Can you solve this everyday practical math problem?

There’s another variable here. Physical infirmity.

Last year I had knee problems. Not bad enough to need a walker or even a cane, but bad enough that I was doing the kind of mental calculation that you suggest. Shortest distance even on short walks.

In my case, I opted to walk a little further sometimes, in order get the cart and use it for support as a quasi-cane. I may have walked a couple extra feet, but once I had the cart I would better support myself, which was a net positive. That benefit overrode the equation of which was actually shorter.

I am going to say, the one that is closer to you, because you need to bring the cart back after you load your stuff into your car.

That is correct. Always get the cart from the store and return to store or storage area, depending on which is closest to the car. I wonder if people ever think about this or do it instinctively. The store near me has a reserved parking spot next to the storage area for the employee of the month. They would be doing a bigger favor by reserving the spot closer to the store.

Or you can leave the cart wherever you want as some people do…It will reduce your distance by half..)~

@imrainmaker
Those people need to be flogged.

Well if you put the cart near the stable door, you could put the cart before the horse.

A = the store
B = your car
C = the cart rack

In ABC, walking in and out, and returning your cart, you travel BABCB, unless the distance BA is shorter than BC.

The simple solution is to park closer to the store than to the rack.

In real life, other variables apply.

The store may not have any carts (trolleys) in the designated area inside the store. At busy shopping times, this is a non-zero probability. (Alternatively, the carts there may have that one wobbly wheel or be sticky with someone else’s spilled drink or child’s gum. Or worse that I don’t even want to think about. But if I arrive there empty-handed, then I’m faced with Hobson’s choice – assuming there is at least one cart available.)

The designated storage area carts in any area may be wedged together, as sometimes happens when they are pushed together too tightly, and I don’t want to spend the time and effort to pull them apart. Or they may be wet from being out in the rain, though this is not much of a concern of mine. However, in general, there’s usually a wide choice of carts in the parking area.

And finally, there is always a cart or two – or two dozen – left randomly in parking spots throughout the parking lot by “those people” who do that. One of my preferred strategies is to park “out in the boondocks” (with or without a cart nearby) and just grab the nearest free cart available. It’s also usually quicker to drive to and park in a relatively empty part of the lot, and it is also safer while parking or driving away if there isn’t a lot of traffic nearby. Both of those are actual considerations of mine.

That strategy gives me a chance to not only obtain but also to test drive the cart as I push it towards the store. If it’s soiled or wobbly or displeases me in some other way, then I drop it at a corral and pick another there. (Since I’m parking “away”, there is always at least one and often a multiplicity of corrals between me and the store.) If that one also has a problem, then I can (more often than not) drop it off inside the store corral area and pick one up there, and then I have a choice between those two – or at least, if all else fails, I have one cart that I have brought with me from the outside, whether I like it or not.

And on the way back out of the store, I nearly always – I won’t say 100%, but close to it; I try – return my cart to “a corral”, because that’s how I do things. But if, for whatever reason, I don’t do that, at the very least I haven’t made the world a worse place.

Something makes me consider that I might be overthinking all of this…but these thoughts were part of a process of shopping that I’ve developed over decades; it’s not like I’ve just sat down to think of this. (Only to write about it.)

If “saving steps” ever becomes a consideration for me, then I might spend more time making new considerations (and believe me, I have spent far, far longer “writing about” these considerations than I have in actually calculating them) but that’s not where I am now. Even without saving steps, I think I am already saving time by avoiding traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, increasing safety in a very general way, increasing my opportunity to get a satisfactory cart (or to get a cart at all, on those awful days when the store is very crowded), and improving my health (however marginally) by taking a longer walk. And really, my only extra steps are the ones that I nearly always take to return my cart to a proper corral when I’m done. So, wins all around, as far as I can see.

The worst scenario is when you exit the store with a fully laden cart and forget where you parked your car.

I neither pick up nor return carts to those little areas. I leave my cart by the space where my car was parked because I park as far away from the door as possible. I pick up my cart in the store on the off-chance that it got sprayed with disinfectant. Sometimes they spray them.

Only use a shopping cart within the store.

Carry the bags from the store to your car.

This question doesn’t make sense to me and I realized why when I shopped this morning. What I do is pick up the cart near the door when entering the store and return it to the nearest catch-all area after loading my car. Why wouldn’t everyone do that unless the situation is like it was (and may still be) in England where you pay a deposit on the cart when taking it and must return it to the same place to get it back?

That is the correct answer, assuming that if you parked near the store, you would return the cart to the store. I never said this was a difficult problem. I was just wondering how many people had thought about it. Unless you park close to the store, the other cart storage areas provide a convenience to shoppers.