“Anytime I see someone blocking the aisle in the supermarket while talking on a phone I want to ram that person with my shopping cart.” — Richard Turner

S H O P P I N G  C A R T S  L O V E  B U S  S H E L T E R S

Wednesday’s challenge on partner Susan and my alternate site was CARTS.

Shopping carts to a supermarket are an essential resource that enables consumers to easily transport the items they purchased to their vehicles and also ensures that the store will make a profit from the sales.

Some carts have steel frames while others are constructed from a heavy duty plastic form usually a dark green or blue color. In the olden days stores placed locking mechanisms on each cart and with a nominal fee you could rent one of them out for your shopping needs.

At first I thought this practice was a bit protective. Customers had to always make sure they had at least one coin on them to use the carts. You could recover this fee when you had finished shopping and safely parked the cart in an appropriate shelter on the lot designed for this transaction.

The supermarket associated with the carts in the above photo decided to abandon this practice placing their trust that store customers would always return the cart to its docking  station.

Unfortunately this is not always the case. It seems that the carts are migratory creatures who at times leave the flock and sidle up to  a nearby bus shelter in the hopes that a compassionate bus driver will grant them a free ride on public transit.

Other carts wander far afield from the store’s lot and end about the neighborhood until the store’s truant officer makes his rounds and returns the cart to the store’s property.

I guess some customer s don’t realize that these carts when given that magical whiff of freedom will launch themselves unabashed off the store lot and end up becoming an eye sore about the area.

I think installing a G.P.S. chip on the carts would help store rescue squads locate their property that much easier.

But that action might also bring back the practice of having the proper coinage to use the unit.

Handcuffing the customer to the cart would work but a bit Draconian … maybe.

Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – Carts