It’s pretty common in NYC - the stores that didn’t have this, where you could push your cart through the parking lot to your car used to send employees around the neighborhood to collect carts. Because people who walked to the supermarket would push the carts home and leave them there. The quarter didn’t stop them - what finally did was the systems where the wheels lock up when you leave the parking lot.
There’s always a post you can pull out of the ground. I think it’s more an “emergency egress” thing (since most post spacings that can block a cart also blocks wheelchairs). Lift it out, push the cart through, go to your car and bring the cart back.
I think she had bags, but honestly, I wasn’t scrutinizing her cart. I did pass her twice & both times items went into the cart & not a bag.
If she was going to wait until the end to distribute them, wouldn’t that be easier on the checkout belt? When I do a full shopping & use a cashier, I put stuff on the ‘from’ belt in pretty much the way I want to bag them. Frozen stuff in one bag, fridge & pharmacy-aisles stuff (toothpaste, shampoo, etc.) to go upstairs. Non-perishables packed easiest for me to unpack depending upon where they go (all the ___ together) &/or how they best fit in my bags.
I’ve never seen this. Can always push the buggy out to the car, unload it, and then put it in the buggy holding area.
I’ve reached a point where I prefer bag-your-own. That way, I don’t get situations like today, where the cashier did put items together that I wanted in the same bag, but used an illogical sequence for putting them in, so a large item didn’t fit in the zippered insulated bag correctly. I doubt he was thrilled that I took a moment to correct that so the bag would zip before I ran my payment, but oh well. Maybe a little common sense next time?
Regarding Northern Piper’s remark, I’ve never seen it either. The local supermarkets have no such thing, and they haven’t in the other places I’ve lived in Canada.
A few have had the “insert a quarter to unlock” feature, and one would lock the wheels if the cart left the parking lot, but other than that, no, there have been no barriers beyond the store exit preventing you from pushing your cart to your car.
I would refuse to shop at a store that did not allow carts to go out to the parking lot. Someone with a full cart, especially with heavy items and/or physical challenges, NEEDS that help conveying goods from store to car.
The only stores that do that around here are the dollar type stores, and generally you can easily carry that stuff.
I’ve seen urban supermarkets where they have enough theft of carts that they do stuff to prevent it. But out here in the burbs, all the shops let you take the cart to your car.
On-line shopping varies a lot by store. Some of my friends complain about really weird substitutions they’ve gotten. But my local supermarket really built out their delivery service during covid, and it’s great. I prefer doing my own shopping (i want to pick out my produce and meat, and maybe be inspired by a sale or special item) but when we were home with covid, we used the delivery service. The shopper texted about anything he couldn’t find and suggested substitutions. He took an additional item we’d forgotten to order, too. Everything was reasonably packaged, and he clearly intended to bring it in to our fridge, although i told him we were contagious and to just leave it on the front steps. My only minor complaint was that he arrived an hour before the scheduled window, and i was in the middle of something, so it was a minor inconvenience to have to stop and put away groceries.
I’ve seen urban stores that have tall poles attached to each cart, so they can’t go out the door (at least not easily).
That was one of my tasks at an A&P on Queens Blvd in Elmhurst. It was 1962 though.
In Montreal, I guess I should specify.
The way it worked at those supermarkets that have this (in Montreal, where I’ve seen it) is that they have car order service. After you’ve finished shopping, you drive up to the special car order lane next to the store. Your groceries have been tagged with a bag check, you show the check to a worker and he loads your groceries into the car. So you don’t have to carry your groceries to your car yourself.
Yes, some of our stores have that, but it’s optional. You can choose to take the buggy out yourself to your car.
Well, I’m in Canada (Ontario) and have never seen this anywhere (blocking you from taking your shopping cart out to the parking lot). I would never, ever shop at any supermarket that did this. WTF are they thinking? And where are you seeing this?
What is in fact common – and reasonable – is shopping carts that auto-lock if they’re taken beyond the perimeter of the parking lot.
I responded to this just above. In Montreal. And those places use car order service to get your groceries to your car, as I also said.
I should clarify: This was in the 70s, when I lived there. No idea if that’s still how things are done there.
Then perhaps you should have said, “I’ve only seen this in Montreal.”
Wouldn’t blocking carts going out the door be a safety issue?
Am I missing something?
I’ve never seen a store do this. Here in the belly of the US you push your cart out of the door. Unload your bags at your leisure. Put the cart in the corral and go home. Easy peasey.
Why do we have to make these things so difficult? Who decides these things?
It’s been several decades since I lived in Los Angeles, so things likely have changed. Back then, shopping carts were routinely wheeled to nearby residential neighborhoods and abandoned. There were cart return services that drove down every street, picking up errant carts and returning them to the appropriate supermarket.
In some neighborhoods, shopping carts became the local station wagons to transport goods short distances. Because full carts can be noisy on city streets, I remember hearing trash pickers traveling down the street at night.
One market replaced all their carts with special ones that caused an extra wheel to drop down if you ran over a curb. If you accidentally tipped a cart in the store, it would become unsteerable until an employee ran over with a special tool to reset the mechanism. As a result, the inside aisles became cluttered with abandoned carts. Not to mention pissed-off customers.
Another store erected large concrete & steel barriers just outside the main entrance to prevent carts from going further. You were supposed to leave the cart there, go to your car or have someone else drive it up, then load. This caused quite a traffic jam at the front door.
You are probably missing that in places where lots of people walk to the grocery store, the incentive to steal a cart to carry groceries home is strong, and many stores do something to make that a less attractive option, so they don’t lose too much money replacing their carts.
But no, the carts aren’t a fire hazard. I mean, if someone piled up a few carts in front of the door, i guess it could become one. But there’s isn’t really any motive to leave the cart jammed in the door, and it’s easy for employees to move a cart out of the way if they notice some bozo has left one there. Or for the next customer trying to leave the store to do so.
And who decides these things is probably the manager of each store, who knows the conditions at that store.
I’ve seen the ones that can’t leave the store. They mostly show up in places that don’t HAVE a parking lot. Places that have parking lots are more likely to have the ones that lock if you remove them from the lot.