Most U.S. shopping carts are equipped with front caster wheels, not unlike those on a desk chair, which can swivel in any direction. Sometimes all four of the wheels are swiveling casters, which makes the cart almost too maneuverable and hard to push around corners. More often, a cart’s back wheels are fixed to roll straight. But because carts see such high traffic, are pushed over hazardous floors, and are frequently the victims of aisle rage, it’s easy for the metal base of the cart to get bent. When that happens to a fixed-rear-wheel vehicle, the driver’s own force has to make up for the cart’s wayward path (which in turn creates more aisle rage, and so on). Proper weight distribution will help you steer: Load the heaviest items in the back, above the rear-wheel axis.
Photoillustration by Davies & Starr/Getty Images
Re: gfr1111"s October 20, 2007 comment:
Yes, and you also have larger debts and are in bigger trouble.
Seriously, what's with those prejudices? Not all French go to their grocery stores daily, and to be honest I find going to the store often just to get that little junk I need is ten times better than going to the super market weekly and waste ~4-5 hours. This way, I waste at most 5 minutes...+READ
Re: gfr1111"s October 20, 2007 comment:
Yes, and you also have larger debts and are in bigger trouble.
Seriously, what's with those prejudices? Not all French go to their grocery stores daily, and to be honest I find going to the store often just to get that little junk I need is ten times better than going to the super market weekly and waste ~4-5 hours. This way, I waste at most 5 minutes every day, which adds up to 35 weekly max.
There's nothing I hate more than spending 5 irritating hours in a supermarket hunting for what I need (and also looking for what I don't need, but would like when I see it) and hearing all those irritating announcements every 5 minutes. If I had to do that weekly, I'd shoot myself.
I agree that the shopping card kiosks are a little irritating, but the price you indirectly pay for the card kid is higher than the cost of not returning your card to the kiosk. The supermarket can't up the prices with an infinitesimal value, as that would probably require one below a cent for each product (because there are lots of products sold daily) so as to not take more than what is needed to pay for the cart kid. Of course, you can't up the prices by 0.x cents, so you would up it by a cent at least, but then you see customers don't want all that little change at the counter so you end up with an even higher virtual price for the card kid.
In the end, you'd probably find yourself spending at least 50c on the card kid weekly, whereas not returning your cart to the kiosk would only cost you 25c.
So, in essence, I don't see what you're complaining about. You actually get a cheaper service with the kiosks, and don't have to drag the cart back if you don't want to (others will do it happily for you, for less than what the cart kid would take from you).
Of course, this is assuming the supermarkets actually cut the prices by a cent if they implement this, and we all suspect they don't.
But still, the ideas is if you don't mind infinitesimal higher prices, you also shouldn't mind losing 25c every weekend.-COLLAPSE
This is a great discussion. I absolutely abhor those germ-ridden, poorly manufactured grocery store carts. The good news is however, that my mother, even in her old age, was the one who enlightened me with a solution. She says to me, "Why don't you just buy your own cart?" Of course I shrugged it off at first, thinking, "Sure......I'll just buy my own hunk of junk and watch its inevitable demise...+READ
This is a great discussion. I absolutely abhor those germ-ridden, poorly manufactured grocery store carts. The good news is however, that my mother, even in her old age, was the one who enlightened me with a solution. She says to me, "Why don't you just buy your own cart?" Of course I shrugged it off at first, thinking, "Sure......I'll just buy my own hunk of junk and watch its inevitable demise in six months or less - not to mention the shear size of hauling one of those carts around. I think not, mother dear."
Well, as the unbreakable pattern continues, I was wrong and mother was right. She found out about these delightful little shopping carts that fold. They are compact, lightweight and can collapse to fit in your trunk or backseat. I believe the correct term for them is "folding shopping cart."
Anyways, just thought I would share this little slice of knowledge with you all. There are a number of online stores that carry them. I found an online coupon for this site (they have a pretty good selection of personal carts to choose from):
http://www.cartsonthego.com
- Cheers-COLLAPSE
Re: Zarf"s September 3, 2006 comment: I don't want to have to put money in a kiosk to get a cart and then have it refunded to me when I return the cart. I like the idea of paying some high school kid minimum wage to gather up the carts in the parking lot and take them back into the grocery store. The money spent on the kid (indirectly, through infinitesimally higher prices) is well worth not...+READ
Re: Zarf"s September 3, 2006 comment: I don't want to have to put money in a kiosk to get a cart and then have it refunded to me when I return the cart. I like the idea of paying some high school kid minimum wage to gather up the carts in the parking lot and take them back into the grocery store. The money spent on the kid (indirectly, through infinitesimally higher prices) is well worth not having to push the empty cart back into the store and then walk back to my car.
As for the French, I greatly admire their genius for creating great cuisine and their respect for quality food, but they have a different system than we do. They live in small houses, drive small cars, and shop for food almost everyday at their nearby small grocery stores. Whether they want to buy large quantities of food at one time and save trips, or not, they can't, due to their small houses, cars, etc.
We Americans live far from our (large) grocery stores, don't travel to the grocery daily (weekly is more like it), and buy larger quantities of food, which we store in our larger houses, with larger refrigerators and freezers. So, when I get done with my "big production" weekly grocery shopping, I want to steer my big cart to a cart corral and go home, not truck the cart back a block to the grocery store to recovery my 25 cent deposit. If some grocery chain starts using the French system, it will be a deal breaker for me. I'll shop elsewhere. Thanks!-COLLAPSE