"shopping cart" news and stories

Publix Super Markets in Atlanta, Georgia are testing out a new device, a high-tech shopping cart of sorts, to keep kids quiet while their parents are doing the grocery shopping. The TV Kart is a small, car-shaped cart with a TV screen that plays children's shows, such as Barney, The Wiggles, and Bob the Builder. The carts are electric and have brakes built in, but unlike the non-electric versions in stores at the moment, parents will have to pay $1 to use them - for the convenience of keeping their children quiet.

It's only a small jump from children's TV programming to advertising - and once the kid is in the store, the battle to get the parents to buy whatever the child wants is nearly won. Whether the stores like them or not, it's a good bet that at least one or two parents' or health groups will be questioning the idea.

Source

In the Etiquette column of this month's Good Housekeeping, there was a strange query. A reader wanted to know whether it would be appropriate to move someone's shopping cart when it is blocking the aisle in the supermarket. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Assuming that the reader was not planning on moving the offending cart to the far end of the store, was this really a question that needed to be asked? Does she simply stand there behind the cart and wait for something to happen? If the owner of the blocking cart had moved off to look for something else, leaving the cart unattended, one must wonder how long she would wait behind the unmoving cart. The columnist suggested that a polite "Excuse me" would probably suffice, but that it was acceptable to "gently push the cart aside" if left with no alternative. Is this sort of issue really such a crisis that they needed to write to a national magazine to have it sorted out? I can only hope that she doesn't live in my neighborhood, because if she is that unable to navigate the grocery store, I'd hate to see her in busy traffic.

Source