h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Shopping carts take up precious floor space. Putting them ii racks might make stores less crowded

It don't mean nowt to a Yorkshireman

There's NO slot to get the £1 coin back!

Naughty shopping trolleys get drowned in the pond around here, or used as makeshift barbeques (just roll it over the bonfire).

I've seen the "odd weirdo" pushing a supermarket trolley WAY beyond any supermarket in townwith a "bit of shopping in"

There's a supermarket a little more than a mile down the highway from our trailer park. We have some residents who keep shopping carts at the Park entrance so they can push them down the street, fill them with groceries, then push them back here

We used to have the 50 cent coin-lock trolleys. Then they introduced surrogate zero-value plastic coins because they got tired of changing 50 cent coins all the time. Last month they removed the locks and now we had our first swimming trolleys back again. I guess someone can now get a psychology PhD investigating why apparently worthless pieces of plastic are enough to keep people from thrashing the trolleys.

Aldi uses quarters. It makes the shopping cart return into a game. Around here, people pass the carts around - you find someone returning a cart and give them your quarter, which you will get back later.

It's good because the parking lot is on a steep hill. Otherwise, the carts would roll downhill and end up in the road - and then roll down the road past the computer-repair place and down to the Dollar Store - or else miss the curve and end up in the woods.

They don't because everyone plays the quarter game.

Walmart's parking lot is flat, so no quarter game. Everybody puts the carts in the little corrals. Then an employee comes out and makes a long train out of the carts.

One of my local supermarkets uses £1 coins for their trolley, but some will still take one homeIT only costs £1

The actual cost of a shop-dedicated trolley is around 750 euros, so it really is a bargain.

bent scrap merchants ain't bothered which supermarkets they came from