Oh, now THAT I hate! Maybe it’s just because of the shapes of our parking lots, but I run into a lot of cases where I have to move my car 75 feet, because the carts from Target will lock before I get to the zone for Jewel - so if I plan to go to both, I have to move my car from one end of their large shared parking lot to the other.
Wait, this is what I mean. Switch it to sattelite view. See where the pavement changes colors? Target (the white roof on the right) has their carts set to lock about a row before you get to that pavement color change from the right. Jewel (the store on the other end), has theirs set to lock about three rows before you get there from the left. And, in reality, the pavement color change is no longer there, so you have a vast no-man’s land in front of Best Buy where you can’t get to your car with either cart, and it’s not labeled at all.
As for the cart deposit, I like it. I keep a quarter in the car that’s “The Aldi quarter”, and woe unto he who uses the sacred Aldi quarter in a parking meter without replacing it! On the rare occasions I’ve not had a quarter, I simply ask a sweet little old lady if she will “sell” me her cart for two dimes and a nickel. Everyone says, “oh, no, just take it, please!” and I end up making a quarter on the deal. (Unless I just pass it directly into someone else’s hands at the end of my trip.)
WhyNot, I’ve never seen carts like that, but if I were in your situation, I’d drag the cart into the non-Target site just to spite the store. Unless, of course, there’s some type of override that the employee is able to activate to unlock the wheels…
Are these things rechargeable, or what? Seems like the need for maintenance would be more expensive than paying some minimum wage dude to collect carts.
At the Supermercado it never ceases to astound me how lazy the people are. Granted, we’re in a cold climate, and the market’s in an area dominated by people from warmer clime’s, but still. The most remote parking spot can’t be more than 150 feet from the front of store. Despite that, they won’t return their carts. They leave them in empty spots, behind other cars, wherever the hell they damn well please. They also prefer to cause a clustercopulation in the parking lot by waiting for someone to leave rather than parking in the first visible spot – remember, we’re talking about 150 feet being the very worst case. At this store, there’re no locks on the wheels, and there’s also a large amount of foot traffic. So, they protect their carts by putting a big “$100” on the cart handle, just so that you know that they’re worth something and guilt you into not stealing their carts.
Despite all the problems, if they had a quarter machine, I’d just choose not to shop there. Unless it took credit cards. I don’t care a whit about the accusatory implication of the machines, but to force me to carry change, and in the right denomination? No. Wouldn’t work.
I have to agree with choosing not to shop there. It isn’t so much that I don’t want to be forced to take carts back as it is that I don’t carry change, or actually any cash on me usually. Credit cards. And a lot of my clothing doesn’t have pockets for change even if I did.
Different stores (at least around here) have different levels of service, different policies, and different price levels. For instance, some stores have baggers, while in others you’re expected to bag your own groceries. Most stores provide bags (paper or plastic) for free; at Aldi’s you have to pay extra for them.
Some shoppers value service and convenience in their grocery shopping experience, and don’t mind paying higher proces to get them. Such people are not likely to want to be nickel-and-dimed (or quartered) into returning their carts to the front of the store; they want the convenience of being able to leave the cart in the nearest corral.
I don’t carry change as a matter of course, so would not prefer this. Also, the store I shop at doesn’t have a significant problem with abandoned carts so to me it would be hassle for basically no benefit. I see people loitering in the parking lot hoping to collect some change as a negative I’d rather avoid. I’ve seen the quarter system used in New Orleans where cart theft was a major concern. There was also an abysmal selection of grocery stores, so I went along with it.
I also think protesting the self-checkouts is ridiculous. In the supply chain from the farm to bagging your groceries, do you have any idea how many jobs previously done by humans have been automated?
Great thinking. Every supermarket should take on fifty new employees, for the economy. And they should give everyone raises, too–all that extra money flowing around will mean there is more money to spend.
If you can’t tell, I’m not being serious (nothing personal, but sometimes people get whooshed over the most mundane stuff) The elimination of a job is met by decreased prices.
I have always wondered why some people think that they can pick up a cart inside the store and take it out to their car without returning where it came from.
Airports use the coin-return scheme still, don’t they? Then that encourages the opportunists who gather carts and return them for the money. Nothing wrong with that, I think – if the intention is to make things neat, it works just as well regardless of who does the returning – but management often discourages it.
Some supermarkets in LA have a problem with cart theft – the shopping cart is the primary form of transportation in some neighborhoods, not only from the store but for other purposes like wheelbarrow substitutes, garbage and storage containers.
There are cart return services using trucks that drive thru neighborhoods looking for abandoned carts from any supermarket and returning them.
One supermarket near where I used to live converted all carts to the kind that drop the front wheel a few inches whenever pressure is off, like when you roll over a curb. Then the cart becomes nearly unmanagable and unstable and the management expects users to abandon them at the edge of the parking lot, since a special tool is needed to reset them.
