An Open Letter to Some of the Laziest People in Colorado

We've all experienced it - a trip to the grocery store and after unloading a shopping cart of groceries, the last thing we want to do is find a cart corral, walk the cart across the parking lot, and put it away.

Read More: 20 Out-of-the-Box Ideas to Repurpose Vacant Colorado Stores |

However, while mildly inconvenient, leaving shopping carts in grocery store parking lots is far more inconvenient for those whose jobs entail collecting these stray carts.

In fact, there's actually something called The Shopping Cart Theory that addresses this scenario and suggests that mere laziness is often accompanied by a deeper lack of overall morality.

Lazy Coloradans + The Shopping Cart Theory

It's certainly not uncommon to encounter stray shopping carts at grocery stores, big box stores, and malls across Colorado, but that doesn't mean that it's ok.

The question of morality comes into play when considering the repercussions, or lack thereof, related to refusing to return your shopping cart. In essence, it isn't illegal to leave your shopping cart in the parking lot, and there is no punishment for doing so.

Get our free mobile app

Any shopper knows that returning their shopping cart is objectively the right thing to do and the inconvenience faced by an employee who has to gather multiple carts far outweighs the inconvenience faced by the shopper who decides to take a minute of their time to do it themselves.

There is no reward for returning a shopping cart, and the only motivation for doing so is to make a grocery store employee's life a little less taxing than it already is.

While refusing to return a shopping cart out of sheer laziness doesn't necessarily equate to being a bad person, we should all do a better job of thinking about others when making the decision prior to driving away from the parking lot.