When shopping carts attack

The kid that pushed the cart in Rancho was a boy, but they had a young girl with them + other teenagers. Probably a different set of dirtbags though.

 

there is a store in a poor part of town that doesn't allow carts in the parking lot. large wrought iron fence with gaps every 10ft. too many groceries to carry means you pull the car up to the front of the store and load it.

 

The solution?

Plastic shopping carts.

 

Not a solution. For one thing, they are heavier than the metal ones. They have them at Target and a few other stores around here.

A solution would be capital punishment for those who refuse to put them in the racks provided. The first offense gets a warning, the second offense would be a $1000 fine, the third offense would be lethal injection. :madgrin:

 

ALDI already does this in the U.S., but wouldn't ya know, it's a German company!

 

I often park next to the 'cart return' spot, particularly on the outer parts of the lot. In general, I think that people who return the carts to the collection point push them all the way into it, thus avoiding my car and secondly, because the collection spot is often less than a parking spot wide, I put the right side of my car right up next to the cart rail (if Im by myself). That leaves additional space on my left side and helps avoid door dings on the off chance someone parks next to me out in the rural areas of the parking lot.

 

You are so correct.I'd almost forgotten about that. I spent '94 -'98 in Amsterdam. Alsjeblief, niet raken mijn auto!

 

Germany is the same way also.

 

The discount store I was referring to was indeed Aldi!

 

Perhaps we need a Federal law for a $1 deposit on the carts. Lower insurance rates, lower store retail prices (no one to pay to collect carts) and best of all, it would get all those $1 coins into circulation so the Feds would save by doing away with the $1 bills.
Looks like the Euro paper bills start at 5 and there is a 2 Euro coin...
Naaaaa, it make far to much sense, or is it cents?

 

Unfortunately, lazy people are all around the world. One of our local markets has coin control shopping trolleys, introduced to stop them going feral - a lot of people would push them all the way home and then leave them in the street, and it was costing the market a fortune to retrieve the trolleys.

However, I believe that Electric Me has the key - the parents do not care, so the kids do not care, or at least will not care until they have something that is new, and then watch the agro fire.

 

At least here in Phoenix, all the major grocery chains have a rear wheel brake that trips and locks a rear wheel when the cart is pushed past the sensing devise at every entrance/exit of the parking lot. Of course its not bullet proof, but it has certainly cut way down on the number of 'ferral' carts in the appartment complex's next door to the stores. It is difficult to push a loaded cart with one wheel that won't turn.

 

Until you wear a flat spot in the wheel. Then you can push it on the other three.

 

There was someone who took carts from the local Giant 9 blocks to my old store and left them nearby. They did once a week for nearly a year and not once did I see them do it (probably because they did it outside of my hours). We had to call the store to have them pick up the carts!

Sometimes wind would blow these feral carts into cars and this is blocks from the market!

 

I try to strategize when parking - using curbs, parking out a ways.

 

Quick short story. Btw, this happened to my saab, not my prius. Just like many of you, I used to always park my car as faraway from the rest as possible. I do this even at work, not just at the shopping centers. Well 2 years ago, on one snowy Jan day, I'm at the office and I get a call from the front desk. "Are you the owner of a black saab license plate....." "Yes, why?" "Are you sitting down?" "Umm yeah..." "Your car's been hit."

Initially I thought it was just a bump or dent or something like that. But nope. Instead, what happened was that one of the snow plows rammed into the car taking away half the trunk.

Sure its not like the driver didn't see my car, but accidents still happen, and these days, I park it within the herd. Safety in numbers right?