Your Aug. 10 article about the shopping carts made me chuckle ("Retailers Employ Technology to Cut Down on Loss of Carts"). I worked at a Shop 'n Save in Lawrenceville when I was in high school and college. When it was still a corporate store in 2002, we actually got these carts to prevent the problems outlined in your article.

They were an excellent solution for about a month, but quickly we noticed carts missing again. The reason was because customers would unload their groceries and lift the carts over their heads so that the scanner would miss the chip in the wheel, therefore not making the cart lock. They would reload their groceries in the cart beyond the boundary and be on their way.

I visit Lawrenceville on Sundays, and I see these carts in the streets, in empty lots and even in front of peoples houses. If I visit the Shop 'n Save, there are many of these carts in cart holders near the rear of the parking lot with broken wheels that cannot be unlocked that have literally been sitting in the cart holder for nearly five years.

I will never forget the day I unloaded those carts off of the flatbed truck and how excited my managers were when they thought they solved the problem of the vanishing carts. Your article instantly brought back cynical memories of those carts and brought a smile to my face. Now when I see these carts I just laugh at another failed solution.

TOM MIKULA
Oakwood

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