Carts in the wrong store

[BookstoreEscapee]

My last store is in a shopping center with a Michael's and, until recently, a Linens 'n Things, which I believe were the only stores that actually had shopping carts. My store does not have shopping carts. My store is not set up to accommodate shopping carts in the aisles. The main row of the shopping center is shaped like an inverted "L." My store is the period at the end of the short side (there's a back entrance road that comes in between), while Michael's and LnT are in the center on the long side. Yet we get people with shopping carts.

One time there was a little old lady who was basically using the cart as a walker. I swear she found the loudest, squeakiest cart in the whole bunch just to torture us.

[simplyanother]

There is a store right next to ours with giant blue baskets....and we have teeny tiny little red ones. You can fit two of ours down an aisle, but not the gigantic other stores carts.

People often come straight from the other store, into ours...with their animals in the cart. Ugh.

We don't need any animals (unless they are the service sort) in the freakin craft store.

[LadyAndreca]

It's been a while since I worked there, I'm having trouble remembering the colors, but at our plaza we had...
Target (large red)
Michael's (grey?)
Sears (small blue, I think)
PetSmart (different shape, blue)
Value City (black)

There was also a Costco, but as that was on the upper plaza level you didn't see those make it into the lower lot.

The shopping plaza was huge, as it was a defunct mall that Target decided it liked the location of--Sears is the only original store now. And Target is in the center of it all. Our poor cart attendants hated having to walk over to the Sears lot on one end, then the Value City lot on the other, then down the slope to the bottom edge of the parking lot to get the ones that rolled away...

I haven't seen a PetSmart cart in Target yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

But if you REALLY want out-of-place carts, my apartment complex is usually littered with them. People go over to Foodtown, which is in walking distance, and then cart the stuff back home with them. And they don't always use the cart next time they go shopping--kids were hanging them on the dumpster to use as basketball hoops last summer! There were so many that maintenance got fed up and drove around to collect them all and put them back in the Foodtown lot, and we've slowly been collecting them again.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Oh, we get other stores' carts in the wholesale club all the time. Most commonly are Wally World's carts (they're right next door), especially when "you guys don't have any carts!" (You came on a Saturday, you mouth-breather. OF COURSE IT'S FUCKING BUSY.)

We get Tarjhey's carts, occasionally the World Market's, or Petsmart, or Food Lion/Bloom, Michael's... all these are in our shopping center.

There was a time, however, before we switched to our current fleet of carts, when there was one cart in our fleet that looked exactly like ours-- same design, color, everything-- except for the name of our main rival on the side. The nearest location of said rival is at least five miles away, and across TWO major roads.

Only way I could think of for it to have got in our lot was if it were deliberately put there. So I liked to joke, "They're trying to subvert our customers!"

Then we switched to a new type of cart, and haven't had to deal with that anymore.

[RetailSlave]

Back during the summer we had an older lady come up to the Service Desk riding in one of our electric carts, looking for her keys. We checked lost and found..not there. She said, "Well, I can't drive home without my keys and I have groceries that will spoil!" We offered to let her use the phone to call someone, but she declined.

A few minutes later we had someone come running in telling us that two of our cart pushers were leaving store property. Our Team Leader came in and got her truck keys and took off after them.

When she came back she said that the old lady had decided to take the electric cart and drive it home. She told the TL that her plan was to take it home, leave it parked in her front yard overnight, and in the morning call the store and tell them that "someone" had left the electric cart in her front yard, and could we come pick it up?!! She didn't seem to think that there was anything wrong with what she had done...she said, "Well, I had to get home somehow and I couldn't find my keys!" It rained heavily that night, so it was a good thing we caught her...the electric carts don't do well in the rain.

[Pagan]

Me: And I show that your account was opened in War-CHES-ter.
C: They say it Wooster around here.
Me: ....

At home:
Google Worcester pronunciation... click on sound bite...

I just gotta ask....how were you pronouncing Worcestershire sauce? I keed, I keed!

There was a time, however, before we switched to our current fleet of carts, when there was one cart in our fleet that looked exactly like ours-- same design, color, everything-- except for the name of our main rival on the side. The nearest location of said rival is at least five miles away, and across TWO major roads.

We'd get carts at Hasting's all the time from Wally World, which was mile down and across the 6-lane-horrifically-busy-no-matter-the-time-of-day road!

[Mike Taylor]

We get customers bringing in Staples, Kohl's and Costco carts into our store. These don't even LOOK like Best Buy carts. Wrong shape and wrong color, especially the Kohl's shopping carts.

[Thatgirl71]

We get this alot in my store. We're right next door to a Family Dollar. The customers will bring in FD's carts, shop around with them, then leave them crammed into where we park our carts. FD's carts are smaller than ours so when the SC's cram them in, it makes the carts stick together and hard to get apart so we practically pull our arms sockets out to take them apart. It is soo annoying.

[depechemodefan]

I had someone come into my work with a Wal Mart cart. Let me explain why this is so painfully stupid.
First: I work in a coffee shop.
Second: to get from the Wal Mart to my work you have to walk through a rather large plaza, through traffic, cross the street, and walk through another plaza.
Third: I work in a friggen coffee shop!

I'm imagining a homeless person afraid of losing his/her cart and had to drag it inside the coffee shop.

Because, yes, that is really stupid, since a coffee shop just has coffee. What do you need a shopping cart for?

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Our store is in a shopping center with a Family Dollar store, which is the only other place that has shopping carts (other stores include a nail salon, barber shop, hair salon, beauty supply store and a chinese take out place. Oh, and a pizza joint too.)

Of course, FD has the small red carts while ours are the large gray carts with a blue strip across the handle with the "Litter Box" name on them.

Once in a blue moon do we get a FD cart . . . I'm sure they've sometimes seen one or two of ours but their store is small and one of our humongous carts would be like a bull in a china shop over there.

It could be worse though: try having two grocery stores in the same shopping center, like where my old store is located. Not only is there a "Litter Box" store at one end of the L-shaped plaza with a Starbuck's on the very end near the road, but on the far end of the plaza is a Harris Teeter - their carts are a dark green.

Customers on rare occasions got those two stores confused as far as the carts went. How this happened when just walking across the parking lot from the Harris Teeter to the Litter Box takes a good five minutes - if there's no traffic to dodge - I couldn't tell ya..

[Sirloracaz]

Yea, pretty much. It creates too much more work,a nd we have plenty to do already. That's part of the reason some stores have those things that lock up when they are out of a certain range (which I hate). People should put their stuff in the car and get a cart for teh right store... or at least take the improper cart with them.

[Hon'ya-chan]

For some odd reason, the mall i'm in will get stray carts from elsewhere I mean MILES elsewhere.

The nearest is a Safeway cart that Maitenance is using to store cleaning chemicals in a Fire Escape Stairwell (among the other Fire Code Violations in the mall; safeway is like mile or so away)), we have several K-Mart carts scattered about (K-Mart is like a good 5 miles away), and I think at one point we had a few Home Depot Carts as well (6 Miles Away).