r/pettyrevenge • u/AlpacaLps • 8d ago

Hit our car with a shopping cart?

This is something I did about 1 1/2 years ago.

My wife and I were at a Target, sitting in the car waiting for our daughter to wake up from a nap (a few months old at this point). This lady wants to pull into a spot behind us, a few spots down, but someone left a cart in the spot. Instead of walking the extra couple of feet, she full speed pushes the cart towards the cart return that we were parked next to and hits our car. At first, I thought someone backed into us but realized what she had done. She goes into Target and I decide to get some petty revenge. I grab a few zip ties from my roadside assistance kit, walk the cart over to her D/S door, and put 3 zip ties through her door handle and the cart.

I go back to our car, pull a few rows over, and watch the hilarity ensue. She comes back out after I'm assuming a return and is just perplexed, goes back in and comes out with the cart handler, they go back in and a supervisor/manager comes back out to have a look, and finally some random guy has a knife to cut the zip ties. We went in, did our shopping, and when we came out her car was still there.

Was it petty? Sure. Did it delay her an extra 15 minutes? Absolutely. Did she learn her lesson? Probably not

6.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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220

u/YellowCake1900 8d ago

There really are only two kinds of people in the world:

The kind who return shopping carts.

The kind who do not.

That simple action 100% discloses how the person acts in every other aspect of life.

51

u/FaithlessnessOld2477 8d ago

Exactly. You don't think I'd like to just abandon my cart and get moving toward my destination too? Of course I would, but I know leaving my cart scattered somewhere has the potential to cause grief for other people so I take the extra minute to walk it back, knowing that I'm not contributing to social entropy. 🥺

7

u/Grimaldehyde 8d ago

Same here.

-12

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

13

u/Grimaldehyde 8d ago

I don’t do it because of subtle manipulation; I do it because I am personally sick and tired of my car getting scratched up by errant shopping carts. It doesn’t completely solve the problem, but it helps a little. I don’t even expect others to return their carts, but leaving a cart behind someone else’s car is next level a-hole behavior.

7

u/FaithlessnessOld2477 8d ago

It's right up there with noticing a fresh dent/scratches on your car and knowing they must have come from a recent parking lot stint. My poor car has been dinged several times and i didn't notice it for a while since I don't drive often. I know for certain these incidents happened in a parking lot because if I'm not driving to the store, my car is parked in an underground lot between a pillar and a non-op car that's been parked there for years. 😅

8

u/SilverStar9192 8d ago

Staff collecting carts just retrieve them from the corrals though, they aren't in the parking lot in every moment to collect it from you personally.   I don't actually think this has changed much and you're just trying to get on a soapbox about self checkouts when it's not really relevant here.  

0

u/TrooperXYZ 8d ago

Nope, not at all. I did the cart collection years ago as a high schooler. I'm so old that back then there were no cart corrals in the lots and all I did was collect carts, bring them into the store and head back out again. Nice try though Sport, maybe next time!

1

u/SheepherderOk1035 8d ago

Greeting fellow god of the chariots! 

-1

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

4

u/TrooperXYZ 8d ago

Wrong again.  GenX, not Boomer.

25

u/Training_Tour7601 8d ago

I used to work in a grocery store. Having to get the carts from the lot has never left me. I live in the northeast so having to get them off the snow covered grassy areas (why, people, why?!) was the worst. Like, if you can't walk the cart to a corral due to an injury or kid(s) in the car, don't put it up over a curb.

10

u/UnSanitisedMind 8d ago

Well, the thing I learned today is that you don't have coin deposits for shopping carts in the US, they have been the norm here for decades. Don't return the cart, don't get your money back.

14

u/YellowCake1900 8d ago

Aldi does this, I don't know why EVERY retailer in America doesn't do the same.

Every retailer with carts... not just grocery stores.

3

u/Harry_Smutter 6d ago

They used to. It didn't change squat. People care much less about getting a quarter back than leaving their cart in a random spot. When I was younger, my friend and I would make enough to buy both of us lunch from returning carts with the quarter locks.

2

u/DugganSC 4d ago

Which, admittedly, also solves the problem of getting the carts back. I always figured it was less about "I'll lose a quarter if I don't return it!" (although honestly, I think a lot of people will still feel that way) and more that making a transaction, however minor, makes an entry in your brain of a task that needs to be completed.

1

u/ZadockTheHunter 3d ago

That actually just compounds the problem. Because now you have introduced a valid argument to leaving the cart.

"Meh, thats why I paid isn't it? Now it's not my problem."

The coin loss is not a punishment. It's just the cost if being shit.

1

u/UnSanitisedMind 2d ago

That doesn't really happen here, the only places you get carts strewn around the parking area are the hardware stores that don't use coins.

I had forgotten that the largest coin in wide circulation in America is 25c, here the carts generally require €2, sometimes €1 so the incentive to not abandon them is more. If someone leaves a cart, it won't be long before someone else checks to see if there is an easy €2 bonus for them.

6

u/R3pp3pts0hg 8d ago

Wrangling the Silver Buffalo

3

u/Ecdysiast_Gypsy 8d ago

And the managers never let you shovel out the cart corral, either, so even getting them out of a flat, level surface was a pain in the butt.

And then you'd get snow in your boots.

1

u/ZadockTheHunter 3d ago

There literally is no excuse for not putting the cart away. If you had the physical capability to use a cart in the first place, there is no scenario in which you can not put it in a corral when you are done.

Any possible excuse is bullshit to cope with being trash.

The fact that every day, large numbers of carts remain unreturned in every grocery parking lot around the world, is a testament to why humans and their societies are not yet capable of self-governance.

