Return the trolley, or leave it

You have unloaded the shopping into the car.

The trolley is empty, the bay is thirty metres away, and nobody is watching.

What do you do?

There are three tribes here and I know people in all of them.

The first tribe walks it back every single time. Rain, hail, screaming toddler, does not matter. The trolley goes home.

The second tribe pushes it to the nearest kerb, or wedges it neatly against a pole where it will not roll into anybody’s car. Halfway home, and out of harm’s way.

The third tribe leaves it exactly where the last bag came out. Somebody gets paid to collect them, and that is the whole argument.

Now, there is a famous version of this question floating around the internet that says the trolley is the perfect test of whether you are a good person, because there is no reward for returning it and no punishment for not.

I do not agree with that.

I have seen a mother with two little ones and a storm coming leave a trolley, and what I saw was a tired person, nothing worse.

Here is what I think it actually tests.

What you do with the smallest possible act when there is nobody to see it and nothing to gain.

The tribe that walks it back have decided that the small thing is the thing. The tribe that parks it neatly are the negotiators, they will do the right thing as long as it costs about half the effort. And the tribe that leaves it have decided that some jobs belong to someone else, which, to be fair, they sometimes do.

None of them is wrong.

But every one of them is telling you something about how that person handles the hundred tiny unwatched choices that make up a day.

Back to the bay, parked neatly, or left where it stopped, and what do you reckon that says about you?

There is more teaching like this in The Library, and every daily post is in Daily Posts. If you would like guidance on your own path, see Readings.