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prmoustache 4 days ago

> Larger stores in Sweden also use the coin system, even though as in the Netherlands it feels like use is declining in favor of just unlocked carts.

The coins are so that people put them back in their designated storage area, not to prevent theft. A significant fraction of the population are lazy asshole who tend to leave carts next to where their car was parked instead of walking the 10-20 meters it take to return them.

JadoJodo 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's not always out of laziness: many times I see moms buckle up their young kids in the car, unload the groceries from the cart, and then be nervous about leaving their kids in order to return the cart. A lot of them will try to park next to the cart return, but that's not always possible.

prmoustache 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

That is a silly excuse and I say this as a dad. If you don't want to leave the kids for 30 seconds, you return the cart with them.

throwway120385 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's a great idea if your kid is less than 15 pounds, but it's very hard to wrangle a willful 2 or 3 year old the 100 feet across a busy parking lot and back to the car without picking them up which is a monumental task for many people. My wife has this issue because our son is more than 30 pounds which is very heavy for her. Every kid is different and people don't always have the same physical abilities as you do.

jjk166 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You had to get your kid out of the car and bring them to the place where you picked the cart up at the beginning. Typically the cart return is closer still.

prmoustache 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How does she gets to the cart in the first place?

Most 2-3y old kids can walk and when my babies where too small to walk I would just put my groceries in the bottom part of the stroller and in an hiking backpack instead of a cart.

throwway120385 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, but my entire post was about safety issues having my son walk in some parking lots. And getting my wife to put on the equivalent of a 60-liter backpack to go to the store is absurd.

I get that you don't want to make accommodations for people but you might want to think about what leads you all to get so bent out of shape on this one. At the end of the day your argument boils down to "your spouse just needs to work harder so I'm not inconvenienced by the cart she hung off the curb next to the space I wanted." Society is full of people with differing abilities in differing mental spaces and not everyone owns equipment like that and is willing to spend 10 minutes getting it out and setting it up in a busy parking lot while also wrangling their willful, very curious child.

t14000 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why is your kid so disobedient?

throwway120385 15 hours ago | parent [-]

He's very curious about everything and he's very distractable.

JadoJodo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm also a dad, but not everyone has just one kid. Many of the moms who I've seen struggling are doing so because they have 2-4 kids (1-2 newborn, 1-2 under 5).

There are absolutely lazy people, but it's not always the case.

prmoustache 3 days ago | parent [-]

So what are the probability that those 4 kids and their parents are all disabled and unable to move to the coral, and how do they manage to get a shopping cart AND be able to do their actual shopping inside the supermarket with that low amount of mobility?

People having newborns typically use baby carriers and strollers and when using the later use the storage space of the stroller to carry a significant amount of groceries. Nobody with a sane mind woud grab 2 newborns in the same arm and throw them in an unsafe shopping cart.

valianteffort 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is even less than statistically insignificant.

Every single person that doesn't return their cart does so out of laziness. Besides just being an asshole, the cart will take a potential parking spot that someone else later needs to move to free up, and worst of all the wind could blow the cart into someone elses car.

Nobody is gonna kidnap her kids as she walks the cart back in less than a minute. It is simply her being a lazy asshole.

JadoJodo 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Every single person that doesn't return their cart does so out of laziness. > It is simply her being a lazy asshole.

I can see that this is a very personal issue for you, so I'll just say this: People are complicated, and I would encourage you to have more grace for them. If it bothers you that much to see a cart left by a mom struggling with kids, you might consider offering to return it on her behalf.

pixl97 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Otherwise known as Shopping Cart Theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_cart_theory

wildzzz 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Right, getting your quarter back is enough incentive to return a cart. If you were just planning on stealing a free cart, now it only costs a quarter.

Harvesterify 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As a french living in the Netherlands, the first time I saw this behavior was in the US (SF and LA), it just never happens here, or very marginally.

prmoustache 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I have definitely seen it in Europe. France, Spain, Italy and even Switzerland.

PetitPrince 4 days ago | parent [-]

Haven't seen that in Switzerland but most place I see where a shopping cart is really warranted (large stores, Ikea, etc.) have covered parking spots instead of open-air (and/or are smaller than those giant parking lot we can see in the US). My hypothesis is that of the panopticon: since those are smaller space that anti-social behavior is way more noticeable and will not be tolerated by peers.

4 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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