Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Chain Gang.

I had a bit of bother today when I went to fetch a trolley at my local supermarket.

You are probably quite familiar with these trolleys, each embedded one into another, that are parked outside a modern supermarket. I call them "chain-gangs", because the back of each trolley has a dangling chain with an attachment that plugs into the lock of the trolley that is stacked behind it.

You have to push a coin into the lock of the rearmost trolley. This releases the chain from the lock, and you pull your trolley out. The chain is left dangling from the back of what is now the last trolley in the chain gang.

Simple! Then off you go into the supermarket with your trolley, with your coin visible and protruding slightly from the lock.

Afterwards, when you've finished shopping and you've loaded your car with goodies, you return your empty trolley to the chain gang. You push your trolley into the back of the rearmost trolley, then you plug the end of the chain hanging from that trolley into the lock of your trolley. This relinks your trolley to the chain gang and releases your coin from the lock. Bliss!

They are clever people, these trolley designers. I've often tried to prise my coin out, whilst wandering around the supermarket, in the hope that this would relieve me of the chore of returning my trolley to the chain gang. But no way! The trolley lock has clamped its jaw, bulldog- like, around the coin and the only way to get your coin back (short of a hammer and chisel) is to return the empty trolley to the chain gang.

But I digress. Or perhaps I should say that today the supermarket digressed from its usual policy of totalitarian control and order. The entire chain gang, fully chained together, had been pushed out of its railed enclosure to enable a cleaner to sweep the tarmac. And for the first time in my life, I found myself approaching the chain gang from the front, instead of the rear.

I admit I should have thought more deeply about this, and I should have walked to the back of the chain gang to get my trolley out in the usual way. But I didn't. Instead, I chose the easier option, which was the front trolley, which was nearer. And I inserted my coin into the lock of the trolley behind, which broke its link to the chain of the front trolley.

That's when disaster struck. Kathy was with me, and she was in a hurry. The supermarket was running a special promotion of cut-price goodies, and she was worried that these would become sold out. So she grabbed the front trolley that I had freed and disappeared into the supermarket.

I hope you can visualise the scenario: Kathy had disappeared with a trolley that had no coin in its lock. And I was left alone, at the head of the chain gang, which had my coin clamped into the lock of its foremost trolley.

What would you do?

Well, I'm sure that you can think of all sorts of solutions that I didn't consider in the heat of the moment. What I can say is this; people who had finished their shopping were arriving with empty trolleys and plugging them into the rear of my chain gang in order to retrieve their coins. And they outnumbered the fewer new arrivals who wanted a trolley from the back of my chain gang. My chain gang was growing by the minute. Something had to be done. So I panicked.

Determined as I was not to abandon my coin in the front trolley, I pushed the entire chain gang into the supermarket in order to find Kathy. I admit this caused some inconvenience to the shoppers inside, as well as some minor damage to the supermarket entrance, and to the special offer promotion display in the entrance foyer, and to several aisles. But I did find Kathy in the frozen food area, where she was examining some pork chops which were on special offer at a 30% discount from yesterday's price.

"What the hell are you doing!" she yelled, as I approached, pushing my chain gang. Somehow, I managed to bring the meandering train of trolleys to a full stop when the front trolley (the one with my coin in it) got wedged between frozen pork and frozen chicken container units.

I can't quite remember the exact detail of our subsequent conversation. But we did agree that a coin in the lock of a front trolley in a chain gang is irretrievable.

Maybe the supermarket knows this, too...

Here's a photo of Kathy's coinless trolley.

I'm using this photo as a template for the production of copy chain attachments. I see an opportunity for making money in the supermarket aisles if I have some of these attachments to hand....


Expat said...

This 'paying," albeit temporarily, to use a supermaket trolley (shopping cart) to spend money at the same supermarket is unknown over here. One just pulls one out freely from the stack and uses it and returns it to the return area after shopping. Are we just more biddable? Less likely to wheel the trolley away to parts unknown?

Or have they heard about CI and wish to avoid copy-cat, chaos-causing escapades?

Canary Islander said...

Hello Expat!
I've just now noticed your comment! The time stamp on your comment is 10.57pm and its now 12.06am here! I'm left wondering what time zones these time stamps operate in!

Anyway, I think the difference between our two great cultures is distance. You guys generally have to drive longer distances to a supermarket than us. We live on an island, and lots of people walk to their local supermarket. There's a huge temptation to use a trolley to carry the goodies home in!

In England, some supermarkets have laid special "trolley traps" in the paths leaving the store. These prevent a trolley from being wheeled away from the supermarket grounds.

My God, it's guerrilla warfare out there...

Expat said...

Actually, my closest supermarket is 2 minutes by car. I have six others with a 10 minute (in traffic) driving diatance. But I think you are right to some extent. We just have to wheel the cart to the car and unload, not carry heavy bags of any distance. Had I to do that, I think I would fast become a trolly trollop and steal away with it!

Dolores Doolittle said...

Wonderful images, CI! I'd have given it a damn good thrashing with a Big Stick. As I did recently when I'd forgotten about Plugging the Chain Back In. (Can alzheimers start in one's fifties)?

Expat-not-trolley-trollop - the more you write about the US, the more perfect it sounds - why can't all daily-life systems be like theirs?

Expat said...

It's because of the way our suburbs 'grew," D. The supermarkets all have huge parking lots. I expect it's different in the big cities here.

There's a trade-off between what you have over there and what we have here. Europe has wonderful architecture and charm. We merely have convenience.

CI, I am posting this at 5.43 am Eastern Standard Time. Let's see what time pops up and see if we can work out where the host server is!

Canary Islander said...

Good Morning All! Just woke up - and it's 10.05am. I think the time stamp is now operating on UK/Canary time!

Expat said...

And we are already in Daylight Savings Time, so we're only 4 hours behind you until you Spring Forward.

Dolores Doolittle said...

Hell's Teeth, Expat - 5.43am?! Is that Normal in your household? I feel very proud if I haul myself out of bed at 7.30...

Yes, the server must be UK/Canary time, because my gmail notification here in france said 10.43. And we lose an hour's sleep this Sat/Sun - I hate that!

Expat said...

Normal for me, Dolores. I'm almost always up around 5 am....sometimes 4 am. Haven't had a good night's sleep in many a long year.

JW10 said...

Wonderful images of carnage, CI, an excellent Supermarket sweep.

We too have the pound coin trolleys and like yourself I've tried to extract the coin before giving it back to the chain gang. My most painful attempt was when I lost two incisors trying to tear the coin from the apparatus.
(only kidding)

Canary Islander said...

I've now discovered that the supermarket checkout staff have a metal gizmo widget which will release the coin from a trolley lock. They use this to return the coin to customers who want the supermarket home delivery service to pack and deliver.

Now just think what fun one could have wandering around the supermarket aisles with one of those metal gizmo widgets. Untold wealth awaits...

Expat: If Dolores is right, you'll have one hour less insomnia this weekend.

Dolores: I'm not sure if my previous comment is true, but I'll sleep on it.

JW: A brilliantly incisive observation, but I'm working on the design and manufacture of a metal gizmo widget. You can have distribution rights for Scotland! Market research indicates Glasgow as a hotspot for future demand!


Dolores Doolittle said...

Expat, that's Terrible! You evidently don't spend much time lying in wait for sleep to return, but aren't you knackered all day?

Although, on the rare occasions I've got up before 6am, I have felt (after the initial agonising wrench), Wide Awake and Bursting with Energy! Not like me at all...
And I'm comatose by teatime.

Are you at your most productive early in the day? And how do your sleep patterns synchronise with John's?