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Comment by puzzledobserver | Hacker News Reader

I don't use shopping carts because my groceries typically fit in a shopping basket.

What I find frustrating about my local grocery store is when they inexplicably rearrange items. One week, bread is stocked in one aisle. Suddenly, on my next trip to the store, the same brand of bread has moved two aisles over.

Part of the reason why I switched to having groceries delivered.

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A year or two ago my grocery store got rid of hand baskets. Now you can only choose between a short cart, a full cart, or holding everything in your arms.

I hate it. They’re not bringing them back, I’ve asked.

That's nasty. If I expect my goods to fit into a hand basket, I grab one. Better maneuverability in a crowd.

Did they get rid of free plastic bags at checkout earlier?

I ask because some Walmarts got rid of hand baskets. When they stopped providing free plastic bags at checkout there was a big rise in people carrying their purchases out in the hand baskets and then not returning the baskets. Those stores often decided to stop replacing the baskets.

I would not be surprised if the same thing happened at other stores.

No nothing else changed. I suspect the idea is if you have a cart of some size they expect you’ll buy more because you can fit it or it looks emptier.

Some kind of psychological thing.

Tesco stores in Slovakia have the anti-theft alarm thingies on hand baskets and you can't leave the store without tripping the alarm... There are multiple solutions to every problem.

I wonder if it's based on demographics? Here in Waxahachie, TX, there are no hand baskets at all, however speaking to people with a similar background to me in other states where they are a larger part of the population, and hand baskets can be easily found everywhere.

They do it so you have to explore and buy the high margin items, not bread.

Wow, that sounds extremely annoying. Stuff sometimes gets rearranged here sometimes as well, but it’s more like 1-2 times a year. Or even less.

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