Unpopular opinion: If the parking lot is uncrowded then there’s nothing wrong with leaving your cart in an empty spot. Its not like the workers are gonna be given an extra breaktime if they don’t have to collect carts, the store is paying the workers per hours and will always make sure they have tasks to do 100% of the time no matter what happens. I’ve even heard online multiple store workers say they prefer collecting carts over many of the other tasks they have to do.
So if you aren’t giving the workers more work to do, and you aren’t inconveniencing other parkers, then i don’t see any harm in leaving a cart in a random empty parking spot of an uncrowded lot.
EDIT: just for the record, i do always return my carts, but i also think in some situations it’s completely pointless
Unpopular opinion: If the parking lot is uncrowded then there’s nothing wrong with leaving your cart in an empty spot. Its not like the workers are gonna be given an extra breaktime if they don’t have to collect carts, the store is paying the workers per hours and will always make sure they have tasks to do 100% of the time no matter what happens. I’ve even heard online multiple store workers say they prefer collecting carts over many of the other tasks they have to do.
So if you aren’t giving the workers more work to do, and you aren’t inconveniencing other parkers, then i don’t see any harm in leaving a cart in a random empty parking spot of an uncrowded lot.
EDIT: just for the record, i do always return my carts, but i also think in some situations it’s completely pointless