After seeing this discussion being brought up again, I was going to genuinely ask you all to explain where that comes from. I’m from Brazil and I don’t recall ever shopping at a place with a large parking lot, which I believe might be part of the issue. I was thinking how come people value this act so much and before starting to write a post here I sent a message to a friend, then it hit me: it’s absurd.
I mean it. The feeling I had reading the comments wasn’t confusion or ignorance, it was the cognitive dissonance of looking at the world I live in and what people decided marks a person as decent. This is one of the moments I really have to stop and check if I’m not actually the crazy one. I really can’t think of something smaller to care about that someone else will defend so vehemently. Really, try me, I’m already broken again.
In the UK you need to use a £1 coin to unlock the trolley from the rack, which stays jammed in the trolley. When you lock it back in, the coin is dispensed. Dunno why other countries haven’t figured this one out yet.
Because that just means a bunch of people not able to buy groceries, because they don’t have that specific denomination of cash.
I find notes to be a pain in the ass to use, let alone coins.
People here just carry a “trolley pound” in their car these days. Sometimes you can even get commemorative disks the size of a pound
I live in the States and I’ve seen exactly one store with that system. It’s kind of weirder than zero stores, come to think of it. We’re aware of that system and most are actively choosing the less functional one instead.
Yeah Aldi, a German grocery chain. My wife has her Aldi quarter and that’s all it’s used for.
Always want your Aldi quarter on hand. I kept mine in the centre console.
In Spain, most stores with a parking lot use the same system. Many people carry a plastic “coin sized token” to avoid the problem of random people “stealing” your cart with the coin in it… but usually they still return the cart to get their token back.
The token is probably more expensive than the coin itself in this economy 😂
Well, it depends. They let you use any coin of 0.50€, 1€ or 2€… Temu has 8-packs of metal tokens for 3€, AliExpress has 10-packs for 1€, but many businesses have seized the opportunity to gift branded plastic or metal tokens, including some car dealerships… even the shops themselves! At this point, I have more tokens than I’ll ever have a chance to use 😁