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Comment by someemptyspace | Hacker News Reader

In the United States carts are free. You collect a cart at the entrance to the store, and return the cart to a cart corral in the parking lot next to your car. Then a worker from the store periodically goes out to the corral to collect the carts and return them to the store entrance.

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In California you run the cart up a curb, leave it in an empty parking space, or maybe give it a gentle push and let it roam free. Corrals are depots for broken and rusted carts.

… /s.

I really hate trying to turn into a spot that's flanked by two SUVs only to find a cart in the way. People are incredibly lazy. I love the ALDI's quarter scheme… it's just enough of a nudge to get people to do the decent thing.

I find that funny because we were taught growing up that leaving your cart out keeps the cart-collecting people employed, kind of like refusing to use the self-service checkout -- a different decent thing!

The carts still need collecting. And at least when I worked at K-Mart in the 1990s, there was no dedicated cart collecting person; it was the task of whoever had the free time, usually someone handling stocking, typically junior, and especially someone young (though these days they have the electric carts).

What you were told sounds like one of those slightly tongue-in-cheek excuses people sometimes use to justify behavior, though that doesn't necessarily make it insincere. For most of high school I worked dishwashing jobs. A typical task for a dishwasher includes picking up trash in the parking lot. People throwing trash in the parking lot weren't doing me or anyone else any favors.

I never heard that one but my mom refused to learn how to use ATMs because she wanted to have tellers. Same with any sort of self-scan groceries. And Oregon is one of two states where you can't pump your own gas.

Do you do that consistently now that you're an adult? Do you bus your own tables at local restaurants (small business owner) but not at franchise restaurants?

It's been a quarter for at least the last 18 years. You'd think with all the inflation that's happened over the years they'd have to increase the deposit at some point.

The coin thing is free too, it's just so people have to put the cart back to collect their coin (usually 1 or 2 euros). I wish we had it in the US, people are freaking idiots and leave carts all over the place in the parking lot.

Carts are free at Aldi too. You just put a coin in to release a cart, and when you return your cart, you get your coin back.

They aren’t free if you don’t have a quarter on hand.

Well they aren't really for sale or rent either. Not sure what your point is?

Maybe not intentionally, but it was a pretty good pun.

Pun? I missed it - ELI5 please!

It takes a quarter to free one from its chain.

OK, I'm genuinely curious, why the downvotes? Did I accidentally invoke some sensitive imagery?

Not sure, but perhaps because it's not actually a pun?! At least I still don't get it.

Free as in beer vs free as in speech.

I never, ever carry change.

In germany, paying with hard cash is still very common, having some change is basically the norm (you can also use plastic tokens instead of real coins, you can get those for free from a lot of places here, including the shop themselves, either as promotion or if you ask)

If you visit Aldi at all regularly, you just keep a quarter in the car's change drawer.

Why not? Cash is divisible, readily accepted, and anonymous.

Today for the first time in two months I went to a retailer that was cash only. I haven't carried my wallet with me for two months - I just leave it at home and use Apple Pay for literally everything, including public transport.

But then, I also don't shop at Aldi or need a trolley.

Credit card fees are included in every purchase. I typically end up with 20 to 100 bucks every month. If I use that for travel I get even more. Twenty dollars in cash tends to last me an entire month.

And needs to be acquired and carried. I don’t like coins, the weight and noise of them.

I also don’t carry things in my pockets.

The fees associated with debit card transactions don’t land on me, so...

It does land on you via higher prices. Nothing in life is free.

Actually, the cost of handling cash, for stores, is more than debit.

You don’t need a quarter, just something quarter-sized. Google “shopping cart coin keychain” for examples.

Quite right; my family has a few plastic "coins" that work just as well.

Here in the UK, shopping carts used to take a £1 coin, which incidentally had very similar geometry to the Indian 5 rupee coin (worth about 5 pence) - that was a great little find for our family, who always had a few 5 rupee coins lying around from our time visiting family in India. Sadly they updated the design of the £1 coin, so this trick no longer works.

Just about any store around here that uses the coin system also hands out free "cart coins" if you ask the service desk.

One thing that enables this to work for Aldi is their parking lots are much smaller than most grocery stores. You're walking maybe 100 ft round trip to return your cart, whereas it could be several hundred feet at larger stores with giant parking lots.

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