this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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The most interesting thing is when something is culturally different from the US way of life, then it's by default wrong.
I was arguing about shopping carts in another sub and, because it is culturally appreciated in the US to return the cart, I argued that we don't do that in our country because it's considered unsafe and was called lazy and got heavily downvoted.
That's unfortunate. So many of these english speaking social media platforms tend to be US point of view dominated. From an American perspective it is difficult to envision a situation where returning a cart is so unsafe that it should be universally avoided and that may have resulted in the downvotes, and it's certainly conceivable that the inconvenience and refusal to returning a cart could be rationalized over "safety". It's not like that sort of rationalization doesn't happen over other things in daily life. The only thing I could suggest is a offer a why. I'm not suggesting people will become less stubborn over the issue, but at least those who want to learn, will.
Not to restart the discussion but: The whole "returning your cart" thing is a very arbitrary metric reinforced by a meme from around 2020 and has taken hold in the fickle zeitgeist of the internet. Personally I think carts need to be returned because they block parking spaces and can roll into and damage cars. Out of curiosity, why don't people return carts where you live?
This is how our parking lots look:
Every parking space has a space where you can leave the car to be collected by the employees, usually in the back of the spot. You can see it green in the image. Our parking lots are huge and usually take several floors. For us it makes no practical sense to have to go back all the way to the front, or to inside the store in some cases (like in the case in the photo, where you have to go all the way inside the mall), just to return the cart.
Of course if it happens for people to park near the cart deposit space, they usually return the cart to the stack.
Lots in the US are plenty large as well, so I don’t see that as a factor. But that doesn’t explain the “safety” aspect that was mentioned. It just means your lots are designed to accommodate leaving carts and the employees are accustomed to fetching said carts, not an explanation that led to the design other than perhaps a convenience for customers.
Which doesn't mean I'm wrong and you're right. It's just two different ways of doing the same thing.
On big food courts here the etiquette is to return the tray to the tray holders or to the store, but for small courts or restaurants it's very common to leave it at the table for the employees to gather. So it is kind of inverse of the cart etiquette. In some places in the world it is common to return the tray, and in some places it is common to leave it at the table. That doesn't mean either is wrong.
The world is big and different people have different views and cultures and ways of doing every single thing. To tell one is superior to the other when talking about these things that don't matter so much is to impose you way above anyone else's to feel superior.
The person that called me lazy was calling everybody where I live lazy because everyone does this thing this way, which is pretty pretentious.
You can have strong opinions about something without being judgmental about how other people live because they don't do things the way you and your peers do.
Being culturally expected and ingrained isn't an issue I think needs to be argued about - so long as it doesn't cause harm. Whatever works in your country is fine. Americans have plenty of their own cultural norms that are generally unacceptable or frowned on in other parts of the world even through they are insignificant in actual meaning. However, again, it doesn't explain the safety aspect regarding cart return.
Huh?