One Good Return Deserves Another!

Can this simple test prove your inherent goodness?

Shopping cart discarded by someone clearly lacking even a shred of human decency

Are you a good person? Of course you are. What kind of stupid question is that?

Although, in truth, most of us are not exactly unbiased judges of our own inherent “goodness.” Lord knows even some of the world’s most notorious monsters would have likely said they led virtuous lives:

Charles Manson: “Yeah, I think I’ve been a pretty good guy overall. I mean, you know, maybe with a few exceptions.”

Thankfully, there’s a simple new test to determine whether you’re a good person, and like everything of any value today, it originated on social media. According to an article in Upworthy, the so-called “Shopping Cart Theory” posits that “an individual's moral character can be determined by whether they choose to return a shopping cart to its designated spot after use or simply leave it wherever it suits them.”

This theory has no scientific research backing it up, but I’m nevertheless willing to embrace it wholeheartedly if for no other reason than that I do always return my shopping carts. And I do so because I’m a thoughtful, considerate, selfless person, and certainly not because I have the emotional maturity of a seven-year-old and, after unloading my groceries, I like to hop up on the back of the empty shopping cart and ride it across the parking lot.

Some might quibble with this theory on the grounds that there is a cost to returning shopping carts. After all, it’s someone’s job to retrieve all the wayward carts strewn around the lot, and if it weren’t for shoppers ditching them willy nilly, well, that person would be out of a job, wouldn’t they? For these hardworking employees, collecting shopping carts might be their one opportunity to get away from the oppressive environment and dictatorial assistant managers inside Walmart to breathe just a little bit of fresh air and you think it makes you a good person to take that away from them?

We’re All Employees Now

Of course, the stores would not hesitate to cut those jobs if they could come up with a means of compelling us to return our carts, possibly involving electric shocks. Businesses these days are always looking for ways to pawn off employees’ responsibilities onto customers in the guise of improving efficiency. That’s why shoppers today enjoy the benefit of “self-checkout.” 

Though, honestly, what’s not to love about self-checkout? Why wait in line to be helped by a person with training and experience – a person who has memorized all the various produce codes and has experience loading literally thousands of grocery bags – when you can try to do all of that yourself, fail miserably, and then wait even longer while the one perpetually-irritated employee assigned to self-checkout assists all the other customers ahead of you who also don’t know what they’re doing?

I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before supermarkets will have us stock the shelves, slice and weigh our own deli meats, and start telling us over the store PA system, “You there, the gentleman in the khaki slacks and blue shirt who just put a jar of peanut butter in your cart – cleanup in aisle four.” 

No Thanks, I’m Just Looking

Sometimes the considerate thing to do isn’t as obvious as returning a shopping cart, however. I’m reminded of this sort of “gray area” every time I’m at a coffee shop and a fellow patron asks me if I’ll watch their laptop while they use the restroom. Of course, I want to be considerate, so I say “yes,” but lately I’ve begun to wonder, what is my actual responsibility here? Am I tacitly agreeing to put my life on the line in defense of this stranger’s laptop? Or, conversely, am I merely agreeing to “watch” the device, regardless of what ensues?

Laptop Owner: “My laptop’s gone! What happened?”
Me: “Um… a guy walked over, picked it up and then walked out with it.”
Laptop Owner: “But you were supposed to watch it!”
Me: “I did. I promise you I watched the whole thing.”

Taking Out The Garbage

At its core the Shopping Cart Theory is about doing what might be termed “good deeds” even when no one is looking.

My sister, Emily, is a perfect example of this kind of good deed-doer, particularly when it comes to picking up litter. Not only does she constantly retrieve and properly dispose of debris on the ground wherever she goes, she even schedules outings to local parks with the express purpose of performing such civic-minded clean-up duties. 

Then again, I only know this because she posts photos of her good deeds on Facebook. She’s ostensibly trying to encourage others to follow her example, but I suspect her REAL motive is to gain social media status. Because what better way to build clout online than by showing off that you frequently handle strangers’ discarded refuse? I believe this is how most top Instagram models got their start.

And then there’s the question of whether this is such a “good deed” in the first place. What if someone intentionally left all those cigarette butts, beer bottles and used condoms on the ground to guide them home, like some sort of debauched, modern-day Hansel and Gretel? If so, I’d like to know what exactly was going on during this person’s visit to the park. And also, can I be invited along next time?

The whole Shopping Cart Theory may be moot, however, since supermarkets around the globe have started making customers pay for the use of a cart – although they do receive their money back upon the cart’s safe return.

It seems like a reasonable solution. After all, it’s not grocery stores’ responsibility to run a worldwide philosophical research study into the nature of human compassion. They just want their carts back. 

I only hope the stores don’t start charging extra for customers who want to ride them.