Why is this practice promoted?
It’s someone’s job and they make their money grabbing those carts, aren’t we taking that away from them if all is perfectly arranged and they can just collect the carts in 2 minutes? This concept seems to only benefit the business in saving labor?
Coincidentally, I was checking out two days ago at a Costco and the manager came up to my cashier and said, “close up after this one, I’m going to send you home early okay?” The cashier said, “yeah, I guess…” But you could tell they clearly didn’t want to leave early. If there were a bunch of carts in the parking lot at that point, feels like that person might get an extra 30 mins or so on the clock… Why aren’t we supporting that? Manager would say, " let’s close you down after this one, and then please do a lap in the parking lot to grab carts before you go"
Us carefully putting the carts away as customers is just free labor that the corporation benefits from… Period. How does this help the worker making an hourly wage?
As someone who has previously put carts away for a job. No, not only does leaving carts out make it more annoying to pick up it can also damage other people’s vehicles, and take up parking spots. Carts roll around or are difficult to see and can get hit. This is the equivalent of saying to just knock stuff off the shelf as you walk through the store, an employee would have to pick that up and it would just cost the company money.
I don’t think this comment actually responds to my points. I’ve worked many hourly retail and restaurant jobs myself. In many there was a regular struggle to hit minimum hours per week to qualify for benefits and managers were instructed to cut people during perceived slow times - none of this considering that I sat in an hour traffic to show up for my scheduled 8 hour shift that I need to meet to make my rent.
I was happy when gobacks piled up, shelves needed to be faced, tables needed to be bused and yes, to carts needed to be collected. When that was the case, I typically made my hours in those common, “we’re going to need to cut someone” moments.
Again, this entire conversation seems biased to the business owner, the corporation’s labor cost, and not the employee. Saying “all the carts are going to hit cars” is a false premise, in my opinion. And what I’m arguing for is the “good trouble” version of this. Place the carts safely away and maybe near the corral, but not in the corral.
Near the corral doesn’t take a lot more time to pick up from in the corral. I agree that leaving then in the corral is fine, someone still has to pick them up from there. But leaving the cart randomly outside has the potential to cause issues for others, completely ignoring the business owner.
As stated previously, doesn’t seem you’ve ever worked an hourly job where management was actively working against that 29 hour threshold and sending people home early from scheduled shifts to make you avoid qualifying for expanded employees benefits.
I definitely have and that doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather not risk damaging others property for an extra 15 minutes of work.
Leaving a shopping cart near your car is the same as deliberately causing damage to products in the store? Very very interesting point of view, if completely unhinged.
You are right, I was being a bit hyperbolic. It’s equivalent to picking stuff up off the shelf and setting it on the ground. No damage to the product and would take workers more time to pick it up. Might as well start doing that every time you go to the store.
So I used to put my cart back all the time but then I found out it creates jobs for people that cant get a job. Some one getting out of jail living in a half way home can use these jobs to get out of their situation. I no longer put it back.
