Freaking people who leave their carts in a parking spot… Straight to the top of the list!
Over here in Germany using a shopping cart “costs” between 50 Cents and 2 €. You have to put a coin in them to release the chain by which they are attached to eachother. Of course when you return the cart and close the lock you get your coin back.
Little metal plates without monetary value but still the right size are common marketing gifts by companies and organizations yet they still provide mostly the same unconscious effect of “I want my coin back”.
Of course there are also people who use little gadgets to unlock the carts without putting anything in but I wouldnt know about such things…
That’s one of the things Aldi brought with them when they came over to the US. I’ve always thought it was a pretty cool idea, though as inflation keeps going the 25-cent lock-in becomes less and less of a motivator. Maybe a good reminder, though.
With how rarely I use cash I need my quarter back so I can use it to get a cart next time.
Good point. It’s really just a cheap key you have to have with you.
It is. In Germany it’s pretty common to have little plastic Keychains or coins to use instead of money.
It’s a thing in the UK as well
Slovenija too. It’s probably a thing in a large part of Europe.
We have these at airports in the US for luggage carts - though they don’t return any of your money if you bring the cart back they l’ve seen, so it doesn’t do much to modify behavior.
Putting a quarter into a cart is a thing in Canada but it’s only ever at the low income grocery stores. The ritzier stores use a locking mechanism to lock the wheels if they leave the parking lot.
Didn’t someone make an audio file that can lock/unlock them at will?
What! I need to know more
I can’t find it now, but it was for some defcon thing 2 or so years ago.
It can cost much less than 50 cents
0.5 RON can be used, which are about 10 cents. You can also use fake plastic coins
Want to know a sad irony? The cart returns are usually really far from the handicap spots. Parking is close to the store. But the returns are halfway down the aisle.
If everyone put them away, the person hired to put the carts back would lose their job. Yes, some used to hire more. Plus, supermarkets may consider having more than 1 trolley area that isn’t miles away from the cars parked there so they can ram more cars in there.
Could be kinder on folks with health issues that don’t have a blue badge…
“I’m a job creator!” I yell, as I shit on the floor of the DMV. “If everyone did this they would have to hire more janitors!” The police drag me away. “I’m opening new avenues for employment in our police department!”
Just in case you forgot the /s tag, that person’s job isn’t to collect the carts scattered across the parking lot, it’s to move the carts from the cart area to inside the store. The right way to handle the lack of cart areas isn’t to make the workers job harder, it’s to complain to the store.
So they can do nothing about it? Have you ever tried to phone a supermarket before?Some supermarkets cut back on the number of spots so customers could do the job of car park staff without paying them cutting jobs in the process. It was deliberate.
Tesco do it, others like ASDA have the cart spots closer to the end of the car park.
I guess if you’re that compliant in serving the capitalist class you can wash your dishes after you go to the restaurant. They’d love the “efficiencies”
“I will not comply in serving the capitalist class!” I screech, as I shit on the floor of a Wendy’s. “The so called “efficiencies” of a toilet only serve to annihilate the jobs once held by the noble proletariat janitors!” I yell as the police drag me out of the establishment.
No one historically shit on floors in supermarkets. They did historically have more cart spots, but decided to save money and cut jobs. The assumption is people will start doing the work for them.
They were very much right.
They put on self-service tills in the hope that folk would do it free. When they used to hire 30 checkout staff, they now hire 2 per 12 tills, so they save on 20 checkout staff per shift. Of course they weren’t redeployed to shelf stacking, as they already had shelf stackers. They just went to the job centre.
If you are happy being complicit in the losses of jobs, go ahead. Persuade yourself you’re moral and descent. You can either clap on the AI job losses as they hunt “productivity”.
Supermarkets have jobs to keep the car park clear, and if it only needs 1, they’ll hire one. If it needs half a shift, that person goes inside half the shift, but now they need less shelf stackers as they’re over subscribed, so they can remove one head count off that. If a supermarket has a cart spot near my car, I’ll use it. If I have to walk 5 mins out my way to the entrance, it’ll be placed neatly to the side joined to other abandoned carts not filling spaces and not blocking access to folk getting past.
