People do weird things with carts. On the weekend DH and I watched a guy take his cart to a gap between the parked cars, 5 cars away from his, push it up onto the raised part between the cars and dump it. 1 car space to the other side of his car was the trolley bay. It would have been easier to return it properly and he would have gotten his money back.
Do they require a deposit to get a cart where you shop? If so, I really wish they would do that everywhere. I think it would cut down on some of the abandoned carts in the parking lot, especially at Walmart.
Where I live (NJ), that is very rare. I think it's a good idea. I think I remember that being the norm in N. Ireland, IIRC.
Then you have the situation with a store I refuse to shop at.
The norm in this chain is you get a cart, fill it, then they take the stuff off of the belt, and put it into a cart they have at the end of the line. Your cart then becomes the new "end of the line" cart. Everyone follow that? Okay. Well, one of the local stores in this chain went over to the pay carts, and this started happening.
I put a quarter into the cart, do my shopping, and get to the line. When I take the "end of line" cart out to load the minivan, I discover that the cart I got doesn't have a quarter. It happened every time I went in, to the point where the deposit was basically a fee. The store was getting a surcharge out of me, which I think is ridiculous. I started only going in if I could carry everything to the checkout, then eventually stopped going at all.