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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Many probably (I’m just guessing here) had moms that picked up their rooms for them. For them, all the housework chores were for their mom to do.
"___ing machine took my quarter!"
The gauntlet has been thrown down!
you might be on to something
I’m not only super thoughtful about carts but also inventive:
If I don’t see an official cart return area near me, I invent one - perhaps repurposing an empty parking spot that no one is using - or one of those patches of grass or mulch above the curb between parking lot sections. I figure I’m providing a service for others.. now, thanks to me, there’s a cart return spot that was not there before!
Okay, I’m being facetious - partly. There is a part of me that believes we often go too far with obeying rules created by sone dubious authority.
Yes, be thoughtful and considerate - often that is consistent with obeying “the rules” - but not always.
During the fake pandemic I was shocked by how slavishly obedient nearly everyone was to stupid masking and distancing rules set by stupid authorities. Then came the stupid testing and stupid shots. It was great a teaching moment regarding the difference between true thoughtfulness and blind obedience.
Thanks. This just makes my day.
My phone auto miscorrects me and after a few tries I give up.
It’s people like you that cause my ears to burn.
“ The added benefit is that the carts sitting outside have been able to be somewhat disinfected by the sun during the day.”
Lol my thoughts exactly!
I have seized your image on behalf of the Wal-Mart shopping proletariat!
I can remember a time in my young adult life when stores did not have this problem because store helped you out with your groceries.
Ah but there is more behind this. You go lets say to Wally World and buy a cart full of groceries. All cashier the two open that is are backed up forcing you to self checkout where 3-4 employees who should be running cash registers and bagging your groceries' are standing there watching you like a hawk until the machine screws up then they hide while you wait for them to clear it.
Now lets get to the real pet peeve which is who gets full service? Who does the store pander too and treat like royalty? I'm talking about people who shop at home, pull up into a RESERVED FOR ON LINE SHOPPERS space and their groceries not only are shopped for them but bagged and loaded into their vehicle for the exact same price I pay if I walk in and shop, then checkout and bag my groceries, load them into my vehicle and find the way to their cart return which is usually so packed it's out in the parking lane. All because all employees are too busy pushing the huge shop on line carts through the store blocking aisles, shelves, you name it to go out and bring in carts. Go back to full service walk in stores and the unstowed shopping cart issue will be resolved. A simple solution and no research needed just some common sense.
👍 👍
Not returning your cart is a non event. Apparently the grocery store agrees with me as they don’t even post a sign saying “please return your cart.” They have employees who go out periodically and gather the carts. Nobody except a few bored souls on FR give a rat’s bazoo about it.
Its not a crime and it doesn’t make you a bad person or a low life ahole and God isn’t sending you to Hell over it. Its helpful if you return your cart. I’m in favor of it. I don’t care if anybody fails to do it. I have real things to worry about. Like the alien’s landing. 😆
That is somewhat true at my Walmart & they DO have employees who normally return carts back into the store.
Have you seen the way Chinese people or Indian people get on a train or bus? Have you seen them pile up by the door instead of forming an orderly line? I suppose that is also a “non event”. It’s also not a crime. Nobody is going to hell for it.
However, it is a low class, 3rd world, high time preference, low trust society type of behavior....just like leaving your cart out in a parking lot. And I hope to hell we don’t start having lots of people doing it here in our 1st world civilized country.
Many stores DO have signs asking you to put your cart away or that they are not responsible for damage to your car by unattended carts (because they often cause damage).
It’s not just a few bored souls on FR that care about it. It’s anyone who has had a car damaged in a parking lot or who has needed to move someone else’s cart out of the way to get into their own car.
Thesis: Each supermarket chain caters to a different type of person.
Count shoppers, carts more than 100 feet from the front door, carts within 100 feet and the cart location to shopper ratio.
Walmart Target Publix Kroger Whole Food Aldi......
Thesis: Each supermarket chain caters to a different type of person.
Count shoppers, carts more than 100 feet from the front door, carts within 100 feet and the cart location to shopper ratio.
Walmart Target Publix Kroger Whole Food Aldi......
The author makes a big deal out of the fact he once worked as a cart wrangler.In large part those jobs no longer exist.Same with bag boys who bagged yer groceries and offered help loading them.Now they even expect you to check out yer own items,bag em,load em,and return the carts.
I say enough.If you steal jobs from cart wranglers,baggers,and cashiers just remember those people have children that need fed too.The wages they earn pay into social security.Stop working for free and force these business’s to provide real customer service.
Well you just said nobody is going to Hell for it so why get all worked up over such a stupid topic as grocery cart return? Think about it. The whole topic is ridiculous which is why I’m ridiculing it. 🙄
I prefer self-serve for groceries, especially anything perishable. I either am pretty picky about produce, or want to pick out the furthest out expiration date on an item I can.
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