Quite a number of supermarkets have fixed it so that people cannot take the carts outside the parking area of the store, I have an idea that some sort of chip is implanted somewhere and the the recently painted lines across the exits prevent the cart from passing that point.
So yesterday this woman has a fucking truckload of shit in her cart and is trying to push it out of the parking area.
The stupid woman was spilling stuff all over the place, the cart just locked up and try as she may she was on a loser. Not only that but she’d succeeded in blocking the fucking exit with her cart.
The security guard came out…
SG “The cart will not go past the lines madam”
SW. “Why not?”
SG." Because the store has lost many carts over the years and they cost a lot of money, this is why the owners decided to stop this kind of thing"
SW. “But they can afford it surely”
SG. (sighs) “Not the point, the taking of carts is theft”
SW. “But I’ve paid for my groceries”
SG. “And the cart?”
By now there are about 5 people stood around telling her to shift the cart so they could drive out, she wouldn’t budge.
After about 5 more minutes 2 guys walked over lifted the cart up and walked with it about 20 yards and left it outside the store entrance.
I didn’t stop to see what happened next but that woman really got on my tits.
Actually, the stores CAN’T afford it, from what I’ve read. The little security devices installed into the carts aren’t cheap, but apparently they pay for themselves in less than a year’s time (again, from what I’ve read). I do think that supermarkets might want to put a price tag on their carts, for anyone who wants to actually buy one.
This sort of thing irritates me. People don’t realize that their little thieving ways add up to a big loss when everyone does it.
I have to admit I once deliberately pushed a cart across the line just to see what would happen. Oddly, I thought, the locked wheel doesn’t release when you pull it back.
Years ago I was leaving a market, and thinking about how I would have to start cooking my meal at exactly 5:47, first searing the meat then reducing the heat to seal in the juices, then while that’s going starting the potatoes, then cutting up the carrots, just before doing the duxelles, and…
What? Sorry, spaced out there.
Anyway, I got halfway home before a checkout girl chased me down.
“Excuse me, sir, is that one of our baskets?”
“Huh? Wha? Gah? Oh, yeah, sorry. My mind is on other things. Say, do you think maybe I should pay for my groceries as well?”
Yep. I’d walked out without paying. They so could have busted me for shoplifting. Thank Og for the checkout girl who knew a space shot when she saw one.
You know, my kid and I have been discussing whether there actually was something to keep the carts from leaving the parking lot, or whether they just put up the sign to deke people out. Good to learn the straight dope.
What a dimwit. People just don’t seem to make the connection that removing the cart is at best inconveniencing other customers and in reality amounts to vandalism at the least (being charitable, I’d bet that most carts that get removed from the premises wind up being abandoned somewhere).
I haven’t seen these deterrents around here - mostly I guess because I live in the suburbs and anyone out here is likely to have a car, and not go shopping on foot. I’ve seen them at the Target at the mall though - your cart won’t move if you try to remove it from the store (sometimes it won’t move even if it’s in the store, grrrr). I imagine it’s a bigger problem in the city where more people are walking to do their shopping.
The worst thing we deal with usually here is that people just leave their d*mn carts anywhere in the parking lot. At one store in particular, where they a) have gotten rid of the guy who would help you load your car if you pull it up to the curbside, and b) have NOT put “cart corrals” throughout the lot. So you’ve got to load the cart yourself either way, no benefit in bringing your car up to the curb, so you might as well take the cart out to your car… then who wants to drag it back to the store entrance (we always do but evidently we’re freaks). I often avoid that store for just that reason.
I currently work for a large grocery retailer. Though we haven’t installed the wheel-locks in our bascarts, we are working on a device that determines if the cart has been returned to the cart corral.
If not, the cart follows the shopper home via an RFID chip embedded in their shopper’s card. As they’re struggling with carrying an armload of groceries in to the house, it sneaks up behind them, knocks them over, and then bounces up and down on their skull until their brains are smeared in a bloody puddle across the driveway.
It’s the little things that keep our customers coming back.
I suspect your other customers would cheer - these are probably the same fuckwits who block the aisles inside the store.
