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Comment by buggymcbugfix | Hacker News Reader

Is this a US phenomenon? Here in Germany, people always return their shopping carts. Yes, the carts take a coin as a deposit, which can be removed when the cart is returned, but many people have shopping cart openers (for want of a better word) on their keyrings, that circumvent the deposit, yet I haven't EVER seen anyone leaving their shopping cart. I'd go so far as to say that'd be even less socially adequate than urinating in public.

I've been around Europe a fair bit and from Bulgaria to Portugal, people just return their carts. It's a no-brainer.

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> Is this a US phenomenon?

The answer to this question is always “no”. Regardless of the subject. Basically 100% of the time.

At my local grocery store everyone returns their carts. In the other place in the US I lived 10 years ago, there were loose carts everywhere.

The US is a very, very big country. Really more like 50 big countries. With huge variation in culture, income, background, etc. There’s barely anything you can say that applies to the whole country, regardless of the subject.

someone clever ought to do some kind of statistical analysis and figure out what hidden variables are causing these differences.

what are you hinting towards?

what are you hinting towards?

what are you hinting towards??

> what hidden variables are causing these differences

Just one variable: the Jerk Scale.

It was never said that it was a phenomenon on the whole country.

It is a US phenomenom yes. When it exists in other countries it's because of Hollywood exporting american culture.

I'm trying to think back to the last time I saw a shopping cart in a movie. I think it was probably Terms of Endearment, but I don't think that the cart made it outside.

Is that really your position? to you ascribe all bad behavior globally to US cultural exports?

not all bad behavior. why this generalizing frenzy?? lmao

Just seems wild to blame USA for exporting cart culture? What's the mechanism with Hollywood? I missed the marvel extended shopping cart universe.

Where did the USA import cart culture from? Mexico?

It seems likely to me that many countries are capable of domestically manufacturing selfish assholes.

Greetings from Finland. No deposit required for the carts, yet almost all carts are being returned (I can't remember when I last saw one not returned).

Wherever you are in Finland is more considerate than wherever I am in in Finland. Often when I arrive at my local Prisma there’s an employee outside wrangling abandoned carts.

It happens: https://www.is.fi/hs-vantaa/art-2000006387011.html

You have to read between the lines on why that is so.

Recently in NL many supermarkets have dropped the coin completely. But people have been conditioned for years to return the cart. Though there are cart thieves.

Same in Germany, it started during Corona, as people should touch things as less as possible.

In the UK some places have it, some do not. Lidl does need the coin, Waitrose does not but has a system that stops you taking them out beyond the car park (there are warnings on, other supermarkets do not.

Almost everyone returns them in all the supermarkets in my area.

My elderly mom never shops at Aldi (in the US) because she can't figure out the coin thing. Given that she spends outrageous amounts on groceries, Aldi is losing a ton of money by paywalling the stupid cart.

Aldi is the only place in the US that I know of that uses this system. It works well enough, no carts in the lot, and surprisingly people sometimes leave a quarter in the cart as a sort of “pay it forward” minor charity. (Good because not everyone keeps change these days.)

Naww, that is very sweet!

I can't say for the US, but over here the coin system is ubiquitous, and if you've not got a coin you can ask at the service desk and they'll hand you a branded coin to use.

Last time I asked in Canada they just gave me a regular Loonie ($1 coin)

The only downside of this in the US is that homeless people will tend to hang around Aldi's asking people if they can return their cart to get the coin. Most of them are friendly and thankful but every once in awhile an aggressive person would make me very uncomfortable.

I also expect Aldi management isn't thrilled about homeless people camping outside their stores.

Took this picture close to the place where I’m living, people just come home with the cart and then drop it outside. This is Germany https://ibb.co/rGXfb0PY

Whoa!

This is the true chaotic neutral option and you see it anywhere that walking is common AND the carts don’t lockup their wheels at the lot line.

However, shopping carts SuCk on anything but smooth cement.

Yeah, looks like NRW alright

You’re living in some different Germany. In the Germany where I’m living shopping carts are everywhere… (nrw)

In my part of Germany (BW) I also almost never see carts outside of roughtly where they should be. Sometimes they are just lazily pushed under the enclosure (if you want to call it that), but most of the times they are just how they should be.

PS: This is not meant as snark, but rather an observation, that by means of a small nudge (in this case the coin deposit), people can learn to do the Right Thing. To quote Charlie Munger:

> Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.

I always thought it a sneaky way to pay children .25 cents a cart return.

An enterprising 10 year old could rack a few bucks sometimes.

People here too return them. It is a social class question.

Here, US?

The difference between the ratio of people returning their carts at Wal-mart vs at the Natural Foods store where I live is substantial.

you just explained it, they're not coin operated.

At ALDI stores they are!

do people abandon carts there?

I don't get there often enough to know. I would assume it's rare, and ALDI shopper is different than say, a Wal-mart shopper.

german precision shopper

I don’t go to Aldi because of the coin thing in the shopping carts. I went there once, didn’t have at change, and had to carry everything until my arms got full, then just left. I’m not going to carry change with me all the time on the off chance I decide to go to Aldi. Every other store lets me take a cart for free, and I return it because it’s the right thing to do and I want them to remain free.

They are still free, since it is a deposit, not a fee. Also don't you need to put in a coin, when you use a locker, in a museum or the library, or the train station? This is ubiquitous here. You don't need to use a real coin, they are also fake plastic coins for only this purpose, you can get everywhere, and also tools, which you put in to unlock, and then can immediately pull out again.

