The rules are not implicit; there are typically giant signs saying "RETURN CART HERE" over a metal cart corral that often contains other carts.
People are expected to learn this during their first or second trip to a grocery store that offers carts.
Similarly, at a full-service restaurant, you will be able to notice busboys picking up used tableware, and you will notice a scarcity of customer-accessible garbage bins (as compared to, say, a self-service fast-food restaurant).
If you are ever unsure of the protocol, you are always welcome to ask an employee. Employees at these businesses are typically distinguished by wearing a uniform.
Hope these tips help you on your future trips to Kroger/McDonald's/Olive Garden.
If by returning my cart I was helping the employees, I'd be inclined to go out of my way to do so. But actually all I'm doing is helping the business, who is trying to cut as many employees as possible (talking about big stores like Walmart, Target, not some small local grocery that might even be employee owned).
That would be a great way to fight the business, which would love to employ fewer people to clean that stuff up by shifting the burden of doing it right onto you, the customer.
And, in fact, you almost certainly are helping employees. Sure, there could be fewer of them, but they'd be doing less menial work. And the ones who got laid off due to your contentiousness would find less menial work elsewhere. Society as a whole would benefit.
You probably already know this, but the idea that we should make the world worse to preserve people's jobs is called the broken-windows fallacy.
I probably should have just responded with that originally.
My acquaintances in food service tell me they appreciate the thought, but rather you not go through the effort.
I don't think many people would object to full-service cart return, in which employees immediately pick up your cart when a customer is finished loading their groceries into the car. But few (if any?) stores actually intend to offer that, as evidenced by the carts that sit for long periods of time strewn about the parking area.
In my experience, someone that needs to be taught rules like that, at an age old enough to be pushing around their own shopping cart, is lost forever anyway. All it takes is half a second of considering what might go on with that cart after you leave it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/waitress-on-tiktok-shows-dif...
With regard to carts, because they roll around, into cars, and cause damage. Leaving your cart loose in the lot is a great way to damage other people's vehicles. The first ding in my first new car was caused by a loose cart some asshole left in the lot while I was shopping.
The original article and many of the comments have a hugely moralistic tone - where are people expected to learn these implicit rules? If the store doesn’t care enough to communicate these expectations (assuming they even have them, and that they don’t only exist in the minds of the self-appointed “cart police”), why should customers follow them?