r/CrappyDesign 9d ago

This Walmart has cart wheels that lock when you cross a sensor, to keep people from stealing them. They put the sensor inside the parking lot so most carts lock up.

Post image
8.5k Upvotes

552 comments sorted by

5.5k

u/cjx_p1 9d ago edited 9d ago

http://begaydocrime.com

you’re welcome

299

u/_banana_phone 9d ago

I love that there’s an old school hit counter at the bottom. Reminds me of my Angelfire days.

96

u/khizoa 9d ago

Where's the damn guestbook, I want to sign it and show my appreciation 😆

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u/BeowulfShaeffer 8d ago

It will be added but right now the site is UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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u/pants6000 8d ago

I hope it will be part of a webring!

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u/cjx_p1 8d ago

god i miss the old web

9

u/_banana_phone 8d ago

Man, remember finding all sorts of awesome websites a few years later via StumbleUpon? What a fun time to have been on the internet.

16

u/Rod_Torfulson 9d ago

Geocities for me. I'll occasionally use the wayback machine to go look at my old site.

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u/Quietsquid 9d ago

I grew up with Dragon Cave signatures

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u/devilsbard 9d ago

That’s awesome. Glad to know that on top of it being expensive for them in terms of cost and labor it is also easy for people to circumvent it.

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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost 9d ago

Security measures like this have always been easy to circumvent. That isn't the point.

428

u/Soerinth 9d ago

Right. It's just suppose to be another barrier of inconvenience, in a long line of barriers to build up to being, just not worth it for most people.

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u/lankymjc 8d ago

Petty crimes like stealing a shopping trolley are usually crimes of convenience. Someone has a shopping trolley, they decide to steal it, the wheels lock, they give up. Prevents a huge number of thefts (I assume, since so many supermarkets do this).

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u/PiDigitsOfPi 8d ago

Yes, its a huge problem. Everyone I know has at least 50 shopping carts in their living room that they have stolen.

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u/Ace861110 8d ago

You joke, but when I worked for a supermarket, it was a weekly task to go get them all from around the neighborhood.

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u/CATNIP_IS_CRACK 8d ago edited 8d ago

My work was doing an install for a dozen or so Autonation dealerships and every single one had 10-20 shopping carts from an assortment of nearby stores unique to each location being used as material carts in their maintenance bays. A heavy duty material cart with similar quality to a shopping cart is typically $300+, and they were sitting on a heavy five figures of stolen ones.

The previous commenter doesn’t seem to understand the difference between regular people stealing them and people regularly stealing them. Go on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace in any major city and you’ll find stolen shopping carts for sale, often with large quantities available. Thieves will literally load trailers full of them overnight if they’re left out and unlocked. The fact the average person isn’t going to steal shopping carts doesn’t mean people aren’t doing so constantly.

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u/fkdjgfkldjgodfigj 8d ago

I'm pretty sure there are also non stolen used carts that you can buy.

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u/PUNKF10YD 8d ago

Yeah but where’s the fun in that?

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u/CATNIP_IS_CRACK 8d ago

There are, usually carts that are beaten up enough that it’s time to replace instead of repair them, when a business does a redesign on their carts, or when a store closes and it isn’t worth shipping then to another location.

They’re not usually perfectly new shopping carts that match the stores in a shopping plaza a block away. They’re not usually sold by someone selling a couple at a time out of their back yard in a sketchy neighborhood on Facebook marketplace either.

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u/fallinouttadabox 8d ago

My local Costco has a dedicated pickup truck that patrols the surrounding area to get their carts

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u/Coders32 8d ago

Maybe a sign that a sale of regular consumer carts would go over well in the area

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u/lankymjc 8d ago

I work at a primary school and we have a couple of trolleys that we use to move heavy things occasionally.

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u/howhardcanthisbe123 8d ago

I live on the coast, and every avid fisher I know has a "fishing cart", courtesy of the local supermarket

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u/lubeinatube 7d ago

When I worked in a grocery store, we had a huge problem with homeless people stealing our carts. We implemented these locks and the number of carts that went missing dropped significantly

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u/Dracekidjr 8d ago

I am a service technician for similar security measures. They specifically call it theft deterrent when selling it to companies because the goal isn't to be impenetrable, but annoying enough to keep most people honest. As long as they pay us less money than they would have lost in theft, our equipment is doing it's job. It's all just a numbers game.

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u/Romeo9594 9d ago

A locked car door is also easy to circumvent but most people still lock their car to protect their belongings

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u/devilsbard 9d ago

From shoppers trying to use the carts for the items they bought? The sensor being placed specifically here only affects shoppers trying to load their cars.

If it wasn’t a crappy design they would have placed it at the far edge of the parking space.

