Australian supermarket lie exposed in new national survey

There’s a common lie that Aussies are telling because they fear a wrath of judgement from others and it has been exposed.

Are you guilty of this supermarket act? Picture: Alamy

Seventy-five per cent of Aussies claim they always return their shopping trolleys, but you only have to hang out in a supermarket carpark to realise people are lying.

Not to sound like a hardened seasoned Detective on a British crime drama but when news.com.au ran a survey interviewing 2000 Aussies and found out that 75 per cent were claiming to be shopping trolley saints, I knew the facts weren’t adding up.

You only have to visit a local grocery store parking lot to see the odd trolley strewn in a random place.

Even a walk around your local neighbourhood usually involves seeing an abandoned shopping trolley left discarded and unwanted.

This evidence really works against the theory that 75 per cent of Aussies are diligently always returning them. I bet these people say they always remember to bring their reusable shopping bags to the supermarket as well.

So, I decided to investigate and armed with my doubts and my iPhone. I headed to the closest Woolworths to see what Aussies are doing when they think no one is watching.

Dun, Dun, Dun.

As the great poet Maya Angelou said people don’t tell you who they are, they show you, and when they do, you should listen.

Firstly I headed to Woolworths at Alexandria in Sydney at 8am sharp, which was a little early, and only a few shoppers were around, but there was evidence to back my hunch.

I spotted two discarded shopping trolleys that hadn’t be put back in the correct shopping trolley bay, it was complete Aussie anarchy.

While I had found the evidence, I couldn’t actually find the culprits, so I headed to one of the busiest grocery hot spots in Sydney’s Marrickville Metro.

I wanted to observe Aussies shoppers in their natural habitats trying to wrangle groceries into their Holdens.

News.com.au is asking all Aussies the questions that really matter in The Great Aussie Debate. From serious to silly, these are the issues that divide Australia and we want to know what you think.

It was a hotbed of shopping trolley crime; OK, technically, it isn’t a crime to discard your shopping trolley, but it is naughty. Would it be a stretch to call it un-Australian? It would be best if you decided that.

I watched five people put back their trolleys, and only three returned them to the correct shopping bay.

One rogue shopper just pretended there was a bay nearby and tucked it discreetly by a concrete slab wall. He did it with the confidence of Tom Cruise getting up to mischief in a Mission Impossible movie.

Another just gave up on the whole thing and moved it away so their car wouldn’t run into it when they made their swift exit.

I can’t say this for sure, but it didn’t even look like either of them were considering returning the shopping trolley to its rightful bay.

Someone call Tracy Grimshaw, the woman needs to come out of retirement and be hot on the heels of these shopping trolley rebels.

The short experiment revealed that 40 per cent of Aussies didn’t return their trolleys, which is a big difference from the 75 per cent of Aussies that claim they do.

Look, clearly I haven’t done enough research to make some big giant claim but I do think my time loitering around a grocery store did reveal that people are telling trolley fibs and it needs to be brought to light.

Some diligent shoppers have clearly done the right thing here. Picture: Alamy

So why are people lying?

Because seeming like a good and noble person is important to most people, and no one wants to admit to being selfish.

You aren’t going to have someone proudly claiming they didn’t pick up their dog’s poo or that they parked knowingly in a non-stopping zone just because it was convenient.

Clinical psychologist Dr Aileen Alegado explained that we tend to lie about trivial things because we fear judgment.

“When there is lying, no matter how big or small the lie may be, it usually comes back down to our own ability to feel shame, guilt or is connected to being judged,” she said.

Often lying stems from the mentality of not wanting to get in trouble.

“We know we should have done something, so lie because we fear being judged or feel that personal shame for what we have done.”

So, if you’re someone that doesn’t always put back your shopping trolley, does that mean you are in danger of being an inherently bad person?

Don’t panic into an existential crisis because the answer is a solid no.

Dr Alegado said that there is a massive difference between doing a bad thing and being a “bad person”.

Case closed.

Originally published as Australian supermarket lie exposed in new national survey