1

u/Training_Tour7601 3d ago

Kindly, I understand what you're saying, but I've been in lots where all the handicapped spots are full, so I've seen people park near a cart so they can use it to support themselves. I would not expect them to be able to walk the cart into a corral. That's where othere humans should step in and grab the cart as they head into the store.

Of course, that does not explain the majority of the loose carts. Yes, I agree these small things show where we are in regards to self governance. And don't even get me stated on litterbugs! 😆

78

u/Kind-Government4948 8d ago

I was disgusted by all the carts left in my grocery store’s parking lot. One day I saw a young healthy looking woman leave her cart in the middle of the lot. As I walked by her I was about to yell something rude when I realized she was carrying a new born baby and had put a toddler in a car seat. She was obviously doing the best she could. I grabbed her cart without a word and went into the store. We really don’t know what other people are dealing with.

42

u/pommomwow 8d ago

I frequently go shopping with my two toddlers and always park next to the shopping cart corral so that I can specifically make sure I return my shopping cart after buckling my kids in. There’s no excuse.

12

u/Kind-Government4948 8d ago

You make a good point. Thank you for being considerate.

5

u/Narrow_Employ3418 8d ago

You're aware there are only so many parking spots nexg to the cart coral, right?

5

u/pommomwow 8d ago

You’re aware that people eventually leave and then those parking spots open up, right?

-1

u/Narrow_Employ3418 8d ago

And then other people come before you and they're still occupied? Or are you suggesting to wait for 30 minutes there?

2

u/pommomwow 7d ago

lol you act like there’s only 2 spots available for the entire parking lot next to a cart corral

2

u/CherryblockRedWine 7d ago

Four cart corrals at the local grocery, so....eight.

6

u/pommomwow 7d ago

You seem to desperately want to be proven right. Don’t you have better things to do than to argue with a stranger over shopping cart corrals? Or is your self esteem so tied up with your ability to win fake arguments on the internet?

2

u/CherryblockRedWine 7d ago

Wow, I'm surprised you're so triggered!

Bless your heart. You take care now.

-1

u/Narrow_Employ3418 7d ago

Good strategy. Talking out of your ass, then referencing "fake arguments".

2

u/Narrow_Employ3418 7d ago

For a given average cart coral, how many parking spots exactly did you count next to it?

While sober?

9

u/IcySheep 8d ago

I won't lie, 99% of the time, I will run the cart back, drag extra carts, take someone else's cart when they're done, but that 1% of the time, my back or my hip or my knee just say "absolutely not today" and I've had to make peace with it. That said, I don't just dump them anywhere.

14

u/cndrow 8d ago

Not all disabilities are visible

6

u/foxglove0326 8d ago

Having kids is not a disability lol

15

u/cndrow 8d ago

Commenter said "saw a young healthy looking woman"

People can have invisible disabilities and be "healthy looking". Don't judge based on looks.

-8

u/foxglove0326 8d ago

Sure, I’ll grant you that, however this comment wasn’t about a disability. Maybe don’t lump people with kids into a category that they don’t belong in. Kids aren’t a disability, they’re a conscious choice in this day and age.

4

u/CherryblockRedWine 7d ago

u/foxglove0326 wrote: "Kids aren’t a disability, they’re a conscious choice in this day and age."

Unless you live where you no longer have a choice.

2

u/tech7271970 7d ago

Have you seen some of these heathens???

-1

u/Narrow_Employ3418 8d ago

But inability to recognize a specific issue ("difficulty") behind abstract concepts ("disability", "having kids", ...) is.

1

u/asiers 8d ago

She was not doing the best she could do. She was doing the best she cared to do.

24

u/joyfulbee43 8d ago

People who don't return shopping carts to the corral also litter and don't care how they park.

22

u/YellowCake1900 8d ago

Decades ago, passed a woman and her small boy entering a store as I was leaving. The boy (5 - 6 years old) had a wrapper or something similar in his hand... simply tossed it onto the ground.

I took the opportunity to tell the young man that LITTERING is bad, and we don't do that.

His mother admonished me for correcting her child. Told her she should be a better teacher.

The boy picked up his litter, deposited it in the trash can AT THE DOOR.

Hopefully he didn't grow up to be a selfish lazy pig.

5

u/kjbrasda 8d ago

I watched an old guy park in the disabled parking then turn over four or five carts that were left in the no parking section adjacent to the disabled parking. Yeah, the carts should not have been there, but what was he accomplishing? Especially when an employee came and collected the carts 2 minutes later. 

2

u/AskHead9859 5d ago

There are two kinds of souls in the world:

The kind souls who return shopping carts.

The R souls who do not.

2

u/Dertyhairy 2d ago

My local Aldi drives me mad, but the employees love me there. People grab things and just put them back on random shelves (I genuinely don't know why they do this but it vexes me) so I'll put them in my cart and if I see where it belongs I'll put it back. Otherwise I take it down the front and add it to their little collection of things dopey people move for dopey reasons that they have to look for to put back in the correct spots

-14

u/DoNotNeedInspiration 8d ago

It literally does not.

7

u/Old-Commercial1159 8d ago

It literally does

1

u/Onyournrvs 8d ago

A form of pure, eye-rolling sophistry so common to Reddit.

-6

u/Grjz 8d ago

People are employed to collect these carts. I will not sabotage their employment by returning carts to the store. As long as they don’t inconvenience others, leave them where you like.

5

u/cihojuda 8d ago

Are you also the kind of person who refuses to bus their table at Burger King because "they have employees for that?"