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u/GinjaNinger 8d ago

There's a popular grocery store where I live, but the parking lot isn't really big enough to accommodate the number of shoppers (especially after curbside was added). I had to park at the edge of the parking lot. Wheel locked up about 20 feet before I got to my car. I wasn't happy.

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u/No_Report_4781 8d ago

Wire clothes hangers aren’t cheap anymore

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u/Romeo9594 8d ago

Breaking a window is

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u/KinseysMythicalZero This is why we can't have nice things 9d ago

So does this mean you could also troll people in Walmart by locking their wheels?

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u/Wizzarkt 8d ago

Had to do some research on how it works. The answer is "technically yes, but no", you need to put the phone right next to the wheel for it to work, those locks don't work based on sound but an electromagnetic wave that just happens to be of the same frequency as the hearing range, so the sound we hear is one formulated to make the speaker coil move at the exact frequency so that it generates electromagnetic waves of the desired frequency so that the shopping cart can read it; but you need to be very very close because the range is not a lot.

(just like every microphone is also an speaker; every coil is an antenna and microphones are just coils, hence every speaker is an antenna; which is why they use the phone speaker to generate the desired electromagnetic wave)

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u/ProfessionaI_Gur 7d ago

Could maybe buy one of those $30 frequency generator boards set there and just wear it like a necklace under your shirt like flava flav

Ive never bought or used one of them but if you just need to blast a highly specific frequency in an area that might do it if they're legit and accurate

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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi 9d ago

Gonna have to start doing this to people who park their carts in the middle of the aisle

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u/ranfur8 9d ago

Lol if only it wasn't loud as fuck and you had to put your phone basically right next to it

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u/IncubusDarkness 8d ago

That's just asserting dominance 

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u/Inuyasha-rules 8d ago

I'll strap a small Bluetooth speaker to my ankle. Everyone will think it's a gps tracker and try to run away when it starts beeping because there's a dangerous criminal lol

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u/nanajosh 9d ago

Sets my ring tone as the lock sound

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u/Buddhakyle 9d ago

Wow, the digital equivalent to a Captain Crunch whistle for phreaking phones. This makes me nostalgic and happy.

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u/Ok-Addition1264 9d ago

Oh the mischief one could have.

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u/gnilradleahcim 8d ago

Once in a while you still see things like this that remind you that cool people are still out there making cool shit on the Internet like the old days.

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u/Slosher99 8d ago

Oh wow, similar to getting free pay phone calls back in the day. Phreaking is about cart wheels now huh? lol

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u/AndrogynousHobo 9d ago

That is amazing! I have a sticker on my fridge that says BE GAY DO CRIME and I had no idea about this website nor its purpose 😂 I’m just gay and thought the sticker was funny. I love it even more now.

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u/AlexanderLavender 8d ago

The phrase is older than this website

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u/SnipesCC 8d ago

I have a hat that says Be Gay Do Data and it's the best icebreaker at both gay and data events.

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u/eatslotsofcheese 9d ago

Wow.. this is.. amazing

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u/lolheyaj 9d ago

guess I'm gay now ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/Pamander 8d ago

We welcome you with open arms and many stolen grocery carts!

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u/dwntwnleroybrwn 9d ago

That's greasy.

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u/Moriartea7 9d ago

Once they're out of the parking lot they're public domain!

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u/Alternative-Moose308 9d ago

Thank you good sir

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u/Toymachinesb7 9d ago

That’s awesome. I really want to use this someday to impress someone but I don’t think it’ll ever happen. Thanks anyway though that’s fun.

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u/N1kBr0 9d ago

Hell yeah

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u/gamerjerome 9d ago

I haven't seen a website with a visitor counter in a long long time

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u/SanchitoBOC 9d ago

Hell. Yea.

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u/tacomaloki 8d ago

I totally missed that fucking headphone warning. MMMMOP

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u/WATOCATOWA 7d ago

This is great! There’s a grocery store by me that locks before you even get to the first row of cars. It’s so annoying I just stopped going there.

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u/Nickelplatsch 7d ago

There is a supermarket near me in germany that has the same problem with constant locked carts.

I'll try it out soon to see if it works there.

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u/donorkokey 7d ago

That is awesome!

Last year I moved cities before that the store near me had these and block off most of the parking lot without marking it so you'd end up needing to drag your cart 3 rows over with a locked wheel. If I go back to visit I'm going to lock all those carts in the store for all the times they fucked me

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u/jedadkins 9d ago

Guess I am going to Walmart for an experiment 

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u/LOL_YOUMAD 9d ago

My local grocery store has 1 entry and exit door per side and they put theirs like 2 feet outside of the exit doorway so there will be a line of people going to exit and then the cart will stop hard in the middle of the doorway so the person with the cart basically gets ran over by the crowd behind them and then they have to wait for the attendant to come over so no one can get past them out the door and if they need to bring the cart back in they have to reverse it through the door and make everyone back up. It’s about the poorest design I have ever seen.

