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Why are shopping carts always broken?

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Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#151

Post by dTal »

pixl97 wrote: post #22

This article doesn't seem to actually answer the question well... If you want to see the problem, watch carts being put in the cart storage pens and watch carts being returned from those pens to the store. A very small percentage of the carts will end up in pens off kilter, then pushed in by the entire line of carts behind them. This bit of pressure can bend the wheel attachment. Now you say "this is only one or two…

> Getting dragged sideways both wears flat spots in the wheels and it can bend the castors or pop the soft part of the wheel of its rim.

This may be an American problem. In the UK and many European countries, shopping carts ("trolleys") have castors on all four wheels; they will quite happily glide sideways. This makes them more maneuverable in the smaller stores, at the cost of being more difficult to control - more like the ship in Asteroids than a go-kart.

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#152

Post by blagie »

Yizahi wrote: post #140

Shopping carts are always broken because the store doesn't give damn. For instance in my current city giant Auchan store has literally every single cart busted, unmaintained and completely rusted top to bottom. Similarly sized Carrefour has normal carts, mostly without any issues, just like Ikea and several other medium and small stores. Kaufland even has some fancy new carts, which not only work fine but have some m…

You can blame one middle manager.

You can't blame a million middle managers. If all middle managers are doing something wrong, that's a problem of org design.

The same is true across the board. One corrupt congressman? Bad apple. 100 of them in a government? Something is wrong with the way the system is set up. One bad teacher? Bad apple. Most teachers are bad? You're looking at some issue with hiring practices, training, salary, incentives, management, accountability, transparency, administration, or something else.

These problems get hard to solve when blame is misplaced. You can't fix an org structure if you can't talk about teachers doing bad things since people confound that with bad teachers. The exact same person can be the most and the least competent based on the situation they're in.

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#153

Post by iSnow »

pixl97 wrote: post #22

This article doesn't seem to actually answer the question well... If you want to see the problem, watch carts being put in the cart storage pens and watch carts being returned from those pens to the store. A very small percentage of the carts will end up in pens off kilter, then pushed in by the entire line of carts behind them. This bit of pressure can bend the wheel attachment. Now you say "this is only one or two…

I am from Europe and we have storage pens with a roof (no idea if it's the same in the USA) and coin locks. Carts still rotate a lot over the day, but I know that blocked or off the ground wheels basically stopped being a problem once those pens with coin lock became a thing.

And yes, we don't usually have those 10m cart snakes, only if one pen overflows and workers take a huge chunk to relocate them.

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#154

Post by InCityDreams »

Yizahi wrote: post #140

Shopping carts are always broken because the store doesn't give damn. For instance in my current city giant Auchan store has literally every single cart busted, unmaintained and completely rusted top to bottom. Similarly sized Carrefour has normal carts, mostly without any issues, just like Ikea and several other medium and small stores. Kaufland even has some fancy new carts, which not only work fine but have some m…

[flagged]

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#155

Post by kapep »

al_borland wrote: post #11
justinclift wrote: post #4

> Grocery store carts are more likely to have carts with wonky wheels than ... drugstores Do countries other than the US have shopping carts in their "drug stores"?

For those outside of the US looking to answer, here is some context from the US. “Drug stores” in the US double as convenience stores. There is a pharmacy in the back along with over the counter medications, but they also sell cosmetics, basic prepackaged food, toys, alcohol, magazines, greeting cards, and other such things. It’s not like Americans are buying carts full of drugs. I also think drug stores generally ha…

I would describe German drug stores in the same way (except that they don't contain a pharmacy and can't sell over the counter drugs). Smaller drug stores in big cities have a few small carts if any but often it's just baskets that you carry. Larger ones usually have carts. I don't think it's odd for them to have carts though, drug stores sell a lot of cleaning stuff which can be heavy and toilet paper which can fill up a cart pretty quick.

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#156

Post by bryanrasmussen »

blagie wrote: post #152
Yizahi wrote: post #140

Shopping carts are always broken because the store doesn't give damn. For instance in my current city giant Auchan store has literally every single cart busted, unmaintained and completely rusted top to bottom. Similarly sized Carrefour has normal carts, mostly without any issues, just like Ikea and several other medium and small stores. Kaufland even has some fancy new carts, which not only work fine but have some m…

You can blame one middle manager. You can't blame a million middle managers. If all middle managers are doing something wrong, that's a problem of org design. The same is true across the board. One corrupt congressman? Bad apple. 100 of them in a government? Something is wrong with the way the system is set up. One bad teacher? Bad apple. Most teachers are bad? You're looking at some issue with hiring practices, trai…

the original saying about bad apples is that one spoils the barrel, which applies in some organizational cases.

Sure you can't blame a million middle managers, because they are all in different barrels, but congress people are in the same barrel, and if one is corrupt we might assume that non-corrupt ones will be corrupted over time by exposure.

Many systems can be set up to ease spoiling, thus creating a two-tiered problem, when the teachers are all bad because the system promotes bad teachers you can't fix it just by fixing the system because you have a crop of teachers in their barrels waiting to rot any newcomer and also rising to positions where they can put regulations in place to ease rottenness in the future.

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#157

Post by HenryBemis »

This is why I was impressed that Tucker Carlson was impressed about the coin in the shopping cart. I've been to the US a bunch of times (a decade ago), and if memory serves well Walmart didn't have coins on their carts. In Europe though this mechanism exists in majority of the super markets (so I'm not surprised Russian super markets are also doing the same).

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#158

Post by aleph_minus_one »

rob74 wrote: post #67
jackson1way wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you have something close to „drug stores in the US“ but minus the pharmacy. For example: dm, Müller, Rossmann. The bigger ones (especially dm) actually always have shopping carts. It‘s very common for people to buy large things in these stores, like toilet paper, baby diapers etc. which can easily fill a shopping cart.

Yup, actually dm is short for "Drogeriemarkt", which could be translated as "drug market". And yes, due to legislation in Germany, they can only sell things like vitamin supplements, "real" drugs (even non-prescription ones) can only be sold in pharmacies.

> "Drogeriemarkt", which could be translated as "drug market".

One has to distinguish between "[die] Drogerie" (more explizit term: "[das] Drogeriefachgeschäft") und "[der] Drogeriemarkt" (in particular in Austria and Switzerland this is strongly distinguished).

Drogerien are specialized shops with well-trained salespeople (Drogist: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drogist). Drogeriemärkte, on the other hand, are convenience stores that sell cleaning agents, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, ... Because in the latter, prizes are typically much cheaper, they replaced Drogerien in many cases.

Re: Why are shopping carts always broken?

#160

Post by cameronh90 »

hbarka wrote: post #87

IKEA carts if you want to simulate driving over oil. Why are they made with all four wheels turning?

Trolleys in the UK and most of Europe have all four wheels turning. Except for Costco which use the US-style ones.

I find it much more maneuverable, which is important in our smaller aisles. US-style ones would be a nightmare.

That being said, I think both Costco and Ikea should probably conform to local standards.

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