I love being rewarded

We've all experienced the teenager at the grocery store pushing a huge line of shopping carts back to the store. The guys at Target even have a cool machine that helps push the carts. But it all seems like such a huge waste of employee time and energy just because we, the customers, are too lazy to bring the carts back ourselves.

What if instead of a few teenagers retrieving carts stores gave customers rewards for bring the carts back into the store? If you grab a cart swipe your store card, and perhaps a cart card as well, and when you bring the cart back and reswipe your card and the cart you recieve rewards from the store. I'd take the extra few minutes to return my cart if it meant a few cents off a gallon a gas or a free gallon of milk.

The beauty is a double positive effect: Less employee hours spent to retrieve carts and happy customers who might decide to shop at your store rather than your competitors.