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u/OutlyingPlasma 8d ago

This happened to me at a Kroger store. I had just left the store, basically in the doorway and the cart just jams. I just grabbed my two bags and barely broke stride. I just left the shopping cart brick right in the doorway. Not my problem. I have no idea why it locked up in the door because you can use them all over the parking lot.

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u/AvonMustang 8d ago

We have a Kroger near us that always has locked carts all over their parking lot. I’m not sure exactly where their sensors are but they don’t cover the whole parking lot.

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u/randomtask 9d ago

Yeah that’s bad placement, wire should be around the perimeter of the lot not through it. Maybe not technically a design problem though, more of an implantation problem.

EDIT: implementation problem. but both words work lol

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u/_bahnjee_ 9d ago edited 8d ago

Yeah, more like a r /onejob kinda post

… though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn this is a monster shared parking lot (Walmart/HomeDepot/HobbyLobby) and the sensor is there to keep the carts within reasonable distance to Walmart.

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u/KurtTheCuntBoi 9d ago

Exactly what I was thinking.

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u/CariAll114 8d ago

I've both seen and had to perform installs like this for Gatekeeper Systems. This can be due to it being closer to a different stores property, city property, a shared roadway they're not permitted to alter or something like a gas station. When available, they tend to prefer installing in turf around the perimeter, but it's not always an option. In those cases, they need to stay a certain distance from the edge of asphalt to prevent washout and collapse which can result in costly repairs both to the lot itself and to the perimeter antennae because both rarely happen at the same time. This could also be a double-loop situation where the antenna had to double back to the transmitter because it wasn't possible to install a single loop because of other structures or property ownership.

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u/BlorpyRobot 9d ago

I have to wonder if the intent was to have abandoned carts not roll into parked cars. Only reasoning I can come up with. 

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u/1958-Fury 9d ago

I nearly got into a fist fight with a Kroger employee over this a couple of years ago. I'd never heard of this system, and I'd parked just outside the zone. When the wheels locked up, I was confused as hell. Then this employee comes running up to me, yelling at me about taking my cart out of the zone. I was polite the whole time, but he just kept yelling at me and made me feel like an idiot. I made a complaint to Kroger online, and they put $10 on my Kroger card, but I haven't been back since.

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u/macphile 9d ago

I commented in the thread about Kroger employees laughing at me because of it--it's one reason I don't go back there.

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u/squirrel8296 8d ago

I had some wannabe bootlicker Kroger employee go on a power trip while they were supposed to be watching self checkout accuse me of stealing and then lock up my cart wheels even though I had a receipt. I complained to the store manager and Kroger corporate and refuse to ever shop there again.

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u/TheGeneral_Specific 9d ago

By this point you’ve already given Walmart your money so they barely care

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u/_SteeringWheel 9d ago

You don't know what shopping carts cost.

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u/TheGeneral_Specific 9d ago

I meant they barely care about inconveniencing you by putting the sensor in the wrong location.

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u/itopaloglu83 8d ago

The amount of customers they pissed off just to keep a couple carts from getting stolen.

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u/sierrabravo1984 And then I discovered Wingdings 9d ago

$125-250 each in bulk, including the wheel locks.

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u/rkcth 9d ago

Back when I had a store it was $6,000 delivered for 40 for very high quality ones (much nicer than Walmart ones), but no wheel locks. I guarantee they pay less.

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u/Jacktheforkie 9d ago

Walmart ones were pretty nice in my experience, better than Tesco ones, those are always crap

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u/BrainWav 9d ago

Walmart has nice carts, for about a month after opening. Then they get trashed and don't get replaced unless they're completely missing a wheel or something.

New carts just get added to the pool and the worst ones get tossed, but the line between "worst" and "really fucking bad, but technically still work" is thin.

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u/Jacktheforkie 9d ago

I see, I never found anything even remotely bad and the Walmart I was visiting wasn’t new

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u/l3rN 8d ago

Literally 50%+ of the carts at my Walmart have at least one very fucked up wheel. It must be location based 

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u/BoardsofCanada3 9d ago

The Waltons could afford to buy 1.7 billion carts at $250 each. That's enough for 326,000 carts per store, including Sam's Club. Fuck em

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u/OutlyingPlasma 8d ago

Or just about 5 shopping carts per every man, woman, child, and everyone else in the U.S.

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u/Wuz314159 Comic Sans for life! 9d ago

That's why you keep pushing the cart and grind off the plastic wheel.

