Texas man eats lunch in his car. Then he sees a grocery customer break a cardinal etiquette rule

Grocery shopping isn't the most complicated endeavor. Most people get in, get what they need, and get out. Ideally, they don't create headaches for employees at the store.

One Texas man, however, says he had a front-row seat to someone creating a headache in a parking lot.

‘So I was eating lunch in my car, and there was a person in that spot'

A content creator (@berfs1.irl) shares a video of an abandoned shopping cart in an H-E-B parking lot. His video has more than 5,800 views.

The creator films from the driver's seat of his parked car.

“So I was eating lunch in my car, and there was a person in that spot,” he says. “She did her groceries, and then she … left her cart there.”

He zooms in on the cart, which is near the cart return.

“The … cart return is right there,” he says. “How … lazy do you have to be?”

Then he gets out of his car, still filming, and puts the cart in the cart return himself.

“That … simple,” he says.

Viewers overwhelmingly sided with him in his comment section.

“So many inconsiderate people now, drives me nuts,” one person wrote. “Good job putting the buggy back, I hope you put it in the correct [corral]. The little buggies have their own stall.”

“I heard it's called the shopping cart theory,” another viewer commented. “Essentially, if you don't put your shopping cart up, it's a direct reflection of moral character and self-governance.”

“In my whole life and never did this my mom always taught me to put the cart back,” a third chimed in. “Makes people's jobs easier … Wouldn't you want your job to be a little bit easier?”

What is shopping cart theory?

Shopping cart theory is an internet idea that posits that how someone handles their cart after shopping reveals whether they're a good or bad person.

Scoop Upworthy described it in 2024 as the notion that “returning a shopping cart reveals your moral character.” The publication cited the original thoughts of Jared, a then-Twitter user who posted about the theory in 2020.

“The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing,” Jared wrote. “To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one that we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.”

In 2024, the Daily Dot called shopping cart theory a “social litmus test that gauges an individual's moral character.”

In the Daily Dot's coverage, a psychologist and content creator said she would not leave her children alone in the car to return a cart. Critics said that carts can roll into parked cars. They added that return stations are usually close by.

@berfs1.irl

Subplot News reached out to the creator via TikTok comment.

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