Posted on 01/06/2023 10:56:24 PM PST by grundle
Videos:
https://www.tiktok.com/@taylormadesince1993/video/7178540623153286446
https://www.tiktok.com/@taylormadesince1993/video/7179492933639441706
On a drizzly December day in Olympia, Washington, a woman in a red windbreaker is rolling her Target shopping cart laden with a stack of baskets when she abruptly grinds to a halt.
"Skrrrt! It's done!" A TikToker going by the name Taylor Ann cheerfully narrates in a video of the moment, which has amassed over 4.4 million views on TikTok. The TikToker did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
The red-jacketed customer — one of a half-dozen stymied shoppers in the clip — eventually resorted to what Taylor Ann described as "the bunny trick," doing little wheelies to hop her cart a few feet closer to her vehicle.
All were victims of an unfortunate combination of apparently crowded holiday parking lots and a likely new rollout of a cart-control system from Gatekeeper, the shopping cart loss-prevention provider that says it serves 47 of the 50 largest retailers in the world.
Whether and when a particular store gets Gatekeeper for its carts is determined on an individual store basis, a Target spokesperson told Insider. The company declined to comment on this specific instance.
The system typically depends on an embedded antenna that works as an invisible fence, though some locations have a wireless solution that has a signal range of about 40 feet.
While the hardwired system is supposed to unlock carts that return within the perimeter, the video from Taylor Ann appears to show the wireless system failing to release carts that have ventured a bit too far. A growing herd of abandoned carts can be seen in the foreground as exasperated shoppers struggle to drag empty ones from the spot where they froze.
The same TikToker even returned for a second day to film a Part 2.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
“Other suggestions I have heard besides physical wheel locks etc is arresting people for larceny”
Your looting is no problem but we can’t have you taking the carts! :D
Yes, I have heard of cities charging stores $25 each for lost/stolen carts to buy them back. Even charging the store up to $50-$200 for destroying/recycling the cart if the store doesn’t come reclaim them. Seems a bit unfair if they are stolen.
I suspect typical TikTok users doesn’t even know what “civil society” means. Won’t miss what they never knew.
Had a conversation w/ the manager at a supermarket in northern Virginia who told me that with carts it’s a damned-if-you-do/ damned-if-you-don’t battle for his store: if you control them, you upset the honest shoppers; if you don’t, the dishonest shoppers run off with them. The only thing he can do is to send his people to nearby apartment complexes to gather them now and then.
Aldi’s system works better.
I’ve lived in areas where there is a company that collects them and returns the carts to the correct store for a fee. The also will wash and repair them for more $$.
Companies will still charge the same as they do now if people were honest. They are in it to make a buck.
I always seem to get that cart with the flat front wheel that goes clack, clack, clack, clac,......
I used to never need to bring a cart near the car but only have done so recently thanks to commie bag taxes that I try not to participate in.
Prior to bag taxes, I could loop all of those plastic goodies over my forearm and carry them out.
Makes for easy loading to, I could just slip them off into the back.
The quarter thing works great at ALDI. Nobody steals crappy Walmart carts.
Our Krogers don’t have this problem. Most carts have at least one bad wheel. These are probably OSHA noise violations going through the store and no self respecting bum would steal them.
The theft of the carts is only one aspect of this thing.
What really pays back is that it can be used to eliminate professional shoplifters from just loading up a cart with expensive items such as TV sets, and whatever else you can think of, and just rolling right out the door. This is so common it even has a name now - “pushout theft”.
But they had better get these things right, because pissing off their honest customers can end up costing them money as well if those customers don’t come back.
Larry Lucido wrote: “They should do like Aldi’s and charge a quarter. That would end theft!”
Common in Germany. If you want a cart you have to insert money into a vending machine. If you return the cart to the machine, you get a refund. You see very few carts abandoned in the parking lots.
You often see something similar in airports for luggage carriers.
they do not allow Salvation Army bell ringers
they are the first national chain to allow men into women's restrooms and changing rooms
first rape of a little girl inside store by a man who identified as a women
and a bunch of other leftist stuff
vote with your dollars
Right on ....
If one of those things locked up on me I would take my stuff out of it and I would throw it in the path of the traffic and then continue on to my car and leave.
And this is not an idle threat. The whole point is the way you get stores to stop doing things like this is when it costs them. You have to make it painful for them or they’ll just keep doing it.
I already did that, over a decade ago.
These things have been around for like 25 years. Big problem is the line in the pavement never survives the first chip and seal. Yeah they can suck, especially in the holiday season when the parking lot is full. Just don’t take it out on employees, the clerk in the front probably wasn’t even born when the system went in place, much less had any input.
The two videos were funny.
They started doing it at Kroger, but appear to have stopped doing it because it was such a disaster.
My wife made a very stoot comment. She said when it locks up you get the store manager and you make him move all of your stuff out of the cart into another cart.
I wouldn’t know about Target. I don’t go in there. It is up there with Starbucks as places I will not enter.
There’s a Publix in Seminole Heights in Tampa that uses them.
They do stop abruptly. I’ve watched it in action.
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