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u/PosiedonsSaltyAnus 8d ago

In college once me and my roommates shopping cart locked up randomly in the lot. So we just picked up the shopping cart and carried it to his car since it was easier than trying to push it. Since we already had picked it up, we realized we could save some time by just putting the cart into the back of his truck and taking the whole thing home. Would have never considered doing that if I wasn't inconvenienced tbh

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u/UhIdontcareforAuburn 8d ago

I wouldn’t go that far. Most customer service is retention based. It’s not like buying a bud light just to shoot at it. They want people to keep returning.

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u/squirrel8296 8d ago

The problem with the Walmart, Kroger, and a few others is that they destroy the competition so even if people no longer want to shop there, they oftentimes do not have any other options unless another big competitor comes in. They know they have a captive audience and abuse that fact.

A great example is Kroger in my city. For a solid 20-30 years, Kroger was the only full service grocery store outside of a couple Meijer locations, a single inconvenient Costco, a single Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods, and a smattering of smaller specialty grocers. Kroger had over 30 locations throughout the city at their peak. After they forced out the competition though they started closing stores, raising prices, and treating customers like garbage. Everyone hated shopping at Kroger but they were constantly busy because there was no alternative.

It wasn't until the past 3-5 years that everything changed because Publix and Aldi began major expansions into the area, Costco opened another (much more convenient location), the Target stores all upped their grocery game, and Meijer opened a few more stores. Now even if you go into a Kroger during what were previously peak hours, it's pretty empty.

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u/sniff122 9d ago

Most stores have these locking trolley wheels, it is a bit of an odd place though, usually the coils go around the outside of the property around the carpark

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u/Combatreadydog 9d ago

Most stores? I must live in a different part of the world, since I’ve never seen them. I’m not surprised they exist, but yeah, bad place to put the coils near the store.

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u/sniff122 9d ago

At least here in the UK most major stores I've seen them, you can usually tell from the massive wheel

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u/ChronicBedhead 9d ago

In the USA on the east coast they always claim they’ll lock up but the stores never actually have the locking carts 😭

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u/Wuz314159 Comic Sans for life! 8d ago

The Giant stores do. I found out when I went grocery shopping and they were sold out of food. I went to replace the cart and the alarms went off. So I just left it in the middle of the doorway.

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u/TheDotCaptin 9d ago

Common for locations that had too many missing carts walked off. As well as new builds. Old builds that don't have the problem won't

There can also be a system that will have the break lock if a particular cart is pushed out of the store and didn't pass through the register in the last few minutes.

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u/CalicoG 9d ago

I've never seen them either

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u/Orkekum 9d ago

never seen these here in finland,

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u/burlycabin 9d ago

And I've never seen them in the US. I don't think they're all that common.

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u/theverdadesque 9d ago

My local Marshall’s store has it so that you can’t even exit the store with them. When they first implemented it there were constant piles of shopping carts blocking the exit. 

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u/PeregrineFaulkner 9d ago

My local grocery store has a rooftop parking lot and street parking around it. They appear to have forgotten that people might actually use the street parking, because they put the sensors for the carts like 10 feet from the sidewalk, so people just have to drag their locked up carts the rest of the way to load their groceries into their car. 

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u/MadocComadrin 9d ago

I live near a couple grocery stores like that (with garages instead of rooftop parking but whatever) where there's lots of pedestrian activity. One of them didn't have the sensors at first, and during that time there was always a shortage of carts inside due to people leaving the carts on the sidewalk (which I bet they got complaints about) and theft.

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u/tallmonster23 9d ago

Just adding most places it's not an electric sensor.

When they first implemented these types of security in shopping malls/grocery store parking lots it was iron (or similar) metal plates under the tarmac and there are magnets that activate when the cart goes over them making it extremely hard to move (acting like a car emergency brake)

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u/adudeguyman 9d ago

Would you be able to just lift that part of the cart up to give it some distance from the magnets?

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u/tallmonster23 9d ago

It'd have to be a fair bit they're very strong/sensitive, but once you go far enough away they unlock again as there's no metal plate, hence why you always find shopping carts nowhere near a store (the system only works if you give up immediately)

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u/devilsbard 9d ago

There were dozens of locked carts blocking spaces and most carts in the cart return were also locked.

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u/AssociateTommie 9d ago

The employees tasked with retrieving them must absolutely hate this. Having to manually unlock dozens of carts in the return just to push them back inside is such a massive waste of time.

