I was taught at an early age to never leave a shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot. Now, as a vehicle owner, I get annoyed when I come out and find some lazy person’s card resting against the side of my vehicle.
After reading Hannah B. Waldfogel’s “somewhat scientific” investigation into cart abandonment, I realized my irritation isn’t just about scratches and dents. The stray cart is a tiny moral Rorschach test: What do I owe strangers when nobody is watching?
Waldfogel did what my inner grouch only fantasizes about—she collected data. She binge-watched hundreds of Cart Narcs videos, where a stranger asks abandoners to do the “right thing” and return the cart. What followed was a surprisingly consistent menu of human defenses: deflection (“Do you work here?”), anger, and a buffet of excuses.
The excuses were the part that stuck with me, because they sounded weirdly familiar. People claimed entitlement (“I’ve worked retail—I’ve earned it”), invoked time pressure, or pointed to the parking lot as proof that “everyone else does it.” Some shifted responsibility entirely: “They pay someone to collect them.” Underneath all of it, I hear a story about status—that cart return is lowly work, and therefore optional.
Behavioral science helps explain why the same person who will dutifully separate recycling might abandon a cart. Incentives matter: the Aldi quarter deposit makes return the default, even if some people try to game it. Norms matter too. A lot filled with loose carts whispers a descriptive norm: leaving one is normal. A neat corral full of returned carts whispers the opposite.
But the article’s most useful nudge for me was about meaning. Returning a cart can feel like a chore until you frame it as a small act of kindness—a favor for the next driver, the next parent juggling kids, the next worker who shouldn’t have to chase “metal tumbleweeds” across the lot. So now I’m trying a new mantra: I return my cart not because the cart matters, but because other people do.
When I spot one drifting, I grab it. It feels oddly satisfying.
PHOTO CREDIT: A Steely Millipede (of shopping carts). (by Anne Burgess via Wikimedia)
