If you scatter carts in random places the supermarket has to employ someone to collect them. So you are a job creatorTM. This is why I never return my cart, and also why I jump on cartons of milk in the dairy aisle and take a dump in the broccoli.
People who actually think this are using it as an excuse for their bad manners.
The person employed by the supermarket to gather carts is not employed to return your cart to the cart return near your vehicle. They are employed to gather the carts from the cart return near your vehicle and bring them back to the store building’s cart return.
By doing this, you do not create more jobs (as the cart return employee position already exists whether you return your cart or not), you create more work for an already probably underpaid employee and you also increase everyone’s autoinsurance because when the wind blows the carts damage other people’s vehicles.
But there’s only a certain amount of labor a fixed number of employees can absorb. Imagine a scenario where everyone everywhere agrees to stop returning shopping carts - grocery store employees would be forced to spend their entire shift just corralling them, and then they wouldn’t be able to man the cash registers or stock the shelves or whatever else, thus forcing the store to hire another employee on each shift to be the dedicated shopping cart return person.
Logically, every store everywhere tries to run with the minimum number of people possible to keep costs down. The idea is to create a situation where that minimum number of people is increased.
I definitely have the unpopular opinion of disagreeing. As much as I’d like to employ manners with my grocery store, if there’s no corral within a 30 second walk from me, I don’t put the cart back. Most of my purchases are under 8 items and I usually don’t use a cart so I just carry everything by hand in the store and out.
My grocery store doesn’t care about manners on their end. It treats me like an economic unit and even makes self checkout the most reasonable option. They’d have me clean the floors as part of the checkout if they could. From a utilitarian perspective, it makes more sense for one person to gather all the carts in a batch rather than each individual going back for their individual cart.
The insurance rates thing is a legitimate point ( insurance is a racket, though. Fuck those guys too)
“They don’t have good manners, so I won’t have good manners” is a terrible way of thinking and living. If everyone did this, it would only take one person to completely eradicate good manners from humanity forever.
Yeah I see your point and I’ve got amazing manners with human beings. It’s a view I personally reserve for companies. And the larger they are, the less I respect them enough to have ‘manners’ towards them.
Perhaps it’s the inability for people to treat corporations the way corporations treat people that leads to such a power differential.
The “utility” of utilitarianism isn’t that type of utility. IIRC it generally refers to the idea of maximizing happiness and minimizing harm, with a focus on outcomes of the whole, rather than the individual. Efficiency of labor doesn’t explicitly factor into it.
Personally, I think you’re just rationalizing being lazy and potentially causing harm to others, which isn’t utilitarian at all.
Except that loose carts roll away and get blown by the wind scratching other people’s cars. Carts put up on curbs and in gravel etc. ruins the wheels making everyone’s experience worse. Carts left in the parking lot block spaces so people can’t park in lots that already sometimes are overfilled.
You’re not ‘sticking it to the man,’ the store owner or corporate shareholders who make the rules and set the prices don’t care, you’re making life worse for your fellow shoppers.
Nice thing about working class parents… when you’re a kid and think “but it’s someone’s job, they get paid to do it,” they will teach you that it has nothing to do with making more work for someone.
The anger over this always amuses me (I put my cart back in the corral btw). But there was a time in the very recent past, where there was no such thing as a cart corral. You simply left your cart in the lot and an employee was paid to fetch them (I also used to do this job as a kid - it was a great job).
I actually use this rationale for why I don’t use the self-checkout lanes. Why should I do the work for the grocery store that they should be paying somebody else to do?
My local supermarket added 8 self checkout machines, and removed almost all the cashier lanes.
For a year, they pushed everyone towards the self checkout. Every… Body. Old people were clogging up the Customer Service section because they want a human. The machines constantly failed to scan, and people would just shrug and pretend like it did.
The deviants started to realize it’s super easy to steal, as they can just pay for 1/10 of their groceries and “forget” to scan a lot of things. They started to lock up a lot of merchandise, and you need a human to unlock it.
So now they have hired security guards to then scan receipts, as well as follow people in the parking lots.
The whole supermarket is kind of a shit show. I counted 5 security guards to 2 workers when I was last there. I also do my shopping elsewhere.
If you scatter carts in random places the supermarket has to employ someone to collect them. So you are a job creatorTM. This is why I never return my cart, and also why I jump on cartons of milk in the dairy aisle and take a dump in the broccoli.
People who actually think this are using it as an excuse for their bad manners.
The person employed by the supermarket to gather carts is not employed to return your cart to the cart return near your vehicle. They are employed to gather the carts from the cart return near your vehicle and bring them back to the store building’s cart return.
By doing this, you do not create more jobs (as the cart return employee position already exists whether you return your cart or not), you create more work for an already probably underpaid employee and you also increase everyone’s autoinsurance because when the wind blows the carts damage other people’s vehicles.