I get that it’s a deposit, but it still means I have to carry a coin, or some kind of slug. It’s one more thing to carry or think about, that other places don’t require.

Museums, libraries, and train stations aren’t places I go weekly, like a grocery store. When I do go, I can’t remember the last time I ever used a public locker. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used one of those in my life. I don’t tend to carry much stuff with me, so a locker isn’t something I generally need.

It varies.

I was once 75 cents ahead by the time I made it inside of an Aldi in Columbus, Ohio because there were 3 free-range carts in the parking lot that I returned. Three was a lot -- most days I only found one cart hanging out in the parking lot.

In my current neck of the woods things are a bit different. There's never any carts roaming the parking lot, and there's usually carts with quarters already in them, parked properly up by the door.

(I often leave one parked with a quarter like that myself, but it's not because of some "pay it forward" quasi-altruistic purpose or something. Sometimes I just want to pick my groceries up out of the cart and walk to the car and I just don't have enough free hands to deal with retrieving the quarter. So I line up the cart with the others, grab my bag or two of things, and shove the cart the rest of the way home with my hip.)

I am old enough to have lived in Germany when they were not coin operated, and most carts were returned at that time as well.

Though occasionally you saw a cart far far away from a supermarket, where someone had basically stolen it, either teenagers to have fun, or someone asocial who, I don't know, used to carry all the shopping home? I don't really know what they did with it.

And it was the cost of replacing those stolen carts that drove the adaption of the coin operation system. Not that people just left them in the parking lot. Some supermarkets also tried a system where the cart locked if you moved it out of range of some radio in the supermarket, but that one really didn't take off.

(Also, quite a few people in Germany just do shopping by walking or biking to the supermarket).

> I am old enough to have lived in Germany when they were not coin operated

And now they are again. Some new REWE carts already come without this feature.

What about Gittertiere? https://www.reddit.com/r/Gittertiere/s/KIDj4EhElD

Of course hooligans steal shopping carts. This was about people leaving shopping carts in the parking lot :)

Why do the stores have the coin deposit if leaving the shopping cart, even if you circumvented the deposit, is morally more morally reprehensible than urinating in public?

> Is this a US phenomenon

Yeah, you can kind of do whatever you want here. It's sort of our thing

> It's sort of our thing

Also it seems to be our thing to have an unbounded number of assholes who do stuff like throw rental scooters in rivers.

Don't worry. While we don't have the shopping card issue in Germany, we do have the escooter-in-river issue!

Here its mostly teens who throw rental escooters into rivers.

Bad for the rivers, of course, but it amazes me that the teens in Germany are actively engaged in keeping the sidewalks clean.

For the uninitiated, what's the subtext here? Is this about a trend in behavior of teens in Germany?

Asking for the same reason I asked OP my question. I was just in Berlin and, second only to Tokyo, I've never* seen such conscientious group of people, including teens.

* I'd actually place two other cities from that trip into the same #2 position: Zurich and Vienna.

Yes, it's unfortunately a trend to throw e-scooters into rivers. Unfortunately the government is still not collecting stats about this vandalism. Throwing e-scooters with batteries into rivers is dangerous, because the batteries contain poisonous metals. Unfortunately many people appreciate it when people throw these scooters into the river, because they are "annoyed be them when they are standing in their way on the sidewalk".

Some links:

(2025) 300+ e-scooters recovered from the Spree (river in Berlin) by Spree:publik activist Jan Ebel: https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/treptow-koepenick/article4...

(2024) Readers of "Neue Rottweiler Zeitung" mention e-scooters in the Neckar: https://www.nrwz.de/rottweil/e-scooter-laufen-gut-in-rottwei...

(2021) 500+ e-scooters were thrown from the Hohenzollern bridge into the Rhine: https://www.golem.de/news/mikromobilitaet-im-rhein-liegen-hu...

(2021) Dozens of e-scooters in the Main: https://www.fnp.de/frankfurt/chaoten-werfen-scooter-einfach-...

E-Scooters are literally blocking the sidewalks in big cities like Düsseldorf. It's a plague.

If it's on their keychain, do you really think they'd leave their keychain there?

The "coin" part is usually detachable, so no need to leave the whole set of keys with the cart during shopping.

But leaving it on is a good way to avoid forgetting to it.

Yes, but they do cost money and effort to get. A 25-50 eurocent coin is probably equivalent.

The only thing that's useful about those things is that it's easier to get them faster.

Where I live it is always 1€ coins.

There’s ones with a “notch” in the coin part. So you unlock the cart, twist it, pull it out.

Haha I was wondering if this part was unclear but assumed it was obvious from context, that the cart opener can be removed from the coin slit. Imagine leaving your keyring on your cart... yikes!

The reason my wife (I have coins) uses them is that it's just easier to access. No need to go through your coins (if you have any), you just put it in.

> Imagine leaving your keyring on your cart... yikes!

While you're shopping? That's not a big deal.

When you return the cart? How are you driving home without your keys?

I guess Europeans might be more likely to not take a car to the grocery store, but I would prefer to use a basket over a cart while shopping in that case... I'll know when I'm done shopping when the basket hits my limit of how much to hand carry.

Good point. Think of the device as a lock pick for Aldi carts you can remove it and don't need to leave your keychain.

It's not a lock pick for the carts, you need to leave it in.

There are some that you don't have to leave in the slot - they got quite widespread a few years back https://www.printables.com/model/430247-shopping-cart-coin-s...

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