You might be sentencing middle aged men to death and not even know it

I've always tried to do the right thing by returning shopping carts to the front of the store, or at least to one of those paddock style gathing areas. But one day I noticed a couple of 50ish guys out gathering the carts up and bringing them back to the store (home depot, they hire lots of middle aged folks which i think is great). All of the sudden I started my unstoppable thought train about this. If everone brought back their carts, these guys would have much less to do. Then it is just a matter of time before the store starts laying off a couple of guys because there are just too many employees. So let's take "Jim" as an example. He's been out of work and finally got a job at HD. Then he gets laid off. He can no longer make payments on his truck, so it gets repo'd. His wife gets really pissed and yells at him all the time about not being able to get to a job. He now is unable to buy the GI-Joe with the "Kung Fu Grip" for his boy or a Hanna Montana pencil set for his daughter, and they start crying and no longer fit in with the hip crowds at school, so they start associating with "da gangsta's", which are ruffians that wear extraordinarily baggy pants and flat brim baseball caps turned sideways. It's just a matter of time before they start smoking grass, learning the art of "marking" (graffiti that indicates your gang has been there), stealing, etc. Jim gets more and more depressed and figures it's a good time to start popping pills.  Jim's a big fan of Dr. House, so he knows already that Vicodin is a good choice to start with.  Jim has a 3am chat with his son and by sunup, he's scored a bottle for him.  Well, the Vicodin ran out so he starts hanging out at the bus stop and drinking booze from paper sacks. One day he passes out and drops his bottle of generic gin, sending broken shards of glass all over the other people waiting. An old lady cuts her foot all up and calls 911. The cops show up and take Jim downtown and throw him in jail. The other guys in the cell beat him up while the old lady is filling out forms to press charges. Now Jim is unemployed, drunk, and looks like crap. The wife comes down and has to bail him out using money borrowed from her uncle, a bookee. She puts Jim in a rehab center where he stays for a long time. The wife has to sell the house and move in with the bookee. She starts playing the ponies trying to buy a new house and loses everything, winding up down at the Salvation Army. Jim figures out how to loosen his bed straps and proceeds to cut his wrists with a piece of glass off the bathroom mirror. The medics find him and patch him all up, but now they keep a pretty darned good eye on him.

So now as you can see, you really need to leave those carts scattered among the minivans.

Update: Jim began improving and is doing very well. He is now working with other ex-cart-gatherers in group therapy.