More Awesome Than You!

I have noticed something in the game that has me puzzled, and I was hoping that some esteemed MATYians in their infinite wisdom and experience would deign to enlighten me.

On the UI Rewards panel there are four tabs: Inventory, Shopping Cart, Aspiration Rewards, and Career Rewards. The Shopping Cart icon is always grayed out, and I have never noticed an instance when it appearted to be used. It's always grayed out and unselectable. I have all the EP's and SP's, but obviously I've never played my game in such a way that this option is activated.  I was hoping against hope that someone could tell me precisely what the blinkin' thing is for and when it's actually used.  I'm hazarding a guess that it might have been introduced with OFB, and therefore might have something to do with play specific to that EP, but I was hoping someone could confirm or deny.

Thank you very much for your kind help and consideration. Going back to lurking, now.

When your sims buy stuff at a community lot, I believe it is at least temporarily stored in the shopping cart.  Maybe it moves to regular inv once you pay for it?  I think this is how it works, even for magazines, clothes, and souviners.  Mostly, I think it's used for when a sim is buying stuff at an owned community lot.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong.  ;)

I believe that the shopping cart is activated if your sims purchase items at an owned community lot, because you get an "add to shopping bag" when you purchase an item, even though the icon in the rewards panel is a shopping cart. I will have to try as I never seem to check; however, when I go to a non owned grocery store the shopping cart is greyed out. So I am still leaning on my hypothesis.

Thank you both for the kind responses. That's pretty much what I was suspected, fway . . . that perhaps the Shopping Cart tab had to do with what Sims purchase at Sim-owned businesses, but I've never really played that aspect of the game enough to see it in action. (I only got OFB for some of the added features and functionality. My Sims don't seem to be ambitious or industrious enough to run their own businesses. A lot of layabouts, they are . . .)

Strange, I could have sworn after I made a selection at an owned business, that the sim would automatically go and pay for the item.  ???

Yeah, me too, I've never seen sims carry around multiple objects before paying. I assumed the Shopping Cart was originally intended for that purpose, but they didn't finish it, so it was vestigial.

I never have playable shoppers at my owned businesses thanks to JM's hack, but if I recall correctly, the shopping cart tab is used for stuff playables buy while not being played (so you can decide whether to keep that stuff or not as soon as you play them again).

Yes, but you can cancel the queue and add another goods to the shopping bag. I often let my Sims do their grocery shopping at neighbour's business. As long as I have something queued, Pay For Items will not queuestomp other actions.

It is not. The shopping cart is used for the items you have currently bought while playing, IIRC, but many things simply don't use it, and it's basically a vestigial feature.

The only time I've ever seen it used is when purchasing actual objects at an owned business. I can't remember whether it still even uses this though. It's larely useless. Shame, as it would be nice to make multiple purchases of things such as clothes and stuff and have it all kept in there before paying for the lot at the register. It would save a lot of time.

That's comforting. I was afraid I was getting woefully unobservant in my old age.