The Viral Shopping Cart Theory: Is Connecticut Getting It Right?

What is the Shopping Cart Theory?

Have you heard of the Shopping Cart Theory? It's a popular topic online that claims you can tell a lot about someone’s character based on what they do with their cart after shopping.

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The idea went viral in 2020 and boils down to this: returning your cart shows responsibility, self-control, and the ability to do the right thing—even when there’s no one around to watch you.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Some people argue they can’t return their cart because they’ve got kids in the car or other pressing matters. Fair enough—life happens. But still, the core idea holds: what you do when no one’s watching says a lot about you.

Now, let me just say—I like the cart theory. I believe in it. And I think we’re failing the test here in Connecticut.

I shop a lot (four kids, remember?), so I’ve made the rounds: Price Rite, ShopRite (all the Rites), Stop & Shop—you name it. And what I’m seeing is people have just... given up. Carts are left stranded in prime real estate parking spots which is like spitting at your fellow man. Some are perched on hills like they’re daring gravity to make the first move. Others are sitting askew in the middle of the lot, ready to roll into your bumper with the precision of a heat-seeking missile.

We can do better.

Now, I’m not claiming a perfect cart return record myself. There are days when you’ve got a car full of screaming kids, groceries falling out of bags, and you're 15 minutes late to somewhere you should’ve been 10 minutes ago. I get it—sometimes you just can’t. But as a whole, we can at least try a little harder.

I’d love to back this up with a study showing that Connecticut is objectively worse at this than other states—but sadly, no one’s done a state-by-state cart return survey yet. (C’mon, Internet, what are you even doing?)

So until we get that hard data, I’ll just be out here pushing carts to the corral, one righteous parking lot moment at a time.

Pass v. Fail? We're currently failing.