Cart Narcs - Addressing the issue of people not returning shopping carts

 

One of the common themes on this blog is articles about people who do not follow the rules of society. It's one of my pet peeves when people just do whatever they want without any consideration of other people. An example of this is when people take shopping carts and then just leave them in the middle of a parking lot instead of returning them to the cart corral.

Returning a cart is very simple yet many people are lazy and can't be bothered to do this. As a result, their cart ends up blocking parking spaces, rolling around and hitting other cars, and causing additional work for the cart attendants.

Recently I found a channel called Cart Narcs which addresses this very issue. The guy from this channel goes around looking for examples of people not returning their carts and then he confronts them about it. He has a uniform as well as a body camera to record the situations. As you might imagine, they tend to be very entertaining!

Typically he waves down the offender and lets them know they left their cart in the lot and reminds them of the nearest cart corral. Most of the time people try to come up with an excuse such as “They pay people for that” or “Everyone else is doing it.”  Sometimes they just flat out say they don't care.

One some occasions, they admit they were wrong and begrudgingly get out of their car and return their cart. These are great interactions when someone gets that little reminder and they decide to do what they should have done in the first place.

For the other people who refuse to return their carts, it usually escalates into a confrontation with them swearing and getting all riled up. The Cart Narcs guy can be pretty persistent and does not give up until they return their cart or angrily speed away. He even puts magnetic bumper stickers on their car that lets people know they do not return their cart.

While putting things on their car might be going over the line a bit, I appreciate the work this guy is doing by promoting common decency when it comes to returning shopping carts. One thing is for sure, after an interaction with this guy, these people will never look at a shopping cart the same way again.

The channel seems to be pretty popular so hopefully it spreads the word and encourages more people to return their shopping cart when they are done with it. We need more people like this taking the initiative to help make the world a better place!