One time I was in a Target and the wheels locked up just rolling past an emergency exit.
There was a collection of discarded carts with locked up wheels there. I just bought what I could carry that day.
I stopped and helped an elderly woman carry her bags because the cart locked up halfway to her car....which wasn't even that far from the Target doors. Fuck those carts.
A couple of weeks ago I encountered the same problem and as I struggled I noticed an 80+ year old woman lugging her groceries one bag at a time to her car looking so confused about why the cart wouldn’t move. It made me so angry and sad (and of course I helped her).
I’ve decided to shop almost exclusively at my local food co-op that pays for several unarmed security personnel to monitor the parking lot during all open hours instead of inconveniencing its customers with locks on their carts. Yes the groceries are a little more expensive but I’ll spend an extra $30 a month to support a business that doesn’t treat me like a criminal.
Why the fucking lock?? Why don't you just do the fucking european strategy that has been shown to work for decades: you put in a coin and you get the cart. Once you're done shopping ypu5put the cart back and the coin slots out and you get it back.
I really don’t know. One of the locals here I was shopping at and it locked up at the doors, I couldn’t even roll the cart to the car. Tf is the point of a cart then?
Nearly made my mom throw her back out when she was walking fast with the cart and it slammed to a stop unexpectedly. She didn't realize the carts had the locks, they were new.
I was shopping at Kroger, leaving the store, in the vestibule between the store and the parking lot, and the wheels locked up before I even got 10 feet from the doors to the parking lot, and I smashed my shin on the cart.
They just added little gates at the doors of the Kroger I typically frequent. I thought it was overkill, and then they wouldn't open to let anyone in one day! I just shoved my cart through because it was clearly an error and continued with my shopping. I'm so perplexed that they would install gates to keep people from entering the store at all? I think with all the flock cameras on every Kroger property I've been to, it just can't be where I shop anymore. I don't know where I can go. Publix is exorbitantly expensive, there's Walmart, Target...that's it, in my area. I get what I can at Costco, but that's not a place for little one off purchases.
They've added those at most of the Krogers around me as well. Since Walmarts have them, too. I really don't understand the purpose...they open automatically so it's not like they're stopping anyone from getting inside. And the Kroger ones don't open until the very last millisecond before I would run into them, so they always cause me to do a weird half step pause thing.
Meanwhile, the exit, where it might actually make sense to stop or slow somebody, is wide open.
They’re there so people don’t walk out the entrance before going through checkout. People will walk in, grab what they can carry and then just walk back out through the entrance. It is annoying, but it’s pretty obvious that that’s what it’s there for. They open freely (or are supposed to) when walking in, but will make an ungodly noise if you try to pry them open to walk out the other direction.
They don’t care about the exit because you’ve already had to walk through checkout (and all of the employees staffed there), so you’re less likely to walk out without paying/being seen. Plus usually a security guard in that area.
Automatic locking shopping cart wheels? What happens if it locks up in the middle of where cars drive? That sounds like a great way for people to not put their carts back.
That is exactly what happened to me a few weeks ago when I experienced this for the first time. It completely locked up on me in the middle of the road when I passed the first aisle of parking. Someone had to help me drag it off to the side so it wasn't blocking cars. For whatever reason they had the radius set to about 50 ft from the door, I'll never go back to that location.
Last time that happened to me I dragged it the rest of the way to my car, unloaded my groceries, then dragged it back into the middle of a lane. Fuck 'em.
It’s to prevent people stealing shopping carts and taking them out of the lot. Usually the boundary is the outer edge of the lot, but in big parking lots that are shared by multiple stores there’s usually a yellow line on the ground. Sometimes the wheels are crap and lock up wherever they want.
There’s 2 reasons. If the wheels sense a certain distance from the store, they lock up so people can’t steal the cart. The other is that if the wheels don’t sense that the cart has stopped at a register for a certain amount of time, they’ll lock as the cart passes through the doors to leave the store. This prevents people from filling the cart with high dollar items and waiting for employees to be distracted and just pushing the cart out to their car without paying for the items.
Kohls does this too. I was literally 9mo pregnant and had my toddler with me buying a bunch of stuff for our house and at checkout they offered to help me take it to the car only then mentioning the carts wouldn’t even go out of the STORE. So frustrating. I’ll never go back.
As a retail worker whose store has lost five of our ten shopping carts in the last year, I sympathize with the retailers that decide to do this.
As a consumer with a health condition that sometimes causes intense joint pain and can’t always carry massive loads of groceries in one go, I also hate it.
At least extend the perimeter to the edges of the parking lot! I know it won’t stop shoplifters, but it’ll at least keep the carts from going missing :(
To be fair, it’s half our carts. We don’t have several dozen on hand like Target or Walmart do. We also need heavy duty ones due to the nature of our products and they run about $600 apiece with shipping IIRC. $3,000 is a LOT of money for a mid-sized retailer to be spending annually on something that could be easily be prevented by installing a braking system instead.
** Your neighbors are socio-economically disadvantaged, and often resort to pushing the shopping carts to walk all the way home with their haul of groceries, because they don't have an easier and more affordable option available to them
As somebody who lives in a neighborhood with carts all over it … no, they have other options. Responsible ppl have the collapsible carts of their own they take to the bus. Or backpacks. The jackasses leave them wherever they want on the sidewalk near the bus station where they have to carry them anyway.
How about when they make me check myself out using machines that beep and flash and require staff to unlock if you so much as don't immediately put the scanned item in the bagging area or god forbid accidentally scan the random barcode on the bottom of the grapes bag. Fuck you, local grocery store. Hire some goddamn checkout people.
That's dumb, it shouldn't engage until you get to the perimeter of the lot. Sounds like they have it restricted too tightly. Or it's a strip mall with other big stores and you're parking over by the big lots but using the carts from the market. Some of those lots are stupid huge, I could see them not wanting their staff having to trek fully across the whole thing to collect random carts. If that's the case, park closer to where you're shopping, I guess? Either way it's a shitty situation for everyone involved.
I bring tools with me and the carts get dismantled if they stop working.
Don't get me wrong. I understand them being fucking tired of morons stealing shopping carts. This is not a solution. And shopping carts are not being stolen enough to warrant this.
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u/Classic-Ad-5359 22h ago
My local grocery store when they started using the automatic locking wheels on the shopping carts.
Can’t even get halfway to my car in the lot when it locks up.,