Sierra Vista’s Parking Habits Are Raising Eyebrows

By now, you've probably seen the internet meme about the shopping cart litmus test. In case it's a distant foggy memory, it's the one where you're being judged on how you handle a shopping cart after you're done using it.

What Is the Shopping Cart Theory?

The viral posts have earned their own Wikipedia page. It's called Shopping Cart Theory, and the posts were making the rounds on social media sometime around 2020. It's basically a litmus test for your character when no one is around.

"The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching." — John Wooden

Yeah, you're being judged. Ideally, you're unaware you're being watched, so if you put your basket away in a cart corral or return it to the store, you're a good person. If you prop it up on a curb or leave it in a parking space, you're a jerk.

I don't often see abandoned carts left in random places in parking lots in Cochise County these days. It does happen, as you can see in the photo I took earlier this week.

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Gas Pump Etiquette: A New Moral Metric

The shopping cart test may be passe in Arizona. A friend of mine recently posted on her social media page that she had a new metric for judging whether someone is a good person or not.

Read More: Arizona's Weird Summer Parking Habits Explained

To paraphrase her post, she wrote:

"I know everyone likes to use the shopping cart in the parking lot as a character test.

I propose a new character evaluation: those who fill their gas tank and then leave their car at the pump, then go into the store and use the restroom and shop and browse and take all the time in the world while the line of cars backs up waiting for pumps to be open." 

This habit is maddening, especially when you're one of the drivers waiting in line to fuel up your vehicle! She finishes by implying that you're a less-than-stellar person if you do this.

Drive-Up Parking at Safeway: A Local Quirk

There's one more thing I've noticed, and it only happens at the Sierra Vista Safeway: people parking their cars in the Drive-Up Grocery spots.

Not everything that happens in the Safeway parking lot is bad. READ: An Elderly Lady and an Act of Kindness in Arizona

I've never seen people park in the to-go or drive-up spots anywhere else. Strangely, this only seems to happen at Safeway in Sierra Vista!