Quarter for your cart?

Until I moved to Ontario, I had never seen shopping carts that required you to deposit 25 cents before you could use them. If the issue is theft, I guess in small towns, the danger of someone stealing the cart is minimal. If the issue is that people are not returning the carts to the corals, then I guess in small towns, the parking lots are significantly smaller so the employees don't have to walk all over the place to bring the cart back. It only took a little while to get used to the carts. The funny thing was when I went back home, the first two or three times, I started looking for the coin slot in the cart and felt weird when I didn't find it.

I often wish the stores would employ a different mechanism than a coin deposit. It's usually not an issue, but I have been caught quarterless at a store from time to time. Then I find it becomes quite the hassle to get a quarter. A couple other stores have come up with inventive ways to keep their carts under control.

One store I went to had a long metal pole attached vertically to one corner of the cart. This certainly prevents the cart from leaving the store, which in turn prevents both theft and excessive employee effort. It also prevents me from wheeling out anything heavy from the store to my car. Another store had a cart that had a mechanism inside that locked the wheels of the cart when it reached a certain distance from the store. Good idea, if you park close enough. Otherwise, you might as well have a pole sticking out of it instead.

It's kind of nice to be just finishing with your cart when someone who is heading towards the store offers you a quarter to take your cart. Usually, it doesn't end up that way. However, I have been in a couple amuzing situations. Once, as a returned my cart, a guy offered my a loonie for my cart because he did not have a quarter and could not be bothered to go get one. Another time, as I finished loading groceries into my car, I noticed that someone had left their cart close to my car, but not near the coral. I noticed another cart that didn't have a quarter in it (possibly a display cart or something) was left nearby as well. So I took my cart and the two carts I saw and got 50 cents out of the deal as opposed to just my original 25 cents. Hardly impressive, but you know what they say about small things. :)