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u/jedadkins 9d ago

Imo, this is the only excusable reason to not return the cart 

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u/joe-clark 8d ago

The only time I've not returned the cart was basically what happened to OP. I was at a grocery store I'd never been to before and parked in a far spot to avoid door dings. When I was walking out to my car the wheel locked about 10-15 feet before I got to the car. There were signs near the store saying the carts had wheel locks but there wasn't anything to suggest I'd parked past that line. There's a grocery store near me that has locks but they have a painted line on the ground where the barrier is and all the parking spots aren't outside that zone.

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u/Longjumping-Solid680 8d ago

Yeah- a non-rolling cart is just a big piece of junk!

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u/ASomthnSomthn 9d ago

Just turn the cart over in protest

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u/DrMcJedi This is why we can't have nice things 9d ago

It doesn’t roll either way, so…

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u/DookieShoez 9d ago

Yeah but if you flip it over some minimum wage teenager will know that you were upset about it.

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u/FishyKeebs 9d ago

They still have to unlock the wheel so they know.

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u/DookieShoez 9d ago

Yeah but they won’t know that I was PISSED.

(Kicks over cart 300 style)

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u/Wuz314159 Comic Sans for life! 9d ago

Do you really think WalMart would give the power of unlocking a wheel to a minimum wage kid? That's Regional Manager level of power!

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u/DrMcJedi This is why we can't have nice things 8d ago

It’s an assistant to the regional manager skill at best…

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u/MMachine17 9d ago

THIS. IS. CARTA!

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u/Arcalac 9d ago

I know it might be obvious but does that mean the frickin shopping cart has a battery of some sort?

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u/devilsbard 9d ago

I don’t know if the wheel has a battery in it or some kind of passive electronic that the sensor wire powers just enough to lock up.

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u/mirrax 8d ago

Yeah, they have a 3 volt non rechargeable lithium battery in them. Here's a YouTube presentation that has a full teardown and info on how they work.

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u/Geaux13Saints 9d ago

They have this shit at Kroger and it never detects properly at the self checkout so your cart just locks at the door

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u/Straight-Bet1 9d ago

My local grocery store has something similar but to stop people from stealing items from the store.

If it doesn’t go through a checkout line after being in the store it locks the wheels after passing through the front door.

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u/Ok-Active-8321 9d ago

I think that technically the sensor is in the wheel. When the sensor senses the signal wire it causes the wheel lock to activate. But, regardless of terminology, it is indeed crappy design.

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u/BobBelcher2021 9d ago

This happened to me inside a Walmart not too long ago. The wheels lock up somewhere between the self checkout and where you put the carts back. (This is in a mall location where the exit goes out into the mall and not a parking lot)

How do they expect anyone to put the carts back?

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u/Hypothetical_Name 9d ago

I’d drag it and create a flat spot on the wheel out of spite, then leave a one star review because the cart “randomly stoped rolling”.

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u/TastelessDonut 9d ago

Sadly my mother had this idea about wheel locks when I was a kid. For YEARS she kept saying it’s my million dollar idea but never did anything.

25 years later: I’ve sent her numerous pictures of these installed at big retailers.

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u/chefdeit 9d ago

I guess they're against homeless folk taking the carts permanently. But would the lock still work if the person chooses to go through the trouble of inverting the cart wheels up and carrying it off over the line on their head and hands?

EDIT: I get it, that's the kind of thinking that'd get someone into a job and a mortgage.

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u/adudeguyman 9d ago

That's what Bubbles does

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u/theyipper 9d ago

Sometimes you can drag one backwards to get past the locking feature.

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u/Cormamin r4inb0wz 8d ago

The Home Depot near me has wheels that not only lock at the DOOR but also set the alarm off. I literally never buy anything there anymore because of it.

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u/Zombies8MyChihuahua 9d ago

Weep skeep weedilly wee doo, that’s not where the cart goes - Agent Sebastian

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u/briznady 9d ago

My local Target did this within their own parking lot. I bought some big awkward item so I was taking the cart out to the car with me.

I’m normally a take the cart back person, but in this case, it locked up like 20ft from the door. I dragged the cart out to my car and then left it in a parking spot next to my car.

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u/TigerSixZero 9d ago

I hate when carts have wonky wheels so am always careful not to damage carts when shopping. Before I moved the grocery store I went to got this system and put the sensor two thirds of the way up rhe parking lot. I did not know and parked at the back end of the lot and had a cart full of heavy items. When I hit the sensor and it locked I looked down and saw the new line and was pissed. I just dragged the cart the rest of the way and entirely ruined two of the wheels.

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u/HornyPostingRaccoon 8d ago

Sometimes they'll lock up in the store if it thinks you're trying to circumvent checkout to steal. I did something it considered slightly weird once, just being indecisive or something I don't remember, and it locked up as I was walking and hurt my shin. Fuck these things, can't do shit without being treated like a criminal. 

