Shopping Cart Complexity

Who knew shopping carts could be so complicated?

Sure, you want people to use common sense putting their kids into a shopping cart, and common sense it not that common after all.  So, there are those notes to avoid injury.  

Then there is the constant battle of people stealing carts, for which we've had wave after wave of security devices over the years, and we still see carts in ditches miles from any store.  Almost every store, every and every company providing all these devices has its own style of signage.  

The simplest security system is just a big pole stuck onto the cart that won't let the cart fit through the door.  Here's a system that detects whether the cart passed a valid checkout point, probably with RFID tags, and locks the wheels if someone tried to sneak it around.  In this system, there's a wire under the pavement around the lot that locks the wheels.

Gatekeeper Systems has the best summary I could find of the costs and ordinances involved in loss of shopping carts, and the scale of the problem.

And here is what a shopping cart retrieval service looks like.

Personally, I hate the rickety sensation of pushing a cart across pavement.  It just gives me shivers and rattles my skull.  I can't imagine the homeless using these things as little portable storage units and pushing them miles across town day after day.  That sounds like an extra layer of torment on top of everything else that went wrong.  It's a complicated situation, but it seems to me that with these security devices, the carts go as far as they can possibly go and are then left behind as life continues beyond.

Note: I am not affiliated with any of the companies I linked to.  I just see things in the world around me, and get curious what's going on behind the scenes.  I didn't know there would be any real story here, but there are many levels of activity going on here.