I live across from a school, and there is often a cart or two that these morons just leave in the neighborhood after they get their food home. They’re from the stores which don’t have this device.
Anyone know if it is triggered by a buried cable or something? We once thought it would be amusing to build a little transmitter on a pole, and walk through the aisles of a store locking up everyone’s carts. Never would do it, but it would be a nice hack.
I completely understand why stores use these devices, and I appove. But they need to use some thought as to HOW they implement the system. At my local Target, for example, the “line of death” is an irregularly-shaped boundry that only encompasses part of the parking lot, and is poorly marked. So you get half way to your car and suddenly the cart seizes up. And you know what? I’m not stealing the fucking thing, I’m just trying to push my shit to the car. So once it stops rolling you’d better believe I am going to abandon it right there, even if it does block the parking lot.
There’s a small family-owned chain in my area that has solved this problem beautifully.
As you check out, baggers load your grocery bags into large, shallow tubs with a letter or number marking on the outside. As the tubs fill, they load them onto a conveyor belt that carries them outside to the pickup lanes. When you’re all done, they hand you large (8x12" or so) plastic cards with the numbers/letters of the tubs that have your groceries in them. You walk, happily unladen, out of the store, and pull into the pickup lane and hand the cards over to the people out there. They stash your groceries in your trunk or wherever you want them, and you drive merrily away. Tips are forbidden, by the way. (This system of course does not apply if you bought five things that fit into one bag, which you tote out yourself.)
In years of shopping there, I’ve only once been asked for a receipt to verify that my groceries were mine, and it was on Christmas Eve when the place was slammed and someone had gotten some cards mixed up. No grabbing wet carts from the rain, no dents in your car in the parking lot – apparently the carts last a lot longer, as well.
It’s truly wonderful, and I am completely and utterly spoiled.
The system does not do anything about people that block traffice inside the store, but nobody’s perfect.
There’s a store that does this near my in-law’s home, and while I would get used to it if I was there all the time, going there only a few times a year is nerve-wracking. I hate accepting extra help, and it feels “extra” to me because I’m not used to it. I still feel like I should tip anyway, despite the “No Tips, Please” sign, and then I feel resentful for feeling like I should tip when I shouldn’t and it’s all just a mess. I also don’t like someone else loading my car, because inevitably the bread ends up on the bottom and the frozen stuff in the sun. Or even if it doesn’t, I’m afraid it’s going to, and that’s just one more thing for me to micro-manage and feel helpless and beholden and resentful all at once.
Yeah, I have issues. They’d probably go away if stores did it locally and I learned to trust the system on a regular basis.
The thing I hate about the locking cart systems is when the whole parking lot isn’t part of the “territory”, especially in a long strip-mall shaped parking lot. There’s one near hear (on Howard) with a Target on one end, then a Circuit City, a Best Buy and aaaaalll the way down there is a Jewel (with a really great Kosher deli, by the way). I try to be a good girl and park somewhere in the middle so that I can get some exercise going to Target on one end, dropping my stuff off at my car in the middle and then walking to Jewel on the other end. But the damn carts won’t go that far. They lock up three rows away from my car. So do I pick up half the bags, leaving the rest unattended as I walk to my car and back? Or do I do the lazy suburban thing and drive 100 yards from one store to the other? Grrr.
Not only does it piss me off when people steal carts - and stealing is what it is - but then they leave them all over the place. We have a large plaza-style shopping area - actually it’s way nicer than that, called Latham Farms - that sprawls over a pretty huge area. But people take carts from one place and just shop around, and then leave them at the bus stop. That is really annoying.
Yes! My town is littered with abandoned, stolen shopping carts, and the underpaid, overworked Shop-Rite employees have to go around town and collect them. Being the nosy Parker I am, I actually chase people down and harrangue them when I see them making off with a cart.
Those stupid carts… I work as a bagger at a Shaws, so i am sometimes the person who gets to run around, unlock, and retrieve them.
It’s actually not too bad, but some people are absolutely determined to get them to where they want them… i’ve found carts so far past the line that i unlocked it, and it locked up again before i brought it back inside the safe area…