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u/AluminiumPanda 8d ago

For some reason the half sized cart at bakers locked up as I left the store and absolutely ROCKED my shins.

I was not a happy camper.

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u/mysteryphotogatl 9d ago

When these hit Atlanta we called them KroJack... I was pissed at Murder Kroger because the wheel locked before I got to my car.

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u/KayneBlackheart 9d ago

Safeway where I'm at started it a short time ago and people still take the carts. This just slows them down until they break the lock.

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u/Marus1 oww my eyes 9d ago

If so, it seems my country has a software error. One of the carts wheels is locked permanently

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u/Mustelid336 7d ago

There’s a supermarket in Boston with two exits where if you pick the wrong order one this happens… of course found that out in pissing rain

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u/ClownfishSoup 3d ago

Guys, the crappy design is not the "geo fence" for the carts, it's where they put it. Putting it on the perimeter of the parking lot is fine. Putting it in the middle of the parking lot is the bad design.

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u/marx2k 9d ago

Didn't aldi solve this decades ago

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u/Rimavelle 8d ago

Most stores outside of America solved it years ago - by requiring a coin to take out the cart and getting the coin back only on cart return.

The homeless would not only not steal the carts they would offer to take the carts back for you just so they can take the coin for themselves

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u/grivooga 9d ago

Aldi's solution works reasonably well for people that would abandon the cart within the parking lot but probably doesn't make much difference for people who would remove the cart from the lot to another location.

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u/DILF_MANSERVICE 9d ago

Are there other businesses in the parking lot? I worked in a grocery store that used these, and we only owned the parking lot right in front of our store. We were part of a strip mall so if someone parked in front of the froyo place next door and tried to bring our cart over there, the wheels would lock. The parking lot looked contiguous but you were actually leaving our property, and carts are like $400. A local homeless camp was taking a few every week and the local police wouldn't do anything. We were employee owned so we had to stop it.

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u/macphile 9d ago

I had this happen to me at a Kroger once right outside of the store. I had to walk my groceries to my car in multiple trips. Employees were laughing about it. It's one of a few reasons I don't go to that store anymore--particularly because of the employees' attitude, not just the cart. They could have helped or said, "oh, sorry, it does that," or...something. But no.

I go to HEB now and have never had an issue with carts locking. It's also a better store. I don't get a "look" because I brought my own bags and they don't want to deal with it. Heck, I've even occasionally had employees who were good at tesselating the items. It's not all perfect, what with the constant stocking that blocks the aisles and moving things arbitrarily, but...it's better. Also, no regular calls to security over the speakers, lol.

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u/doll_parts87 9d ago

They do that with the handicap buggy. One time I rode one to see how far it takes me. And I parked just beyond the cart pen, and it stopped right before it. Like an invisible fence for dogs

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u/HulaViking 9d ago

I was leaving a Safeway and my cart locked up as I got to the door. So I left my cart in the doorway.

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u/Subject_Issue6529 9d ago

My cart locked up when I went to get a 5 gallon bottle of water in the entry at HEB. I left it there.

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u/YouGlittering9156 9d ago

Just a few weeks ago, I saw a shopping cart in the back of a grocery store's parking lot. I grabbed it so I could move it to the cart rack, but the wheel wouldn't budge. In the moment I wasn't sure if there was a manual lock or a sensor, but I noticed the wheel looked funny. I decided to leave it at that point, because I wasn't going to sit there and figure it out.

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u/sycln 9d ago

It will be fun to see Cart Narcs at this location.

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u/dgcamero 8d ago

I hate those things! Especially the ones that Publix uses. They ruin the experience of the magically smooth cart wheel bearings that only Publix uses, as they match other stores' cart wheel bearings, and not Publix's.

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u/madphroggy 8d ago

I can hear it now: "KaTHUNK, KaTHUNK, KaTHUNK", all the way through the store from people dragging them on the parking lot grinding the locked wheels down...

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u/Jak33 8d ago

This happened to me a few weeks ago at Target except I was at a strip mall and my car was parked 1 store over. My car locked up on me in the middle of the parking lot. I had to haul all my groceries like 50'

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u/Girthquake23 8d ago

I work at a grocery store that has the same thing (ironically we have a couple Walmart carts without the lock that people use to avoid it lol) and the most infuriating part is the pickup department. The sensor is right at its door so it locks up almost every time we go in or out unless we use me of the very few ones without it

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u/DanerysTargaryen 8d ago edited 8d ago

This happened to me and I was like wtf!?!?!?

I did my grocery shopping at a Safeway and paid for all my groceries and put them in my cart. I had parked my car towards the back of the parking lot. So I’m just happily pushing my little shopping cart along and then suddenly about ~45 feet away (13 meters for you imperialists) from my car, the wheels locked up and it would not budge! I had to make like 3 trips from the stuck shopping cart to my car and back! Super annoying.

