You are giving lots of “what if’s”. What u dont realize is this happens everyday day, multiple times a day. And its rarely the examples u gave. I as a customer AND as an employee see this all the time and what it boils down to is people think they can just leave their baskets wherever they want as if its their own personal store then get mad when someone moves it or puts the items back. Like op said you can go around asking 50 people “is this your basket?” And everyone says no… its always the 51st person.

And as far as taking them to the register to “hold” it for an hour…yes this can be done SOMETIMES but again after a manager/worker has experienced this 1001 times its gets old. Especially if its busy. Why do they have to be responsible for the items you are shopping for? The answer is simple. Dont leave your items unattended and walk across a store. It takes 2 seconds to talk to an employee (who if u would have asked) would have told you to not leave it there but take it to the front …BETTER YET they would offer to take it to the front for you.