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shopping rule theory
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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Counterpoint:
The Wholefoods in Redmond, Wa is known as Hellfoods by their employees because of how cold people are there and how overbearing management can be. It also is in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. When I worked there, I love the warm summer evenings when I could go out to the outfield to fetch a cart because I got to be outside and no longer under the micromanagement that is retail.
When I would clock off, sometimes I'd nab a cart and send it out on purpose for the guy behind me to give them an escape.
Did every other employee feel the same way as you? Because otherwise that's not a counterpoint.
But you could say the same for the original premise- not every employee hates getting rogue carts, in fact many like getting them.
I gave an anecdotal point, but the broader argument simply questions one of the assumptions of OP.
Their job is already to gather carts from the corrals. Putting carts in the corrals allows employees to gather carts if they enjoy it without it being an extra inconvenience if they have a time limit. Also like 99% of employees would say they dislike people who leave carts everywhere, especially when they, you know, are a threat to cars if they roll into someone's vehicles, hence why cart corrals are a thing in the first place. I certainly don't want carts taking up parking spaces or rolling into my car if it gets windy.
Yeah bringing in the carts is one of the best parts of some jobs
When I was a cart pusher I could spend all day in the lot. What really sucked is when they changed from the lightweight plastic basket carts to the XL metal carts. Could push plastic basket carts all day and I would smoke cigarettes by my car in the downtime. XL metal carts ruined that job. Also never cared if they were corralled. You have to push them out the corral and with the XL metal carts they were heavy and hard to maneuver.
I've been on both sides of this and it really depends on what management is expecting at the time. If "cart run" is a considered a task unto itself then it can be bliss, but if you're short staffed then management starts to look at "cart run" as a means to an end. When the expectation becomes that you'll be back on register in 10-15 minutes (but all the corrals out front are now full and no customers are complaining about it), then all those wayward carts mean you gotta hustle.
When I eventually found myself in a supervisory role, I remembered that and tried to equitably rotate between everybody that I knew liked doing carts (or offer when I could tell someone was getting burnt out/long day and needed to go outside for a while) and just let them do their thing. Mostly people really appreciated that and in those cases it was gratifying to be the cool supervisor, but I hated that my responsibility had become to ensure that the front carts were acceptably full at any given time rather than to gather the carts -- all it takes is a random rush and suddenly there are no carts and a micromanagey shift lead is chewing you out because they only appear at moments like these (or immediately after the rush while everyone is catching their breath to ask why you can't find something to do) and your guy outside was just standing in the back of the lot smoking a cigarette, the shift lead doesn't care that there were carts mere minutes before they arrived on the floor, nor that the cart runner only just started that cig after gathering all the carts strewn into bushes and discarded between cars or down the sidewalk...
god I don't miss retail lol