Disclaimer: Uncommon Sense is where I think out loud. The views here are my own — they don’t represent any organization, board, or business I’m affiliated with. Personal opinions, offered to be argued with.
Before we get into this — to the trolls: staged or not, I don’t care. Pay attention to the MESSAGE. To the INFORMATION. And learn from it, because this is what it takes to correct people who insist on being discourteous assholes.
Check: https://www.facebook.com/reel/973063749084312
This was never about “just a shopping cart” or “a bit of laziness.” It’s about the principle.
There’s actually a name for it — the Shopping Cart Theory. Returning your cart is the single easiest act of doing the right thing for zero reward and zero punishment. Nobody’s forcing you. Nobody’s watching. No fine, no fee, no consequence. Which is exactly why it’s the truest test of character there is: you either do the right thing when nothing compels you to, or you don’t. Leave your cart stranded in the middle of the lot and you’ve told the world everything it needs to know about you.
And here’s the part people miss — it never stops at the cart. That same reflex, “not my problem, someone else will deal with it,” spreads like a disease. To their families. To their kids, who learn it by watching. To everyone downstream of them. I can promise you with 100% certainty that the person abandoning a cart is the same person flicking a lit cigarette out the car window, dumping their ashtray in the parking lot, and parking in the handicap spot because they “just needed a minute.” It’s all one thing.
It’s contempt for anything beyond the self — and they’re most likely raising the next batch of it.
And notice something: these same people would be giving this guy nothing but attitude and zero respect if he didn’t look the way he looks.
So — note to the big tattooed guys standing in the back, the would-be tough guys: do the work. You can get this done where the rest of us just get laughed at, screamed at, or swung on. You’ve got the presence. Use it. Step up and shut down the miscreants wherever you find them — otherwise all that muscle and all that tough-guy posturing isn’t worth a damn thing.
It takes an insignificant amount of time and effort to be a better person.
Do it