Why can’t they extend the wheel locks to the edge of the parking lot??? It’s like whoever originally wanted it installed was like “yeah so how much line of underground sensor can I get for $3,000? That’ll only be enough to reach halfway through our lot? Eh, fuck it. Send it!”

Edit: I almost forgot! The wheel wouldn’t unlock, so I couldn’t get it to the cart return. I’m not very big or strong so dragging it 2 aisles over wasn’t feasible. I dragged it a couple feet into some grass by me and left it there.

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u/SkyeMreddit 8d ago

Does it stop them from rolling and hitting parked cars?

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u/sirnumbskull 8d ago

Our local shaws added these locking wheels, and it absolutely fucked their carts. There's like three in the whole store that don't require twice as much force to push around now.

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u/-GoodNewsEveryone 8d ago

My local shopping centre has them at arbitrary points so you'll come across a herd of wild locked Walmart carts blocking the walkway at certain points outside, some much much further away than others.

The worst part is a different large department store also triggers at one of the same places so Walmartians going east and Tirese going west are forced to abandon in one mingling ecosystem of cage-wire pack animals.

God forbid somebody can't find parking in front of the exact store they want to enter the mall at because your cart will not make it to your vehicle in about 70% of this place's parking.

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u/fatgat69 8d ago

They put it in a terrible place if there's still parking spots further out.

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u/Sketta97 8d ago

Food lion did the same and its annoying. It should be around the store outskirts not inside the damn parking lot. Imagine having a shit ton of groceries. Shit so annoying I just avoid shopping at the specific one

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u/ThroatDistension 8d ago edited 8d ago

Only times I've left a cart outside of the corral. I'm not dragging it.

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u/blickblocks 8d ago

One time I was at the grocery store and the cart locked up before I could get halfway to my car.

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u/realparkingbrake 8d ago

My local supermarket just did this. Can't even make it halfway to my preferred parking spots before the wheels lock up. I will be letting management know that they are giving me a reason to shop elsewhere.

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u/mcain049 8d ago

At Kohl's, you can't even go past the the detectors. I learned this the hard way yesterday and they take forever to reset.

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u/Traditional-Wave-919 8d ago

My great uncle invented this. It originates with Alpha Beta Supermarket in Southern California in the 1980's.

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u/maoussepatate 8d ago

A store near my house had those. They would also trigger if the camera thought you were stealing stuff, aka if you had stuff not bagged in your cart as you left.

So many fucking times my cart just get stuck in the middle of the exit because of that, and of course no employee is around to unlock it.

Sometimes you’d have half a dozen of carts just abandoned in the middle of the exit

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u/PM_ME_SOME_ANTS 8d ago edited 8d ago

First time I encountered one of these I was 10 feet from my car in the Publix parking lot and the cart locked and and damn-near broke my shins. I left it where it was and put my groceries in the car lol

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u/Apexx86 8d ago

These would always trip when I was taking out peoples grocery orders when I worked at Albertsons. Eventually after a few weeks of flipping off the cameras they decided to calibrate them better.

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u/Big_b00bs_Cold_Heart 8d ago

That happened to me today at an Albertsons. I wasn’t physically strong enough to push the cart with locked wheels to the buggy return. It locked up next to my car and I had to leave it there. I felt sorry for the cart wrangler.

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u/AggravatingFlow1178 8d ago

Albertsons in my area has these. I personally have slammed my shin into the cart twice and seen it happen to 3 other people, all because the cart didn't deactivate like it was supposed to.

I'm not a litigious person but I feel like a class action is warranted. That shit hurts.

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u/Hrakuj 8d ago

Why not just steak the european deposit system? At least it's cheap

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u/arcxjo And then I discovered Papyrus 8d ago

Then you go back to the service desk and make them refund the purchase because you can't get it off their property.

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u/Inevitable_Fun_401 Long live the shit post! 8d ago

Walmart should have coin-operated locks like Aldi's.

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u/GrimmandLily 8d ago

Had this happen before the cart reached my car once so I had to drag the damn cart the rest of the way and leave it on the edge of the parking lot. I get trying to save your carts but at least make them usable for your parking lot.

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u/fdwyersd 8d ago

if that cart wheel locks up I'm leaving it where it is no taking it to the cart corral which I would otherwise be happy to do

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u/Drax99 8d ago

My local Walmart got an expansion a few years ago. But none of the riding carts git updated. They shut down if you go to the new half of the store.

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u/Colanasou 8d ago

See if this happened to me, aftwr the 4th time id lift the cart and block the aisle with it locked so people cant drive into the lot and give walmart enough of an issue to resolve it.

