Friday, February 20, 2009

The Carts

When you go to the grocery store in Poland....you will find that all of the shopping carts are locked together. If you want to use one, you must insert a zloty and then the lock will release. To get your zloty back after shopping, you must return the cart to the rack and lock it to the other carts. This is a pretty ingenious way of making sure that their shopping carts don't wander away and it's easy for the personnel to go and collect the carts.

I thought this was an interesting piece of Poland, so yesterday while shopping I asked Dean to take my picture while I got my cart.

I guess that's not allowed, because the security guard approached and told us we were forbidden to do that. So we played the "ugly, dumb, American" and went about our business anyway. Here are the pictures we were able sneak. I guess that I'm lucky that I'm not writing this from a jail cell.

5 comments:

JaneH said...

This is somewhat like getting a luggage cart at the U.S. airport. Wonder why they didn't want pictures taken. Thanks for your picture You look great.

christine said...

they probably thought you were spies, trying to figure out how to rob them of their money devices or something. wow, that's interesting! they could use something like that here, we sometimes see carts in random places around town. pretty ingenious!

Anonymous said...

Here in Albuquerque we have a couple of grocery stores that do that. the cart thing looks more like the onesat the airport. I am glad to see it somewhere else too.

Ewa said...

hey Sister Banner! Maybe they didn't allow you to take pictures because you were under the building...and they watched too many american movies and now are affraid that you took that pictures cause you wanted to leave a bomb there :P that's my theory....or maybe that security guy was extremely bored and wanted to say something ...or maybe he wanted to feel important :P

LisAway said...

I think that's such a good idea. I don't even feel too annoyed when I realize I don't have the right coin and have to drag everyone into the store to get change before I can even shop.

The Tesco in Mielec first had these on the carts but recently removed them. I sort of love the freedom of not having to do it, and since they used to be the put-a-coin-in type, everyone is used to returning the carts and you NEVER have to dodge them while driving through the parking lot or move one out of a parking space in order to park like you do so often in the states.