I read somewhere that it costs the store about 300 euros (350 dollars) to replace such a steel cart. So a cart thief steals 350 dollars.
That is how it is generally solved in the Netherlands. Only it’s an euro here (worth 2 bucks) so people have more of an incentive to bring the cart back to the corral. We also have the electronic blockin in the larger shopping malls.
Also, our parking lots are smaller and used very intensely. So whenever a cart would just stay there, a car looking for a parking spot would likely move it aside, park in it’s spot, and then the people getting out of the car will use the cart, because hey, free coin inside.
Still, we have cart-theft. Apart from a few hobos, all cart-thieves are inner city students. They don’t have cars, the beer crates don’t fit on the bike, and they don’t have enough of a clue to either buy or borrow a car of cart of their own. So the carts stay in the front yards of frat houses untill they are returned. Or untill, during a drunken frat party, the carts are thrown in the nearest canal.
This is similar to the little cart I use regularly to do most of my shopping. They don’t cost much, either (I think I paid $20 for mine). There are ways to get your groceries home that don’t require a stolen cart.
In college, I lived off-campus and had little access to a car. So we carried our groceries home, on foot. There are always alternatives to stealing a shopping cart.
Yes…if only there were a product out there that they could purchase to meet their needs…like maybe…some kind of grocery cart…
Yes, how unfortunate it is that absolutely no one has had the foresight to mass-produce a consumer-grade shopping cart for $30-$40, leaving these poor schmucks with absolutely no recourse other than to steal a commercial-grade cart costing several hundred dollars and then abandon it to the elements when it’s no longer of use to them.
I don’t drive, so when I go grocery shopping I push the trolley about 500m to the nearest taxi rank and leave it there.
I had no idea until I read this thread that this apparently makes me History’s Greatest Monster.
My sincerest apologies to those of you who spend perhaps an extra $0.37 over the course of your entire shopping lifetimes to indulge my utterly despicable habit. I feel so ashamed and dirty right now.
If you want to feel better about yourself, why don’t you ask the manager of the grocery store if he/she minds if you remove the trolley from the store property? If he/she doesn’t mind you pushing it to the nearest taxi rank, I’ll cease thinking of you as History’s Greatest Monster.
If you’re taking the cart off store property, it doesn’t make you a monster, but it does make you a thief.
You know that every single person who steals grocery carts like you do has the same rationalization, right?
ETA: I’ll give you this, at least you’re not taking them into the neighbourhood so the store can’t find them. I took two carts back to the store yesterday from many blocks away.
You push your cart 500m from the store, after the store owner has politely asked you not to do so? It takes a store employee 7 minutes to walk out there and grab your cart, and another 7 minutes to push it back. That’s about a quarter of an hour just to deal with your cart. Assuming minimum wage, your little act of theft is costing the store about $1.60 to rectify.
Next time you go shopping, leave the cart behind and swipe a couple of candy bars instead; see if the store owner is any less displeased.
You may not be History’s Greatest Monster, but you’re a tick with a lack of respect for property rights. When the sign says “please do not remove carts from premises,” why would you think it’s OK to remove carts from the premises?
Completely off topic.
I once saw a stampede of carts. It was at a crappy Kmart that was about to go out of business. No one ever put their carts in the corral, and no ever ever gathered them back to the store. So there would be maybe 12 cars and 60 carts in the parking lot nearly all day. Anyway One day I was at a stop light near there when the wind picked up with a big gust from 30 -70 or so and stayed that way for a long time… With their spinny little wheels they all straightened out and headed down wind. A couple employees came running out but where hopelessly outmatched.
Maybe a third crashed and fell over jumping off the curb, or ran into one that had. And another 3rd came to a dead stop at the opposing curb. But maybe 17-20 of them managed to get on the road headed down wind(and towards a decent hill down). It was kind of inspiring, like it should have been narrated by Morgan Freeman. I considered turning down the road to follow them and see their fate, but was kind of worried the road would be a demolition derby of people swerving out of the way of on coming carts.
I must have missed the bit where the CEO of the multinational multi-billion dollar Coles corporation came into the store and politely asked me to not remove the trolley. And there’s no sign saying any such thing.
Seriously, if you want to bitch about the wasteful practices of massive supermarket chains that add to your grocery bill you’d be better off complaining about the amount of meat they put on the shelves and then throw out.
eg Last Monday I was grocery shopping and every second piece of meat on the refrigerated shelves was marked down because it was expiring that evening. I usually shop later in the week, so I’m thinking that this was the meat they were planning to sell on the weekend but didn’t. There must of been hundreds of kilos of flesh of animals that had been killed for human consumption that were going to be thrown in the garbage a few hours later.
I could just as easily Pit the cretins who pay with credit cards instead of cash.
Nobody cares that you’re going to get some “reward points” for paying with credit. Your insistence on using a less efficient form of payment than cash means that I have to wait in line behind you while you sign your signature and have it cleared electronically. The store has to pay just as much to hire extra cashiers for that bullshit as they do to pick up my trolley.
It’s the price of doing business.
But hey. fuck the pensioners who don’t drive, right?
They also don’t have signs saying “please don’t take our food home and eat it without paying for it,” and “please don’t cockpunch the manager.” If they had to put up signs for every single thing they don’t want you to do, there’d be no room left for the groceries.
That’s up to the store. Taking carts off the lot is not a wasteful practice of the store; it’s a wasteful practice of the customer.
Properly executed, a CC transaction takes about as long as it does for a cashier to count a pile of bills from the customer and hand back change. Conducting transactions via CC instead of cash also enhances security: a store with piles of cash sitting around is a ripe target for armed robbery (or employee skimming).
And - more to the point - paying via CC is permissible according to store policy.
See upthread: it costs the store $1.60 to retrieve your stolen cart. Even if a CC transaction takes an additional 15 seconds of the cashier’s time (a claim I dispute), that only costs the store four cents. And, once again, the store is OK with this.
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It’s the price of doing business.
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So no, it’s not “fuck the pensioners who don’t drive.” It’s “fuck the pensioners who are too cheap to buy their own cart and would rather repeatedly steal the store’s carts.”
So it’s OK to steal from an entity that has more assets than you feel they should? I suspect your local laws disagree on that point, as do most people who think it shouldn’t take specific signage to keep people from appropriating what isn’t theirs without the permission of the actual owner of the thing being taken.
Charming effort at changing the subject by the way, whining about totally legal things others do that annoy you and attempting to use your irritation to justify theft. After all, we all know that annoying you should be a crime. :rolleyes:
One would hope that by the time someone reaches “pensioner” age, they’ve acquired enough problem-solving skills to find legal and ethical ways to get their groceries home, rather than resorting to stealing.
It’s amazing what lengths rude and inconsiderate people will go to to rationalize their behavior. Molesworth 2 has thrown in everything from Hitler to old bacon.
Cart thieves are lumped into the same category as litterers and dog walkers who don’t pick up after their dog. They feel no guilt crapping all over the world because their convenience outweighs everything else.
This exact thing. I call them “ruiners,” because they do as they please and ruin things for everyone.
ETA: I have to go take my little cart and walk over to Safeway in the rain now. I can walk in the rain, see, because humans don’t actually melt when they get wet.
I see a market for little wheeled platforms that can tuck under the front bar of the cart to lift the locked wheels off the ground after a cart leaves the parking lot. $10/each (d & r)
(d & r)