Trolley Trivia
Have you ever driven into a supermarket car park only to find there’s a blasted trolley, or two or three, in the way? I have and it happens virtually every week. Call me a grumpy middle aged woman but it drives me wild with exasperation. Am I the only person outraged at this selfishness, laziness, and general anti-social behaviour? What’s wrong with people these days?
In spite of the fact there are generally heaps of official trolley parks within just a few steps many lazy morons seem intent on loading their shopping into their cars, or their fancy mud splattered utes, then driving off leaving the trolley right in the middle of a parking space.
Abandoned trolleys are everywhere - but few are where they’re supposed to be - that is nicely stacked at an official collection point ready for return to the store. I’ve conducted a very random study to find out what sort of people abandon a trolley rather than walk a dozen steps to tidy it away nicely. Generally the culprits are invisible but recently, and after months of waiting, I finally spotted a woman transfer her shopping to the car then just shove her trolley aside. She looked like you or I, perfectly normal. How could this be? Why do normal people behave in this way?
Should I be concerned or simply shrug my shoulders and walk away? Why yes, I believe I should be concerned and I am. But before we consider solutions lets take a look at the wider, more perplexing issue (for supermarket owners anyway and therefore the shopping public) of stolen shopping trolleys, carts, buggies, call them what you will.
Dumping trolleys in situ is one issue but stealing them is a far greater problem worldwide. For example, in Australia there’s huge concern and rightly so, as stolen/lost/liberated shopping trolleys costs big bucks for the supermarket owners. Apparently there are more than 2 million shopping trolleys in Australia! I wonder how many there are in the US or the UK?
Anyway across the ditch the ozzies have it (almost) sussed with a dedicated web site and a mobile phone app and inducements to report abandoned trolleys. How cool is that? Furthermore good corporate citizens, five of them every month, can be in with a chance to win $1,000 for reporting an abandoned trolley.
Most of us couldn’t contemplate life without trolleys-how else would you do your shopping? But when first invented there was considerable resistance.
“One of the first shopping carts was introduced on June 4, 1937, the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain in Oklahoma City.
“The invention did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them suggestive of a baby carriage. "I've pushed my last baby buggy," an offended woman informed Goldman. After hiring several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their utility, as well as greeters to explain their use, shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire.”*
Here are some media facts from our ozzie Trolley Tracker web site:
■Together Woolworths, Safeway and Big W stores have around 300,000 shopping trolleys in over 900 stores around Australia. The cost of collecting, maintaining and replacing trolleys each year is over $50 million.
■Approximately 5% of all trolleys are replaced each year either because they go missing, are stolen or damaged beyond repair. The average trolley costs $150 to replace, however trolleys with special features (such as child seats) can cost up to $600.
■Shopping trolleys have an uncanny ability to become feral if left abandoned. One trolley from Lismore in northern New South Wales was recovered in Cairns, 1,500 kilometres away.
■Another trolley from Port Augusta in South Australia was found at Cook, on the Nullabor, 870 kilometres along the Trans-Continental Railway. (Railway staff kindly sent it home!)
My conclusion: if we all shopped on line and had products delivered there would be no need for shopping trolleys. That’s what happened in the “Good old days” when merchants knocked on your back door-buy my sausages/bread/ etc etc. And, I have no idea why people are so selfish/self-centred as to leave their trolleys in the middle of a supermarket car parking space. Do you?
What price progress?
Here’s my weekly selection from all that’s good, and not so good, on the interwebs about supermarkets and trolleys:
Hum, nothing much terribly relevant in the music side to really take my fancy this week....but there’s a band called Suicidal Shopping Trolleys with music so bad IMHO you’d have to be a suicidal supermarket trolley to even think about listening to this music. So there’s no link.
*Wikipedia- where else?
Mostly supermarkets in the UK have a system in place where each trolley is joined to another by a small piece of chain and a latch/ To release the latch and obtain the trolley you need to insert a £1 coin, which is returned once the latch is reconnected with another trolley. In theory this works if people park their trolleys back at the trolley points, but in reality you get packs of joined together trolleys...I suppose this does make collecting easier but still leaves the problem of abandoned trolleys in car parks.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious and ultimate answer, is of course, that humans have evolved to be inherently lazy, especially as everything is done for us or done 'to make life simpler'. An arguable point if ever there was one.
Nowadays you can get ready chopped and peeled carrot sticks to cook delivered to your door by a supermarket uniformed lacky. A mere 50 years ago, you would have to walk to the local shops and buy your carrots from a greengrocer who had got up at some ungodly hour to go to a fresh fruit and veg wholesale market and buy those same carrots from the actual farmer who grew them.
Going back to the trolleys, the supermarket Tesco actually employ people to specifically drive around collecting trolleys that have been spirited away by poor students who find carrying bags of instant noodles and chocolate biscuits too much for their young physically fit arms to handle. (sic)
Hi Lowrider, I appreciate your contribution. It's good to know people elsewhere are reading my blog.
DeleteIn NZ we do have a few supermarkets requiring a deposit for a trolley but I suspect the UK is much further ahead with such technology and, as you pointed out it, doesn't solve the problem of abandoned trolleys.
Of more interest is your comment about ready chopped and peeled carrot sticks-you've pre-empted the next blog!
Look out for more comments on convenience foods and "inherent laziness" of human beings next weekend.