In a classless stateless utopia where food was free and no one had to work it would still be considered polite and common courtesy to put away your shopping cart when you’re done using it at the local food co-op.
The floor shitting analogy is that we shouldn’t have people doing something rude just because it creates or maintains another job. Everyone can agree on the floor shitting analogy and it maps perfectly onto this argument. If you want you can add a preamble of “in this world, everyone used to shit on floors and there was a janitorial staff to clean it up.”
They put on self-service tills in the hope that folk would do it free. When they used to hire 30 checkout staff, they now hire 2 per 12 tills, so they save on 20 checkout staff per shift. Of course they weren’t redeployed to shelf stacking, as they already had shelf stackers. They just went to the job centre.
So by this logic you want gas station attendants back at gas stations, and for people to stop using ATM machines in favor of tellers? Maybe we shouldn’t use computers because of all of the stenography and data management jobs that were lost, not to mention all of the paper mills that were shut down as people moved away from using so much paper. As you see, jobs appear and disappear all the time. Why do you want people doing meaningless redundant jobs for the sake of their employment? That’s just cruel.
Maybe we should bring back the lamplighter guild and get back to using horses. Gas lights and carriages created a lot of jobs that were rudely snuffed out.
In that example, yes it would.
I don’t agree with your premise. When Tesco had more cart stations, I used them. I use them in Asda because they aren’t far from the car, but when they remove stations to cut jobs, they are the ones being rude.
I’m not in the US. We never had gas station attendants. I guess fuel theft was never the same issue here as in the States.
It’s very hard to use bank tellers. Many branches got shut down. It was never really a thing in my lifetime.
It’s very easy to accept situations when you don’t see it change. You accept it as fact. Young folk just accept you don’t have data privacy because it never really existed in their life time.
Supermarkets automate things or put the work onto customers not to pass those savings on to customers, but to increase their margins at the cost of peoples jobs. Some folk are just fine with that.
Many would welcome automation if the gains and benefits were shared around. But it isn’t. The rich get richer and the unemployment line grows. The media train folk to hate the unemployed, like it was their choice their job was removed.
If the only way to keep a fairer wealth distribribution is to keep folk in jobs, so be it. We don’t have basic income or a 4 day week yet.
Just get your lazy ass to walk a couple of meters. Jesus Christ. This is another of these issues only present in America yet americans pretend like it isnt their fault.
Firstly, it isn’t a few meters. Secondly, I think the term is disabled but hey, name calling isn’t a new thing.
I’m not in the USA BTW. I thought it was obvious by the fact I said ASDA and not Walmart.
If the grocery store didn’t have to spend money putting carts away, the same person could be working inside the store where it’s warm and dry. Shitty people are preventing everyone else from better service and/or lower prices.
It’s adorable if you think that extra person is going to be working in store. There is a whole science around queue lengths that they use to cut jobs or push you to self service.
I guess the person would be warmer at home with no job, but it isn’t a good solution.
Its adorable that you think someone’s being hired to only do cart work in the modern day
That’s one responsibility for someone doing a shit ton of other things, usually shopping for remote orders nowadays
So yeah, they’d be inside, return the cart you massive cunt
I dunno about nowadays but where I’m from Cart Boy was totally a single function job in retail stores. You’d be hired just to gather carts. My friend liked it when people left them further away cuz they’d have an excuse to dawdle a bit and not interact as much with annoying customers.
For me, we primarily spent time bagging groceries until a decent number of wayward carts built up. Then we would collect them until there were only a few stragglers that weren’t worth collecting by themselves and go back to bagging. Nowadays it would probably be gathering stuff for instacart orders instead.
So you think if the cart guy helped out the full time in the remote orders they wouldn’t reduce a head count from that role? You know very little about how businesses run.
You could call me a cunt, but you’re either naive or don’t give a fuck about anything other than having acres of space for your SUV.
As someone who has done this job, I promise you, there’s always another task to accomplish. Normally the cart fetchers are also the store’s defacto janitorial staff, and there’s plenty of cleaning to be done at a grocery store. You are ignorant in this arena.
