Book of Daze: Return the Shopping Cart Day

The steps between an abandoned shopping cart and its galvanized steel enclosure are the only thing keeping humankind from eating the bark off trees. Hence the need for Return the Shopping Cart Day.

This holiday was born on September 3, 1981, when Harold Bixby, 54, the assistant manager of a supermarket in Muncie, Indiana, found seventeen shopping carts scattered across his parking lot after closing.

Bixby, who alphabetizes the canned vegetables during slow periods, returned every cart himself and went home convinced the republic was finished.

Return the Shopping Cart Day commemorates Bixby’s discovery and the continuing unwillingness of ordinary people to walk a few feet after loading four sacks of pinto beans, two cases of oat milk, and enough groceries to sustain a minor siege into their vehicles.

The decision is voluntary. No security officer follows them. No municipal ordinance requires compliance. Nobody threatens a small-claims summons. Someone stands in the gray of an asphalt desert, looks at the metal shelter twenty feet away, and reveals what kind of person he is.

To abandon the cart in a parking lot is to announce that civilization has been tried and found inconvenient. The worst offenders are the shoppers who roll the front two wheels onto a mulch island and leave the rear wheels dangling in traffic. They believe getting half the cart out of the parking lot constitutes a good-faith effort. Until an Amazon truck rumbles by.

Traditional observances of Return the Shopping Cart Day include returning your own cart. Advanced participants may return somebody else’s. Families with children are encouraged to point discreetly at abandoned carts and explain that this is how Rome started.

At midafternoon, celebrants may observe a moment of silence beside the cart enclosure while giving the side eye to everyone who got within fifteen feet of it and decided that was close enough.

The most devout practitioners patrol supermarket parking lots at dusk, gathering stray carts before they begin their slow migration toward the passenger door of a 2017 Buick LeSabre.

No prizes are awarded. No certificates are issued. Nobody posts accomplishments on social media. Just put the cart back as smugly as possible.

Read more life-changing dispatches from a culture officially in decline by clicking here.