when policies collide

[cellio]

Dear Giant Eagle,

You have made it abundantly clear that your parking lot is for use only by your customers while they are shopping in your store. Even though Kosher Mart is across the street from you, I try my best to honor that: if I am shopping at both stores, I will park on the street if I can do so within a block or so. It is true that when I've planned to buy a whole cart-load of stuff from you and just a couple packs of meat from across the street, I have used your lot anyway if there is no street parking. But I have at least tried to honor your policy, because I understand about slippery slopes.

I also acknowledge that you apparently have a problem with the theft of shopping carts. Your signs about this being theft are apparently not doing the job for you.

However, it was still a surprise to me today to find that you had -- with no posted notice -- installed some sort of electronic security system such that it was impossible for me to move the cart past your walkway and onto the public sidewalk. I was not thrilled to have to shuttle my groceries from your door to my car down the block in several trips. (Mind, at least I can, unlike some of your customers.) No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

Well, now I know: I should just park in your lot, at least until you install the sensors that will detect bags from Kosher Mart being carried through your airspace.

But to end on a positive note, I would like to commend you for being open today, unlike your larger store in Edgewood. I guess being in a Jewish neighborhood is good for something. :-)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I'm surprised they are still using proximity systems. Most stores dropped those in favour of mechanical things, like if you lift the front wheels to get the cart over a curb something would drop down and lock them.

Proximity systems do make sense in areas where there are a lot of people just taking the carts home and not returning them, or areas with a large homeless population who use carts to store recycling material or possessions or what not. But they are a real pain otherwise.

(note that they can be "re-enabled" with a few cheap skates or skateboards if you really need to, but turning becomes a problem)

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe I should have tried the supermarket in the Jewish neighborhood where I lived before I moved; I thought the one where I live now never closed. I keep forgetting how seriously Easter is observed here, beyond hiding colored eggs for children to find.

[cellio]

The store I usually do my real shopping (as opposed to the grab-a-few-things-on-the-way-home-from-work shopping) is open for all the Monday holidays, fourth of July, even Thanksgiving. I don't remember about Christmas. So I wouldn't have been surprised to see reduced hours (they do that for other holidays sometimes), but closed all day surprised me.