KIRKCALDY, SCOTLAND — Melanie and I walked to Aldi the other afternoon to shop for groceries. Our meandering path led us past lots of lovely old stone homes, some with leaded glass windows, some with ornamental wooden gingerbread embellishments at the gable peaks, many surrounded by stone walls and lovely flower gardens.
Arriving at the grocery store, we were confronted with a challenge… how to unlink one of the shopping carts parked in the cart corral outside so we could take it inside to do our shopping.
Each cart was connected to the one ahead of it by a short length of chain attached to a formed metal bar that fit into a matching slot in the handle of the next cart.
My first thought was that the carts were linked together to keep them from rolling away into the parking lot. “How clever,” I thought. But we couldn’t figure out how to unlink the cart from the next in line.
A helpful shopper offered to demonstrate…
As Mel and I tugged at the chains and fumbled with the carts, a helpful shopper offered to demonstrate for us as she returned her cart to the queue.
“You release the cart by putting a one-pound coin in here,” she said, pointing to a slot on the front of the handle. “That releases the chain from the back. Then when you return the cart, you push that metal bit into the back slot and your coin comes out the front.”
Now I could see that the Aldi corporate managers were even more clever than I had first thought.
What a brilliant way to get shoppers to return their carts to the corral and not leave them scattered around the parking lot. Plus, it saves Aldi from having to hire extra employees to round up the carts.
If you do abandon your cart (in the parking lot or anywhere else), you’ve just forfeited one pound… about $1.30 U.S. at the current exchange rate.
Granted it’s not a lot of money, but it’s significant enough to make almost everyone put their carts away when they’re finished shopping. And it’s enough of a reward that anyone finding an abandoned cart will return it to Aldi so they can retrieve the coin embedded in the handle.
Are you paying attention, Kroger?
What do you think, should we have more of these carts in the states?
This used to frustrate me no end. I’m still sometimes caught out without the proper coins. Luckily, some shops give out metal or plastic coins that fit properly, thereby ensuring that the one ‘coin’ stays in your wallet. Unfortunately, I always seem to lose these after a few months, or weeks. Ahhh, Maidy…