What's with the shopping cart barriers everywhere? (Reston, Annandale: live, price)

[Flamingo13]

There are no barriers either at any of the stores I shop at - BUT!! I do take issue w/the people that wheel the cart to their car and then dump the cart either in another parking spot, work at getting it up over a median, etc. rather than taking it back to the store or to a cart corral.

[SweetAsRain]

Originally Posted by Flamingo13

There are no barriers either at any of the stores I shop at - BUT!! I do take issue w/the people that wheel the cart to their car and then dump the cart either in another parking spot, work at getting it up over a median, etc. rather than taking it back to the store or to a cart corral.

Oh I know, that annoys me too! I park close to the corrals so I don't have to walk very far to put the cart back. Not to mention my kids are in the car too.

[michgc]

Ugh, I used to hate this. That's how the supermarkets were in Maryland. Now most of the ones I go to have corrals in the parking lot to put them in. So much better. When I have my two little ones with me, it would be impossible to carry the groceries and the kids to the car! I always try to park near a corral but I have been guilty of strategically placing it somewhere in the parking lot, too - but only if my kids are in the car and I don't want to leave them to put the cart back.

[dkf747]

When I moved here almost all of the stores had them. The reason they now allow you to take carts to the parking lot is because of a lawsuit won by those with disabilities. Those barriers stop more than carts. I'm glad to see them disappearing.

[leighland]

In my suburb in San Diego, all markets (tiny sole proprietorship and the big supermarkets) must pay the city a fee for "cart recovery"- for those carts that wander off the property, either by dopey kids or homeless people. The city regularly picks up carts- but I don't know if they destroy them or return them to individual stores.

[pseudo]

This is an interesting book, since the topic has turned to lost shopping carts...Amazon.com: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (9780810955202): Julian Montague: Books

[anonymous703]

Originally Posted by Flamingo13

There are no barriers either at any of the stores I shop at - BUT!! I do take issue w/the people that wheel the cart to their car and then dump the cart either in another parking spot, work at getting it up over a median, etc. rather than taking it back to the store or to a cart corral.

Well, if a store is too cheap to pay employees to pick up carts from cart corrals (ie Harris Teeter in Reston) I'm not going to oblige them and bring the cart back to the storefront.

[athousandlogins]

Originally Posted by michgc

Ugh, I used to hate this. That's how the supermarkets were in Maryland. Now most of the ones I go to have corrals in the parking lot to put them in. So much better. When I have my two little ones with me, it would be impossible to carry the groceries and the kids to the car! I always try to park near a corral but I have been guilty of strategically placing it somewhere in the parking lot, too - but only if my kids are in the car and I don't want to leave them to put the cart back.

Yeah, I always try to park near a corral when I have the kids with me, for this very reason. But if there isn't a spot available near a corral - or if the store doesn't have corrals at all, like my Giant in Falls Church - then it's a rock and a hard place. That's when I sometimes resort to using the median; as ugly as it looks and as much as I NEVER would have done that when I was childless, at least the cart isn't taking up a parking space or rolling into people. And I don't have to leave my kids alone in the car that way (which you're really not supposed to do, anyway).

I think what the store wants us to do is bring the kids to the car, and leave the groceries up by the store entrance and drive over to pick up the groceries and load them. Sometimes I do this but I'm never entirely comfortable with it - in part because half the time, the loading area is already full up with carts and cars, and I don't know where to put myself! Plus it feels weird to abandon all those groceries, even for a few minutes.

[blu_monk]

Could be for a number of reasons:

1) Perhaps the parking lot is small, and they would rather have a few more parking spaces than a return your cart area
2) Perhaps the parking lot is small and this helps people not leave carts out in the parking lot making it hard for people to park
3) Perhaps they save money by not paying people to go gather carts and bring them back into the store.
4) Perhaps they won't lose as many carts and the carts will stay in better condition because people are less likely to abuse them if they are right next to the store
5) Perhaps those concrete posts have another job, to keep cars from accidentally running into the side of the building

[CAVA1990]

It seems to be going by the wayside, thank goodness. It was one of those horrid things dreamed up by Giant and Safeway when they had duopoly control of the grocery market in this area. When other chains moved in (Trader Joe's, Harris Teeter, Whole Foods) things started to change for the better. I think Giant was the greatest abomonation to ever visit itself on our food culture. High prices, dingy stores, mediocre food, a labor union service culture and the cart barriers, plus they were from Maryland. I'm glad their time of grocery domination has ended. I still refuse to shop there.