Shopping Cart Lessons
Posted: March 6th, 2010 by Chick Moorman & Thomas Haller
I pulled into a grocery store parking lot this week an hour before closing time. Only twenty-six cars occupied over two hundred parking spaces. The emptiness of the parking area made it easy to count the shopping carts that were scattered at varied distances from the return areas. Some carts had been placed in the designated return area. Many others were spread around the parking area. Forty-three shopping cards were left for someone else to collect and return.
I estimated the shortest distance from an unreturned cart to a return area to be seven feet. The furthest cart from a return area was approximately one hundred feet. I did some quick math and estimated the average distance that a cart was left from the return area was close to forty feet or about 90 seconds of a person’s time.
Be aware that children are watching your shopping cart return behavior. If you don’t have children, other people’s children are watching. They are learning important lessons that could stick with them their entire lifetimes.
Lessons taught by not returning carts:
1.) Do the least possible.
2.) Let somebody else do it.
3.) It’s not my job.
4.) I, me, my, mine. The heck with you.
5.) The dents your car get from a windblown cart is not my concern.
6.) Take the easy way out.
7.) Rationalizing is easier than personalizing.
8.) Exercise is too much effort.
9.) They owe me.
10.) I don’t care.
Lessons taught by returning carts:
1.) Go the extra distance.
2.) I am responsible.
3.) You haul your own ashes.
4.) Look out for the other guy.
5.) Put in the effort to do it right.
6.) I value your car, too.
7.) Put yourself in their shoes.
8.) No excuses.
9.) Exercise is beneficial.
10.) I care.
Every adult in the presence of a child is a teacher. What lessons are you teaching?
Chick Moorman
Maybe some of the carts were left by someone who is injured, recovering from surgery or illness or is disabled and unable to park near the store. Or by the parent of a child with autism at risk of bolting from the car or cart through a busy parking lot.
I’ve been in both situations, and the safer option was to leave the cart by the car once the child w/ autism was buckled into a car seat. In the precious seconds to take the cart to the cart return area, that child could have unbuckled and bolted across a busy parking lot. There was a time when that was a daily reality because of the severity of the autism.
I like to park where someone has left a cart beside the parking place- it gives something for my child with autism to hold on to as we enter the store together, a concrete object that the child could actively hold onto, something that became a helpful compensation (later a scaffold) to having that child stay with me in the parking lot.
PinellaP
6 Mar 10 at 11:38 am
I agree very much with this blog, thank you for posting it. It bothers me to no end people who are so self-centered they can’t return a simple shopping cart. You can obviously make it from the store to your car with the cart, why can’t you return it?
Why couldn’t you have taken your child back with you to the cart return, then walked back with him/her to the car? If your kid is old enough to run from the car, then he/she is old enough to walk with you, holding hands, from the cart return. My sister has a child with autism and does not make this a habit…her kid needs to learn these valuable lessons too.
Michele
6 Mar 10 at 1:26 pm
Michele, you don’t understand. The danger of the child wrestling free and bolting in a parking lot is real and managing the child’s safety always gets priority over returning a cart. The child with autism often is not able to hold the adult’s hand. The adult must do all of the holding (of the hand, of the child’s attention, of the child’s attachment, of the child’s safety). Children w/ autism are known for their amazing strength – sometimes I could not contain my own child. It was frightening to hold on to that child with the tightest grip I could and have that child wrestle away and bolt through a parking lot. I could not ENTER a store unless I was able to get the child into a cart at the car in the parking lot.
I did the best I could.
Sometimes, carts are not returned for very good reasons.
Probably, most of the time, they’re not returned because of laziness, or because shoppers think it’s a “norm”. But not all of the time. That’s what I was trying to say.
PinellaP
6 Mar 10 at 4:59 pm
@Michelle and @Pinella … great discussion about individual situations and taking the perspective of someone else. When my daughter (also on the spectrum) and I shopping, we talk about just these very issues. Wouldn\’t it be great if everyone took responsibility for their own carts? Look at what might happen if they don\’t. Not everyone can take care of their carts so we have to be kind about how we think about and talk about the loose carts. And then, since we are fortunate and able, we take care of a couple of carts (when it\’s safe to) to help out.
Thanks for the reminder, Chick & Thomas, of both personal responsibility and tolerance & generosity to others.
Megan
7 Mar 10 at 10:34 am
A couple of weeks ago I watched someone walk their cart to the nearest curb and leave it there. It meant that it was in a very awkward spot at the corner of one of the rows of parking. If she had just gone ten more feet, she could have returned it to the storefront cart return area.
I can’t tell you how “redeemed” I felt as I watched her struggle to make her car turn around the very (now awkward) corner where she’d left her cart! I bet she was regretting her laziness now!
I agree with PinellaP, though, that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that make things a little more difficult. Because I have a baby, which makes shopping just a little more awkward, I try to park as close to the cart return area as possible, which makes it a little easier to both pick up and return the cart.
And I think Chick could have chosen any number of similar examples (clearing your dishes in a coffee shop, putting unwanted items back where they came from in a store, etc.). It’s less about the exact circumstances and more about the intentions behind it (as he said, “I am responsible” vs “let someone else do it”).
Michelle R
7 Mar 10 at 10:34 am
I guess it gets down to not judging others, which is also a good lesson to teach. Sometimes I leave my cart nearby because someone is (impatiently–but then, there I go, judging!) waiting for my spot to become free. And yes, there was the time a police officer admonished me for leaving my then twin babies in the car alone as I walked the (less than) 100 feet to put the cart back, he explaining that someone could easily try to take off with my kids and/or my car. I suppose the only people who can ‘judge’ best their behavior and its appropriateness is the person who is performing the behavior. Ease up on ourselves, on others, and try to do the right thing as often as possible. Now THERE’S some good fodder for teaching our kids.
Beverly
7 Mar 10 at 6:08 pm