Why do you think there is always another job to accomplish? Do you think that work magically appeared out of nowhere? Do you think your colleagues are slacking or do you think they had removed a head count from the cleaning staff because the cart staff will now do that role?
Man, Elon is on that list 7 times.
What makes you think he puts the cart away?
What makes you think he ever uses carts?
By definition he doesn’t put them away then.
Exactly
So long as politicians are all painted with the same negative brush, there’s no room for anyone with a genuine interest in improving things. There are some truly great, caring people in politics working hard to do the right thing. It’s not their fault the public keeps voting for assholes.
I’ve often felt that genuine politicians can’t possibly have it easy.
To even get started, step one is getting in bed with social media.
No wonder coal as a fossil fuel isn’t going away. The rich folk get so much during Christmas!
I see Luigi isn’t on the naughty list. Based Santa.
Krampus should the entire US healthcare industry.
Add data peddlers on the list.
I would like to add people who don’t wipe down gym equipment after using it.
Fucking digesting animals.
I mean, most people are digesting animals, unless they’re vegan.
All people are digesting animals because humans are animals who digest food.
Vegans taste the best, because they are grass fed.
Forgot the health insurance company CEOs.
CEOs?
Many of my landlords were pretty decent people who actually cared about their tenants tho.
Don’t forget how many apartment buildings are owned by corporate landlords though. Western Canada has a huuuge problem with the slumlord billionaires at Mainstreet and others.
The out-of-date data I can find has 35% of BC apartments as investor-owned.
I guess that’s likely the difference. With the big company owned apartments you usually deal with a super intendant or building manager instead of the landlord directly. So the renter is seen as a faceless number rather than an actual person to the owners you are paying money to. There’s a lack of empathy towards the renter.
Is that why they stole their money?
Stole whose money? My money? My stove broke, they replaced it, pest issue, they paid for the exterminator, roof leaking, they paid for it to be fixed, many other examples but you get the idea. I didn’t pay utilities in some places. I’ve had bad landlords and I moved house because of them and didn’t do them any favours when I left. The good ones I made sure I was a good tenant for. I think a lot of renters don’t understand how expensive owning a place is with upkeep. We wouldn’t be able to replace a furnace or roof repair and all that jazz in our income bracket.
Landlords buy an essential good just so they can squeeze money out of their renters. Housing should never be seen as an investment, yet these parasites do.
There is a huge difference between a private owner, and a corporation. Anyhow they might have a common approach, I would say estate ownership should be limited to a certain number through incremental taxation the more you own the larger the tax bracket, like we do for income
Problem with that is they’ll charge even more and then the people never see that tax money
I am offended on behalf of the good people I know who made it so we could have housing when we can’t afford a mortgage or the housing upkeep costs. They were investments to them sure but they cared about their tenants. Call in the middle of the evening because the toilet wasn’t working and they came quickly with a brand new toilet. Couldn’t make that months rent till the middle of the month , no problem, pay when you can type thing. Every single landlord aren’t the devils you want them to be. I agree some of them are bad because I’ve had that experience too. I think maybe you should be angry with the banks and the giant conglomerates who pay you shit wages making you too poor to afford a mortgage or the upkeep for home ownership. I am not willing to lump all landlords in the same shit pile. I’ve seen second hand what being house poor is like. House is falling apart because they can’t afford to maintain it. Wearing winter coats inside because the furnace broke and can’t afford to fix it, not having a working toilet and shitting in a bucket with a trash bag. Also imagine having to buy a new house everytime you moved to a new town or different area of a big city. Renting a home or an apartment has a place in society.
For profit housing tho is kinda bad don’t you think? I’m not talking about one guy making a respectable living off running an apartment complex
Are you suggesting landlords make zero profit off of the property?
The money we put in is more than the cost of the exterminator, roof not-leaking, many other examples but you get the idea.
No, I’m not suggesting that at all. Don’t know why you are suggesting I am?
The benefits of renting is that we are too poor, we do not have emergency funds to buy a new stove or what have you, but we are able to afford monthly rent. Repairs and stuff, that falls on the landlords. They charge an amount that will cover the cost of any repairs or appliance or plumbing replacements in the future, along with (if they don’t own the house outright) their mortgage payments on the house.
