The Grocery Store Shopping Cart Struggle Is Real
I've noticed a trend with supermarket shopping carts. They lock the wheels on the carts when you get so far. This is because of the rising homeless population in this country.
When you're homeless, you don't have a place to keep your stuff. Yes, even homeless people have things. Suddenly, the shopping cart comes in very handy. Wherever you go, you can bring your stuff with you.
I have no doubt that shopping centers are losing money on lost and damaged carts. Over time, that's not insignificant, so they had to come up with a plan to keep those shopping carts from leaving the premises.
People who don't drive but live within walking distance of the grocery store suffer for this. They might borrow the shopping cart and bring it back to the premises, but now they can't do that.
There was a time when I was doing the same thing, and they started bringing in these shopping carts with the wheels that lock right around the time I was still doing it.
This is not a perfect system. I've witnessed the shopping cart wheels locking up before people even make it back to their cars in the parking lot. They have several bags of items, and now they have to carry bags one at a time from a cart that's stuck in the middle of the parking lot to their vehicles.
It's kind of sad that the grocery stores have resorted to this kind of tactic. I guess it's a sign of the times. Hopefully they can fix it to where it's at least customer friendly. There's no reason paying customers should be given this inconvenience. Then again, stores don't even give you a bag for your groceries anymore without charging you for it.
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Comments
lookatdesktop wrote on July 2, 2020, 12:06 AM
Aldi charges for bags but they cost very little. And yea, The Kroger in Dallas TX has locking wheels on their carts. They often are left in the middle of the parking lot blocking parking spaces. It is a terrible inconvenience when you have all those carts taking up parking space. I have noticed that the Covic-19 situation is not being properly dealt with in as much as lately I see nobody wiping down the handles of the carts with disinfectant any more at least at the Kroger where we often shop. And people are basically too lazy to return carts so they leave them to the side, thus blocking more parking spaces. There are a few homeless people in our area who use plastic shopping carts to tote their personal items to and from wherever they go. They often leave them abandoned at the end of the streets on side roads. Homelessness is as much a problem as the over 40 million people out of work due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
MegL wrote on July 2, 2020, 3:25 AM
Yes, shopping carts have been taken away, in the past by teens and dumped in rivers. They seem to think it's funny! So ordinary people have to suffer. Maybe they could come up with some system where you could "pay" for a token that turns off the locking system and you get refunded when you return it.
VinceSummers wrote on July 3, 2020, 12:49 PM
Where I live, grocery stores will take your cart to your car and unload for you. And why not? How long does that take? The stores can utilize shop employees for no extra pay to do this.
As to the reason for the lock on carts due to the theft of carts, I can see this. But I'm not entirely convinced it's because homeless people steal them. Some maybe, but I question the majority being due to this.
allen0187 wrote on September 4, 2020, 10:23 AM
Never encountered shopping carts with locking wheels.
I agree that it can be quite an inconvenience.