. Its the polite thing to do and most of the time we all do it. But once in awhile I’ve been known to wedge it on the curb myself.
If you think I’m an ahole on FR you should see me when accosted about a shopping cart return at Kroger. 😉
Those CartNarc videos are pretty wild - he really goes after people. I’m amazed that guy hasn’t ended up in the hospital!
In a high trust society people return carts.
In Argentina slums people don’t .
I’ll do that if the corral is so disorganized it looks like a cart might get loose. I had a car seriously dented by a stray cart once. I figure it’s worth a few seconds of hassle to possibly save someone similar grief.
I guess I’m older than you, and I think you’re wrong about that. Cart corrals emerged in the 80s.
Since the deportations started it seems many Hispanic illegals in Florida self-deported. And the amount of trash I have to pick up in my front yard along the street has decreased by 90% or so.
People still litter and not everyone littered in the 60s.
I think the term “because they’re lazy assholes” comes immediately to mind.
My local market bought all new heavy plastic carts, easy rolling, and brand new. Ive found and returned the carts from as far as two blocks away.
Most of this is from illegals, barely speaking English, and also another very specific demographic, bussed up to our area.
I always take at least one cart from the parking lot on my way in to the store and return it to the cart corral when I leave. If everyone did this, there would be no need for a cart chaser til the end of the day.
I was in a store in Spain a few years go, and they actually have carts that easily move sideways. Wish they had those here.
Of course I always get the one where one of the wheels doesn’t work.
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