I don’t mean just returning your shopping cart to the cart area, but actually sliding it back in. At my grocery store, some people half ass stack it back in or don’t at all. This drives me nuts because when I come to return my cart I have to fix the mess before I can return mine. Plus, I don’t want the workers who collect the carts to do any more work than they already do.
I caught this one guy who was returning his cart and I had to wait until he was done. Instead of stacking his cart, he just left it there in front of the stack and I said, “C’mon man!” He was surprised and said, “Oh!” then immediately stacked his cart.
As a European it feels so surreal reading the stories of Americans not returning the shopping carts
Years ago when I first bought one of those multitool hairclips it mentioned it could be used as a trolley coin and I had to look that up. I discovered that in a lot of European countries it’s customary for carts to be locked together with a lock that takes a coin to unlock then returns the coin if you correctly return and nest the cart. Now, it does take a decently curated social milieu to design systems that promote prosocial behavior. That said, that particular prosocial behavior not only had to be mechanically encouraged, but has also led to the development of something called a “trolley coin” to circumvent the mechanism for people who are diametrically opposed to that prosocial behavior.