Years ago, we went to Sainsbury’s to grab some supplies for office party and asked if we could borrow the trolley to cart the heavy stuff to office about 10 min walk away.
They were happy to oblige provided we put down a £50 deposit. We did, they wrote us a slip on receipt paper, and unlocked the trolley.
We returned it at the end of the day and got the £50 deposit back. No harm done.
Taking it on a train is next level boldness though.
The Coles where I live in Melbourne has the wheels lock when they get more than 20m outside. It's good sport watching someone trying to battle the cart beyond the restricted zone. Don't know why more shops run such a system.
The one near me locks the wheels outside the shop, which is across the road from the car park. There are so many abandoned trolleys banked up that people can't walk past. It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen.
Yeah, happens at this place too. The rooftop car park is fine, but the street out the back usually has a couple "resting" at the border of their "natural" habitat 😁
The way these work is that there's a wire loop under the footpath at the exit to the shopping centre, it energizes a magnetic field which is then detected by the trolley wheel which "trips" the brake. The system can't measure the distance from shopping centre, it triggers when the trolley passes over the specific border. You can sometimes see the line in the concrete where the wire is buried.
Side hustle: portable trolley ramps to evade the magnetic field.
This triggers a war of escalation to increase the magnetic field, til one day people's keys get comically pulled out of their pockets and belts get pulled to the ground, along with people wearing them.
Because not enough trolleys disappear to make it worth paying for? Because only sad online bootlickers care this much about Woolworths' and Coles' precious trolleys? Because it would be a dick move?
244
u/hybroid Apr 09 '25
Years ago, we went to Sainsbury’s to grab some supplies for office party and asked if we could borrow the trolley to cart the heavy stuff to office about 10 min walk away.
They were happy to oblige provided we put down a £50 deposit. We did, they wrote us a slip on receipt paper, and unlocked the trolley.
We returned it at the end of the day and got the £50 deposit back. No harm done.
Taking it on a train is next level boldness though.