Right, you’re using them as insurance. You give them money, they pool cash you literally can’t get because the system is out to crush you, and on the off chance something goes wrong they take a small hit to their profiting from your suffering.
This is especially a funny take from a Canadian considering the reason your rent is high is rich people who can easily get more capital are buying up real estate with the sole purpose of raising prices without providing any additional service. I mean I wouldn’t want to try to live in Vancouver on a California salary and that’s sad.
poor landlords. they should just sell.
The beauty of this is you’d be able to afford all of these if wages and housing costs were reasonable. The rich are the cause of both issues.
That’s true, the rich truly are the issue largely. My good landlord(s) aren’t though and they were never what I would consider rich. Just doing slightly better than me at the time. And I got to benefit from their slightly above me income bracket. I think it’s easier in smaller towns and cities than the big places like Vancouver Toronto and such though. The housing costs and rental costs are insane there. Go to places like Thunder Bay and it’s a lot more affordable.
There are honest people out there. Unfortunately, it’s a drip of water in the ocean.
mmm
Is that what we call a joint venture?
If you are going to make me put a coin into a cart because you don’t trust me to be an adult and tidy up after myself without being nannied, then I am going to do my damndest to bypass your lock and leave a mess out of spite.
In the shops where I am trusted and not required to pay a coin (I never even carry cash these days) I tidy up because that is the decent thing to do.
Yeah, might just wanna remember that the people that clean up your mess aren’t the same ones who put a coin lock on the cart.
Maybe you don’t care, but your rage isn’t really being channeled in a way that gets vengeance on the right people. It just hurts your working class allies.
Maybe where you live you are an outlier and not representative of the average person behavior, like you are a better person than the average. At least where I leave there is no coin system and people leave carts all around. I suspect that is even worse than what I see because there are employees always gathering carts.
This is a severe attack against people who don’t put their carts away.
Their actions just leave a small inconvenience for other people … their actions don’t wholesale destroy the lives of entire groups of people or cause outright war, genocide, death or destruction.
People who don’t mind making the world a little bit worse for literally everyone else if it saves them some small amount of effort are the real monsters, because they think they’re not.
…
I mean, ok, genocide is bad, too, I suppose.
You are right of course, but that’s part of the joke. I think it’s provokes such a viseral response because it’s directly “against” the reader, not many of us can claim to be directly impacted by genocide for example, even though it’s way worse.
lol … I find it humorous that I’m getting downvoted for saying it … if only people would get as upset about people putting away shopping carts as they do actual real world genocide.
You think someone posting that they’re pro-genocide would get less down votes?
Everyone agrees you should put your cart away, but there is no reward for doing so and no punishment for not doing it. Therefore it says a lot about the individual if they will “do the right thing” just because it makes things slightly better for other people, or if they won’t bother doing a simple act in order to avoid inconveniencing someone else if they aren’t forced to do so.
For such a simple act, it shows an extreme amount of selfishness to not do it.
Well…maybe you should put your cart away lazybones. Then you won’t have to worry about the Krampus getting you.
I starting to think that people have more respect for Krampus than they do the United Nations.
Obviously not as bad as genocide but it’s pretty close.
Funny I never see such hatred for people who leave their garbage on movie theatre seats or not clearing their trays at fast food places. Some people have disabilities and sometimes it’s just tough enough to shop and they are too tired or worn out by the end of their monthly shopping trip to bring the cart to the cart shed. I feel like everyone shitting on people leaving carts out of the cart shed are fully able bodied healthy young people who will one day do the thing they are complaining about, and realise they were being wieners about it. It’s not the end of the world to leave your cart 10 metres from the shed.
Fuck off and walk a couple of meters. Seriously as a non american this level of egoism is unfathomable for me
Some day, if you are lucky, you will be at an age where you are able to walk the grocery store very slowly and feebly, relying on your cart to stand up and lean on, but too old and tired to to bring it to the cart shed.
It’s really not that big of a crime.
