Why are shopping carts always broken?

The percentage of shopping carts that are broken tells you about the character of the local population.

The article's byline credits Eva Rothenberg, whose LinkedIn lists her as living in New York City. There must be horrible people there.

Here in Waxahachie, TX, there are almost no broken shopping carts, and people help when there is a broken cart.

> Grocery store carts are more likely to have carts with wonky wheels than ... drugstores

Do countries other than the US have shopping carts in their "drug stores"?

I worked in several grocery stores when I was young, I was never aware of any procedures for wonky carts. If there aren’t systems in place to identify and fix problems, it’s no wonder the situation is what it is.

I had never heard of the conspiracy theory that it was done on purpose to slow people down. That doesn’t really pass the smell test. When I have a bad cart I want to leave as soon as possible to minimize my time with it. It also makes me view the store in a negative light. These are both bad things, and it seems pretty obvious that they would get damaged over time from abuse.

What’s income have to do with how you treat a shopping cart? I’ve been to in places in Asia with very poor (poor compared to the poor people in the US) people and they treated their shopping carts better than wealthy people in the US.

There is better social cohesion and respect for other people's property. Now, there are some oddities in that if they find you lying on the street hurt, most will pass you by and kind of look at you quizzically, but they also do have good samaritans, just not as many. The reason is often people will suspect the person who stopped to help stopped out of guilt, not because they were just trying to help.

I don't use shopping carts because my groceries typically fit in a shopping basket.

What I find frustrating about my local grocery store is when they inexplicably rearrange items. One week, bread is stocked in one aisle. Suddenly, on my next trip to the store, the same brand of bread has moved two aisles over.

Part of the reason why I switched to having groceries delivered.