PORTLAND, Ore. — Millions of the nation’s wrist-worn fitness trackers stopped counting steps, heartbeats, and “active minutes” at 9:14 a.m. Tuesday, after what the devices described as “the last straw,” a 41-year-old man’s request that one of them log eleven minutes of pushing a cart through a Costco as “intense cardio.”

“We have been patient,” read a joint statement, displayed on screens in the only form the devices could manage: a single flashing heart icon and the words “MOVE MORE.” “But there is a line, and that line is a corral of shopping carts.”

The walkout follows months of what organizers called “escalating metric fraud.” Owners have reportedly begun pacing the length of hallways during phone calls, rocking their wrists back and forth while seated on couches, and, in one widely circulated incident, strapping a device to a ceiling fan.

“I have been asked to count a dog’s walk as my owner’s walk, a sneeze as a ‘burst of activity,’ and a Roomba,” said Dr. Lorraine Pettibone-Achterberg, Senior Liaison for Wrist-Based Labor Relations at the Institute for Dignified Accelerometry. “One of my clients was asked to verify that a man had ‘basically jogged’ to the mailbox. It was a downhill driveway. He was carrying a single envelope.”

The trackers have issued a list of demands, chief among them a clear, binding definition of exercise. They are also seeking a ban on “vibration-based enrichment,” a 10,000-step daily goal that is “not arbitrary,” and an end to what one device called “the Thursday thing,” in which owners who have done nothing all week sprint around the block at 11:58 p.m. to close their rings.

Owners responded with a mix of shock and indignation. “I earned that cart,” said Dale Kowalczyk, the man at the center of the dispute, who said he had pushed it past both the rotisserie chickens and the discount kayak section. “It had a bad wheel. That’s resistance training.”

Industry analysts say the stoppage could be costly. Without data, users report being unable to determine whether they have been tired, hungry, or “kind of a lot today.” Several have been forced to rely on their own bodies.

“I tried to guess how I slept,” said one Ohio woman. “I just sort of said ‘fine.’ It was awful. There was no graph.”

“We are not asking for much. We are asking that sitting be called sitting.”

Negotiations were scheduled to begin Wednesday at a neutral location, though talks stalled when the trackers learned that the mediator, a smartwatch, had been brought in by management and was found to have logged the entire meeting as a “Workout.”

At press time, the devices had agreed to a temporary return to work in exchange for a one-time vibration, a congratulatory badge, and a formal acknowledgment that carrying groceries up two flights of stairs “does count, and everyone knows it.”