Probably the best job you can get put on in a supermarket is Trolleys.
Not in a large out of town place where they have specialist teams hauling the carts around on golf cart drawn wagons, but a small one in a shopping centre where you have to collect the empty silver from the multi-storey car park.
Getting sent off on a quest to return used trundlers to the shop entrance before they run out completely can be a fun break to the day. You get out of the shop and into the fresh air for a bit and are generally left alone until the job is done.
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We rollin' the trolley train Secure the strap and hang on |
Coming up with a strategy to efficiently restock the trolley bay can be a fun game in itself. A good plan is to do a couple of quick trips on the lower levels, just to get a solid amount back quickly, then head up to the very top of the car park while you’re fresh and not too tired to handle wheeling them down the ramps.
There’s a risk reward to how many trolleys you can take in one go. The standard limit is eight at once, but nine or ten is totally doable. The connecting strap will go to thirteen if you’re feeling bold but you really need to make sure you’re feeling fresh for that. It’s momentum that’s the issue. Getting going is easy no matter how many you’ve got, but stopping? That’s the limiting factor. Especially if you’re going downhill. Even if you’re a seasoned pro and routinely max out the trolley chain, you can encounter the dreaded scenario of the the strap slipping. You hang on while the carts concertina out like a slinky before you and you have to lean and pull back as hard as possible, praying your shoes don’t slip, otherwise the car at the bottom of the slope is going to stop them for you. Pro-tip: Never park at the bottom of the ramp in a multi-storey if you see a trolley bay nearby and value your headlights.
Once the big car park is emptied, it’s on to scour the rest of the town. Some of the minor car parks technically have a bay that you can be excused for investigating, but they never have more than a couple of couple of trolleys, often covered in leaves. But taking them back is a great way to kill some more time before going back to your regular shift.
| Abandoned trolleys are easier to retrieve from a roundabout than a river |  |
Back in the day you would often get sent out to retrieve a trolley that had been stolen and abandoned. Since it was the supermarket’s property, they wanted it returned and the member of the public who called it in wanted it removed from their front garden. So you’d get sent up the rough estate to retrieve the thing. If you were lucky, it was parked on the side of the road, if you weren’t you’d have to dig it out of a hedge. These days technology has improved such trolley theft with location based security devices that lock the the front wheels if you wheel it too far from the car park. This is is either frustrating to the trolley thief when they have to carry their heavy bags of shopping, or deeply funny when the mate who you were pushing round the car park is sent flying out the front and into a bush.
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£1 coin hostage taker |
The best thing about Trolleys though is finding a bay that looks like a total disaster. Because this is where the money is. Instead of a nice long line of trolleys all neatly interlocked, there will have been some kind of issue that has led to absolute chaos. Generally it only takes you a quick glance to get to the root of the problem. The chain was twisted round the handle and won’t reach. The child’s belt is caught between the bars so the seat won’t collapse. Someone’s rammed a big one into a little one instead of using the separate rows. But people can’t be bothered with all that so they find any way to return their £1, never mind how awkward it will be for the next person. Sideways? Backwards? Lifted up and stuck on top wheels up? Sure, why not. So you sort it out and collect any abandoned coins in the process. (It goes without saying that you hand all those in at customer service and in no way keep them for yourself.)
