In this case, I’m referring to the notion that we all make minor sacrifices in our daily interactions in service of a “greater good” for everyone.
“Following the rules” would be a simplified version of what I’m talking about, I suppose. But also keeping an awareness/attitude about "How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment? “Common courtesy”, “situational awareness”, etc…
I don’t know that it’s a “new” phenomenon by any means, I just seem to have an increasing (subjective) awareness of it’s decline of late.
The shopping cart test for a community. Or seeing trash on the ground in public places, tells you alot about a area.
The golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Culture is learned from your peer group. Feeling a investmemt in your environment and a sense of ownership in it’s condition change behavior. “This is our public park, so I won’t littler”, vs “This is their public park so I don’t have to clean up”.
I just want to live in a nice world, so I treat my world nice. Even when nobody is looking.
Perfect example… Germany universally has this deposit system for their shopping carts but bypassed the handling and inserting of a coin into the cart at the height of covid.
Since then I have barely seen any reversal there. People still return their carts although they don’t need to get their coin back where the system is still disabled. Or they just conveniently forget to use the system and still bring their carts back without locking them there where the system is operational again.
The actual deposit was basically only needed for the learning phase. After this it just works automatically.
As a former retail worker, I always slightly disagreed with the shopping cart test.
Going outside to get the carts meant going out of range of the radio system that they had all us techs and sales people hooked up to. So in my mind I was like: " fuck up them carts all you want, I’ll go outside, get some exercise, and some fucking peace of mind."
No excuse to leave the carts in everyone’s way and make parking difficult.
I was also a former retail worker, but I guess my experience differed slightly from yours.
My primary responsibility was not getting the carts. I had a lot of other things that I was responsible for throughout my working day that had to get done. But when we needed to get the carts, I would often be the one asked to go.
When people left the carts all over the place like animals, it made my job take longer. And that meant I had more to catch up on back in the store once I finished. Not to mention, being out in the hot sun, or the rain, or the snow was not my definition of a fun time, so I typically wanted to be done with it as quickly as possible.
People would just toss their carts into empty spaces or onto foliage dividers, even making eye contact with me and smiling as they proudly sauntered back to their soccer mom SUVs, as if they somehow believed they were giving me the gift of job security. Sometimes they also confused “shopping cart” for “trash can”. I hated those people. I honestly wished death on some of them. I still can’t stand people like that today and I make every effort to not be one of them now.
Years ago a buddy of mine worked at one of the big chain stores. He would always talk about how much he loved to be sent on cart retrieval, for the reasons you mention.
Interesting, I’ve always put my cart back with the thought that someone won’t have to work as much if I do
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When considering the golden rule, it can help to recall many ‘others’ would prefer folks not ‘do unto them’ in the same way… or, frankly, at all.