I gotta be honest, my bf or I still make sure the cart goes back every time we shop, but I increasingly question whether I should bother. These grocery stores keep raising their prices well above inflation so they can pocket the rest and brag to shareholders about it, at the cost of people who actually shop there.
It’s tempting to say that if they’re going to play that game, they get no courtesy from me as a customer and can hire more cart collectors. It’s miniscule on an individual level, but it is unpaid labor.
There’s the argument that unreturned carts mostly inconvenience other customers, but honestly if the store is exploiting both customers’ goodwill and wallets, I think it’s fine to make the experience at that store just that little bit worse; maybe that last little push will encourage people to shop elsewhere (where it’s an option of course, i.e. not a small town).
I don’t feel this urge at stores like H Mart even though they have so many fewer return stalls and it’s often a longer walk to do so.
I guess this is kind of an antithesis to Shopping Cart Theory I’ve been developing in my head over the past little while. It’s conditional on the store itself being overtly greedy, but I think there might be something to it.