Shopping at grocery stores in Italy

Italy is a very laissez-faire country. This attitude translates into grocery stores and traffic. It can be quite shocking if it is not something you are used to.

Grocery stores feel like the lawless westerns you have seen in an old Hollywood movie. People leave their shopping carts in the middle of isles seemingly never to return to them. No one, and I mean no one, says excuse me to pass by you. They also don’t ask you to move if they need you to. I have no understanding of what is considered polite and what is considered rude anymore.

You need to deposit a euro into the shopping cart to borrow it while you browse the store. Although, many are broken and do not require coins anymore. I can only assume this is due to them being jammed with items other than currency to avoid payment.

I have no understanding of where to return the carts. It seems some return them to get their coin and others simply abandon them for ease. I attempted to return the cart and gave up after bumping into not one but three different people. I said sorry and excuse me so much that I simply cannot shop there anymore.

It seems the best thing for me to do is to simply order my groceries online and never return to the wild wild grocery stores of southern Italy, since I cannot seem to navigate the proper etiquette for such.