I’m so in the minority here, but I have a different perspective.

I worked at a grocery store for years, with about a third of my job being cart duty. I loved it when people left their carts outside of the corrals, for a few reasons.

First, if a lot of people did so, I would point it out to whoever was the manager on at the time before I went outside. My manager knew that I would take longer before coming back in, and that would give me more time to stroll/relax/enjoy the outdoors before coming back in to customer craziness. Having those extra minutes because my manager didn’t know how long I should take was nice.

Second, sometimes I had to walk way the hell out to the edge of the parking lot, which was really nice for a long walk away from customer craziness. Such walks were very nice when the weather was nice.

Third, it was job security. Working during the recession made my managers want to let as many people go as they could, but customers who made it so even the most efficient cart duty workers took a while to clear the lot effectively kept more of us employeed than management would have employed otherwise.

For those reasons, whenever the weather is nice, I try to leave my cart in a weird spot that is anchored by something. I realize that many other cart duty folks probably dislike me for it, but I know I appreciated it when others did this. So I do it for the folks like me.

I know all of the arguments against it and I’m not trying to debate here. Just sharing a different perspective; sometimes, leaving your cart in a terrible spot can be nice for some of the workers.