Do you return your shopping trolley? Max Futcher debate

It’s a moral dilemma and the ultimate test of honesty - but it seems a lot are failing. VOTE IN OUR POLL

You can get a sense of where we’re at as a society by visiting your local supermarket carpark. It can be the Wild West in many respects but, specifically, I want to talk about shopping trolleys. On any given day, you will be driving through a carpark crammed with vehicles, searching patiently for a vacant car spot.

After a few false alarms (disabled spots, pram parking or a space with a motorcycle) you spy an opening at the end of the row.

Eureka!

But, just as you pull into the park, you see someone has left their empty shopping trolley in the middle of the car space. Really?

You see it all the time: trolleys left in random places. It looks like someone has emptied the groceries and then driven off, leaving the trolley in everyone else’s way. It looks like that because that’s exactly what has happened.

There are ample trolley bays positioned throughout the carparks, but returning the trolley there is just too much effort for these “time-poor” shoppers. So, they leave the trolley in the way, sometimes precariously positioned so it will later roll uncontrollably into the car door of some innocent shopper.

That doesn’t concern the guilty party because by then they’re happily cruising home, perhaps cutting off other drivers and running red lights along the way. If they did think about the errant trolley they had left behind – and I doubt they would – perhaps they’d justify it in some way to themselves.

“It was too far to the trolley bay,” they’d think. Or, “Those shopping centre owners should make them more accessible.”

Channel 7's Max Futcher. Picture: Tara Croser.

Or perhaps they would tell themselves it was the role of the trolley collectors. “I’m keeping that bloke in a job! If I took my trolley to the bay, that young bloke would be out of a job!”

Keep telling yourself that, Your Majesty, but we know the truth, and so do you. What’s more, there’s probably a young prince or princess in the back seat who will follow the example you’ve set.

Two months ago, in Oxenford on the Gold Coast, a driver’s dashcam captured a fellow shopper dumping her trolley just metres from the trolley bay. The video was posted on TikTok, and attracted angry reaction from other shoppers, who spoke to the local Seven News.

“It does annoy me when I see people do that,” one person said.

Another agreed the loose trolley could damage someone’s car, and everyone interviewed felt there was no excuse.

“Unless you’re handicapped or elderly, of course,” said another man.

Even the young fellow who’s employed to collect trolleys was surprised at some people’s inconsiderate nature. “It’d take two minutes to walk to a trolley bay and put it away,” the trolley collector said. “It’s not a hard thing.”

Two years ago, The New York Times ran an article about so-called “Shopping Cart Theory”. The theory posits that the decision to return a shopping trolley is the ultimate test of moral character and a person’s capacity to be self-governing.

Do you return your shopping trolley after you use it?

The theory, circulated on social media, suggested “A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage … The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society”.

I’m not sure this disturbing habit deserves its own theory, but here I am writing a column about it, so who am I to judge?

There are some shops that appear to have solved the problem by using trolleys that require a gold coin. That coin is refunded after you return the cart. It’s a good strategy but, let’s be honest, how many of us carry gold coins in our pockets now? So we resort to stuffing 37 items in a basket.

We have plenty of laws, regulations, by-laws and rules in our society but, really, what ensures this giant social experiment works is what we all do when the rules aren’t strictly enforced.

I return my trolley every time, not because it’s the rule, but because I don’t want it to interfere with others. I make sure my kids are aware of this simple, considerate action. It’s part of keeping things civilised, even in the thunderdome that is the supermarket carpark on a Saturday afternoon.