Unfortunately, the extra wheel activates if you accidentally tip the cart slightly inside the store, too. When that happened to me, I just kept on pulling the cart down the aisle as it careened from side to side, knocking stuff off of shelves on both sides. Soon an employee would come running with his special tool. Strange, it just kept happening and he’d keep running.
Then the market gave up on that scheme and put up concrete barriers near the storefront that prevented carts from being wheeled into the parking lot. You had to leave your cart, go get your car, drive up to the loading area where there was a waiting line, hope your groceries were still waiting for you, then load your car by lifting bags over the barriers. Employee loading help was often requested, so they had to hire more bag boys.
I don’t think that scheme lasted long, either, as I stopped going to that store. I sympathize with their problems and extra expenses caused by the thefts, but I think they should have accepted that as an unfortunate expense of doing business in that neighborhood and not insulted the average customer who wasn’t a criminal.
No, they want the convenience to be lazy slugs. The corral can be 10 feet away and people still don’t push the cart into it. Then, eventually, the cart rolls across the the lot and into someones car.
Do you use candles instead of electric lamps for the same reason?
With regard to the discussion about carts, I’m all for any reasonable scheme that encourages people to return their carts to the store or a corral. Having had two dents in my car fender a week after I bought it owing to lazy ass cart non-returners (one that occured right in front of me by a woman two spaces over, and the individual in question just gave me a shrug in response to my “What the fuck, lady!” exclamation) I’d actually like to see these people drawn and quartered. And curiously, or perhaps not, I’ll note that of the most frequent offenders seem to be patrons of Whole Foods. I guess since they’re supporting organic farming and enlightened social consciousness of fair trade coffee they can be excused for being impertinent assholes in their immediate dealings.
In regard to the public at large, I think a presumption of guilt of being inconsiderate jerks is pretty much the only way to go.
I’m always amazed by this assertion. The only thing that results in decreased prices is either decreased demand or the introduction of a new supply. The price of an object or service is what the market will bear, regardless of the cost of providing that object or service.
If you’d like to see this in action, check out the prices of gasoline at stations close to the airport. They pay no more for their product than other stations, and the rents on these properties are often lower than in town, yet the prices are always higher than farther away. The driver for this is the increased demand caused by rental cars needing a fillup on the way to the airport.
The only monetary benefit to self checking is to the establishment. Individual shoppers may benefit from shorter wait times, and the lack of personal interaction is seen by some as a plus, but you won’t see lower prices as a result.
Technological advances are a source of lower prices. In economics terms, they shift the supply curve. See here for further explanation. Supply Curve
Prices are jointly determined by demand and supply. In the case of a supermarket, labor is one of the inputs of the product, groceries. A decrease in the cost of an input shifts the supply curve, resulting in lower prices.
If you are referring to the keyring link, no they haven’t. They’ve invented a new kind of “coin”, which is even more obnoxious. Replacing the need for a coin with a special-use token isn’t a solution. At least change is a common denominator for any of a number of various things which might require it.
That said, in spite of the inconvenience, I probably wouldn’t mind a deposit system. The shopping carts rolling around supermarket lots really do annoy me. As it is now, if I pass a loose cart on my way to the door, I’ll grab it, even if I’m just going to use a basket. If it gave me a quarter, so much the better.
How about a slightly different system:
Combining the “lock up wheels” idea with the deposit gives you a way to handle lack of change. Make it so that unactivated carts will only roll inside the actual store. You can then grab a cart, not cough up any change, and simply have the checkout clerk activate the things at the cash register and add the deposit to your bill. You then take your groceries out to the car, and get the deposit back when you return the cart, as with the current system. Do that, and something like a $2 deposit is probably acceptable. You take the cart back, and get a couple dollar bills, rather than inconvenient coins.
Another problem with dip shits leaving their cart where it’s not suppose to be, is they’ll leave them right in the middle of a parking slot. So you either can’t park there, or you have to park your car in the parking lot isle while you move the cart so you can park there.
Heres an idea: Nail assholes who’s carts cause damage to someone elses property.
Nail them hard. Using the stores security camera we trace the tags of shoppers who left a cart out that caused damage. Make them pay the repiar and huge fines!
Or nail the store! Hey, it’s their cart! If someone uses my car, even with my permission, and causes damage with it to someone elses property, the authorities still come after me until I can show who really did it!
I don’t really give a rip if it inconveniences some people! I want this problem solved! :mad:
Can you explain the mechanism by which a store laying off a minimum wage employees and replacing them with self scan checkout machines will increase the supply of groceries? Because I see fewer grocery stores than I used to. It’s not related to the self scan checkouts, but the self scans sure haven’t increased the number of stores.