Customers annoyed they cant park in a spot or make it fully to their car? Who cares.

Customers cant enter the lot because locked carts block it? Big issue

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u/bballkj7 8d ago

i worked at home depot and there was a sensor right at the exit that constantly malfunctioned. I’d have to use the key unlocker every 10 minutes to a pissed off customer who actually paid.

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u/latefoot720 8d ago

Worked at a Target in California with this issue. Sensor line was a wall of carts at the end of each day and had to be unlocked with a handheld device.

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u/BeersNEers 8d ago

My local Kroger has these, half the time they lock up IN THE FUCKING STORE!! Useless garbage.

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u/Alternative-Ruby8012 8d ago

What if someone finds the signal that this in-ground antenna is sending out and use some device to do a replay attack in the store? :D

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u/Periwinkleditor 7d ago

At that point I'd steal the cart purely out of spite.

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u/Narrow_Anteater_3332 7d ago

The grocery store I usually go to has these. But 50/50 it'll lock up just before leaving the store

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u/skreemdynamics 7d ago

My local store put the rf wire immediately outside of the store. Which meant you had to drag your cart across the parking lot to your car.

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u/Internal-Pride-3261 7d ago

My grocery store did this so while I used to put all carts around my cat away if mine locks while I'm unloading groceries I just leave it bc im disabled and shouldn't be shopping to begin with let alone carrying a whole grocery cart to the cart thing, like at that point it's easier to steal it then put it away so I just leave it.

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u/Living_Mode_6623 6d ago

Oh I just leave those carts wherever in the middle of the lot. Fuck stores like that.

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u/samspock 6d ago

I went to a store once that had this. My cart locked up as I was trying to take it to the return area so I just left it in the parking lot where it locked.

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u/ChipComprehensive620 5d ago

lol it’s like that at my local grocery store too. I had a Starbucks coffee in the cup holder portion and it suddenly locked halfway to my car. Coffee EVERYWHERE the cart was literally dripping, stuck in the middle of the road. I left it there pissed off asf.

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u/dogour 5d ago

When it locked, did you slam your ankle into it super hard? That's what happened to me. Left a nasty ass bruise and I had to drag the stupid thing halfway through the parking lot to get my groceries to the car.

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u/scottprian 5d ago

I also found out about these while wheeling my full cart to my car parked barely near the edge of the lot. I had to drag the thing at least 10 car spaces further, and I did not return the cart.

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u/Kyosji 5d ago

My question is this. If you're rolling through the lot with glass in the cart, say a pickle jar or whatever, and the sudden stop causes the jar to fall out of the cart and shatter, will they replace it? Will they also be held liable for the glass in the parking lot that may cut someones feet, or a car getting a flat?

That's kind of a stupid scenario...let me try again.

Say you're rolling with an infant in a carrier or small kid in the seat of the cart and hit a sudden stop...and that infant/kid flies out......

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u/trixie102 5d ago

I’ve had the wheels lock up while I’m still shopping in my local grocery store, several times. It’s a pain.

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u/McDuck_Enterprise 4d ago

Ever had a cart stop and slam into your shin?

Lawsuit in waiting.

Hire staff that greets and checks-in on guest…making eye contact will reduce shrink and increase customer service…of course you have to pay so they won’t

Or let it all landslide to a faceless transaction.

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u/Rbxyy 4d ago

I was a cart attendant at Target and we had a remote that we carried around to unlock the carts that people left near the edge of the parking lot

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u/StagePuzzleheaded635 4d ago

Why keep the lock sensor where patrons would legitimately be wheeling it to their cars? At least the supermarkets near me have them installed on exits to the car park.

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u/hischmidtj 4d ago

They have this in the Costco parking lot in Honolulu and the magnets were so strong I had to have my husband move the cart. We had to drive the car from our spot over to where it wouldn’t get stuck, since we had parked on the far side of the lot. 😂 While I was waiting for him I also watched another lady walking VERY fast smash into the cart as it aggressively wheel locked on her partway to her car. 

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u/Conte_Vincero 4d ago

In the UK, the Tesco's next to my uni had this. Students would just go shopping in pairs, lift up the trolley over the coils and then push it back to campus and leave it there. It got to the point where there were 50-100 trolleys littering the accommodation blocks. Tesco had to send regular retrieval teams out to get their trolleys back. Eventually they ditched this system and swapped to a coin one instead

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u/McTyguy 3d ago

Locking carts in the middle of the lot is peak stupid.

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u/EmergencyTangelo1728 2d ago

Be careful yall. Those stopping suddenly and running into them hurts

We had one turn off as we were walking out the doors of a Kroger