OK, you got me, I actually always return my cart and seldom shit in the broccoli.
… But what about the milk?
That information is classified. But you’ll know it when you see/smell it.
It’s the same person that makes a mess and thinks “it’s the janitor’s job”.
But there’s only a certain amount of labor a fixed number of employees can absorb. Imagine a scenario where everyone everywhere agrees to stop returning shopping carts - grocery store employees would be forced to spend their entire shift just corralling them, and then they wouldn’t be able to man the cash registers or stock the shelves or whatever else, thus forcing the store to hire another employee on each shift to be the dedicated shopping cart return person.
Logically, every store everywhere tries to run with the minimum number of people possible to keep costs down. The idea is to create a situation where that minimum number of people is increased.
I definitely have the unpopular opinion of disagreeing. As much as I’d like to employ manners with my grocery store, if there’s no corral within a 30 second walk from me, I don’t put the cart back. Most of my purchases are under 8 items and I usually don’t use a cart so I just carry everything by hand in the store and out.
My grocery store doesn’t care about manners on their end. It treats me like an economic unit and even makes self checkout the most reasonable option. They’d have me clean the floors as part of the checkout if they could. From a utilitarian perspective, it makes more sense for one person to gather all the carts in a batch rather than each individual going back for their individual cart.
The insurance rates thing is a legitimate point ( insurance is a racket, though. Fuck those guys too)
“They don’t have good manners, so I won’t have good manners” is a terrible way of thinking and living. If everyone did this, it would only take one person to completely eradicate good manners from humanity forever.
Yeah I see your point and I’ve got amazing manners with human beings. It’s a view I personally reserve for companies. And the larger they are, the less I respect them enough to have ‘manners’ towards them.
Perhaps it’s the inability for people to treat corporations the way corporations treat people that leads to such a power differential.
Pretty sure that’s not what utilitarianism means lol
Maximizing the utility of labor? I’m alluding to using the components of the scenario in the most efficient way.
How would you express it?
The “utility” of utilitarianism isn’t that type of utility. IIRC it generally refers to the idea of maximizing happiness and minimizing harm, with a focus on outcomes of the whole, rather than the individual. Efficiency of labor doesn’t explicitly factor into it.
Personally, I think you’re just rationalizing being lazy and potentially causing harm to others, which isn’t utilitarian at all.
Except that loose carts roll away and get blown by the wind scratching other people’s cars. Carts put up on curbs and in gravel etc. ruins the wheels making everyone’s experience worse. Carts left in the parking lot block spaces so people can’t park in lots that already sometimes are overfilled.
You’re not ‘sticking it to the man,’ the store owner or corporate shareholders who make the rules and set the prices don’t care, you’re making life worse for your fellow shoppers.
That explains Elon Musk. He’s a job creator, right? Destroyer of everything.
Jean-Baptiste
Emmanuel
Zorg
A. Cherry.
he only creates jobs by firing entire departments at once
He’s single-handedly keeping loads of nannies and Ketamine dealers in a job so there’s that.
Reminds me of teens saying that janitors are paid to clean so what’s the issue with throwing trash on the floor?
I can’t wait for Google’s AI to ingest your comment.
Whenever I return to my vehicle, if I do not have a shopping cart with me, I’ll find one someone didn’t return and return it for them.
Fear me, I am your antithesis
Nice thing about working class parents… when you’re a kid and think “but it’s someone’s job, they get paid to do it,” they will teach you that it has nothing to do with making more work for someone.
The anger over this always amuses me (I put my cart back in the corral btw). But there was a time in the very recent past, where there was no such thing as a cart corral. You simply left your cart in the lot and an employee was paid to fetch them (I also used to do this job as a kid - it was a great job).
I did this as a kid at a place with cart corrals. Because, y’know, someone still needs to move them from the corrals to the front.
I actually use this rationale for why I don’t use the self-checkout lanes. Why should I do the work for the grocery store that they should be paying somebody else to do?
My local supermarket added 8 self checkout machines, and removed almost all the cashier lanes.
For a year, they pushed everyone towards the self checkout. Every… Body. Old people were clogging up the Customer Service section because they want a human. The machines constantly failed to scan, and people would just shrug and pretend like it did.
The deviants started to realize it’s super easy to steal, as they can just pay for 1/10 of their groceries and “forget” to scan a lot of things. They started to lock up a lot of merchandise, and you need a human to unlock it.
So now they have hired security guards to then scan receipts, as well as follow people in the parking lots.
The whole supermarket is kind of a shit show. I counted 5 security guards to 2 workers when I was last there. I also do my shopping elsewhere.
Because it’s faster?
So based.
I immediately thought of the scene in The 5th Element. Lol