Letters to the editor
Shopping carts are a menace to society
I would be interested to know if other v alley residents feel the same way as me about the dreaded shopping cart.
Aside from the small dent left in my car's door panel by an abandoned cart , the use and abuse of these contraptions is a nightmare.
The shopping cart villain spans all ages, classes, races and sexes. Frail old ladies take on a frightening new persona as they steer them into fellow shoppers' shins; vandals and thieves steal them for joy-riding, leaving them abandoned and wrecked at the roadside ; vagrants proudly load them with their worldly goods .
Why do retailers employ an army of staff solely to collect their carts from every corner of the parking lot when they could be easily and more cost-effectively collected from designated cart stowage s? Worse still, why do retailers seemingly accept that their carts will be stolen ? Why don't patrol cops stop and apprehend those clearly in possession of stolen property, or are carts given free with every full grocery purchase? Do these uncontrollable four-wheeled monstrosities have a value, and is not the cost of their collection, repair or replacement passed on to the customer through higher prices?
Anyone that has visited a large DIY store or supermarket in Europe will know that to use a trolley (that's what they're called over there), a refundable coin has to be used to free the thing from a chained lock; why can't a similar scheme be adopted here? The 25-cent coin may be too low to deter people from abandoning them, or thieves from wheeling them away, but maybe a suitable token that would open a chained lock could be sold for a dollar or two at the store's customer services or check-outs; the token then recovered for use another day when the infernal thing is returned to its stowage after use and relocked.
Carlo Pritchard
Las Vegas
Letters and questions are always welcome
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