A mother on TikTok posted a rant from southern California advocating for her unpopular position that putting shopping carts in the return area isn’t worth her time, and she’s not a bad person for thinking so.
She was not, she said in a video purporting to be posted from her car’s driver’s seat while in a supermarket parking lot, going to unload her groceries and children, and then leave her children alone in the car to trek across a hot Los Angeles parking lot to roll her cart into a return area. Using vulgar language, she invited those who would give her a dirty look or judge her for this to take a hike.
She posted a follow-up video on May 31, in which she justified her position by claiming that 256 children had been kidnapped in parking lots the previous year, and abduction wasn’t the worst of what happened to over half of them. She appeared to be using data from research conducted by Kids and Car Safety, a nonprofit whose study examined the fates of children who were in vehicles when the vehicles were stolen.
The post went viral, garnering nearly 12 million views and attracting so much attention and commentary that she was invited by KTLA 5’s Weekend Morning News to make her case on television. Leslie Dobson, the mother in question and a licensed clinical psychologist based in Los Angeles, accepted the invite and reiterated her point with vigor.
Many viewers weren’t impressed by Dobson’s stance and reasoning. Some chimed in with their experience of returning carts and not losing their children. Some said they took their kids with them when they returned their shopping carts. Others characterized her behavior as “entitled” and “lazy” and called her a “Karen.”
In the television studio, Dobson discussed her stance with two anchors who are also mothers, and to commiserate about the backlash Dobson provoked, including doxxing and death threats. Dobson expressed her satisfaction that her video generated discussion around an important issue.