I'm just curious if any one else works at a store that suffers the same kind of problem we've been having as of late. We used to have six motorized shopping carts for our elderly/disabled shoppers. Now we have three. Occasionally, we would get a phone call from a resident informing us someone had left one of our motorized shopping carts down a side street and so we would go and retrieve it. This only happened from time to time. Recently, the problem has escalated to the point where it's severe. We have some apartments nearby that are home to some teenage punks that think it's hilarious to drive one of our motorized shopping carts across a busy street to a local fast food and leave it there. One day a co-manager and I along with another employee cornered the thieves in the fast food, got their pictures on a phone, called the police and told them not to come back to the store. They proceeded to run before the police could arrive and we trailed them in a car for awhile and the morons even headed back in the direction of our store, to which we sped up to them and they were told to leave the premises, which they did. They later returned after a couple of weeks and did it again, and then again and who knows now where one of our motorized shopping carts is.
Then today, a customer reported that she saw two motorized shopping carts in a dry drainage ditch. I along with a co-manager headed out there and located both, one of which was mile or so from the other. Both had been partially stripped of their components, rendering both inoperable. I won't go into detail concerning the challenge involved getting them out from the drainage ditch, but I will say it wasn't easy considering the weight of the carts and the height of the protective guard rails. Of course we're not happy, but we're also concerned that whoever stripped the carts of inner components is going to come back for the remaining three or those thieving brats are going to drive off with the rest. Either scenario is likely, unfortunately, and having just three motorized carts isn't going to cut it considering the high volume we do. What needs to be done at the moment is protect the remaining ones from theft, but with access to the shopping carts being readily available, being observant isn't a viable enough option. Has any one else here had to deal with a similar problem, and if so, how did you go about protecting store property?
To be honest, I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more often at our store. Our store has 6 and we've never had to retrieve any outside of the Kroger parking lot. There is an apartment complex next door to our store and occasionally a regular shopping cart might bleed through there. There are elderly people that live there so I'm suprised that they didn't go for a dream ride on one of those things yet.
Many of our shopping carts end up at apartments too and we have to go to the apartments both across the street and behind the store to get the carts back, but nearly all of the small, double-decker type carts of disappeared from the area. The store has to keep spending money on purchasing new carts rather than do as I suggested and get carts with the types of wheels that lock if you try to take the cart beyond a certain point. I understand it's a major cost issue, but having to order new carts every couple of years, if not sooner, is a major cost issue too when each cart averages $300.
It's a more significant cost issue when it comes to repairing/replacing the motorized shopping carts though and the main concern is soon, we're not going to have any left and that's not a good situation considering there would be customers that wouldn't shop at our store because they depend on those motorized shopping carts to get around the store. We seriously have customers that can't make it from their car to the store, so they wait until they can get a courtesy clerk's attention who will then bring one of the motorized shopping carts out to them. These people make up enough of the overall business that the store does that if they have to go elsewhere to do their shopping, it would be enough to drop overall store sales down a few percentage points. That's a problem that impacts everyone at our store because obviously, less profit means less hours, and with the way corporate wants to eliminate full timers/cut back part time hours, we don't need something like this reducing our hours even more.
If store management was really concerned with the theft of carts in your area they could have something installed similar to an electric fence. When a cart reaches that border the back wheel locks and can't be taken off the lot.
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My Views and Opinions do not reflect that of the Kroger company. I'm an indivdual expressing my 1st amendment right.
