Who knew there was shopping basket security

[Familyshopper]

Is it me or has this shopping basket etiquette always been in place 🤷‍♀️

I went shopping for a few bits on a local supermarket but as usual I forgot my bags but instead of wasting money & plastic I decided against buying a bag & didn’t fancy juggling my shopping to the car so I took a basket to my car, a security guard came charging after me telling me I wasn’t allowed to remove the basket, I told him I’m taking my shopping to my car & I would be returning it straight away.

I mean seriously I don’t want another plastic bag in the house let alone a big metal basket aibu to think this rule is crazy or is it an unspoken rule that I’ve never been informed of

@GreyHare

All the supermarket baskets are security tagged round my area as when the supermarket stopped having the free carriers everyone took their shopping home in the basket, within 2 days the local big Tesco had about 6 baskets available as the locals all cleated them out and then posted hilarious pictures of themselves at home with their baskets.

Wouldn't be very 'hilarious' if someone reported them to the police. As 'funny' as some may find it, it's actually STEALING.

@Familyshopper

Many stores don't allow you to take baskets out, but I know Morrisons do. Maybe not if it was a couple of teenagers, but a woman/man with kids (or not with kids,) they may let you. But many do not, and with good reason. They're expensive to replace.

I think it's a bit weird to want to take it out though, as most people would just get a bag-for-life. If you're so determined to not buy one, then leave your basket in the store (with your shopping in,) and go outside and get a trolley, then come back in to where your basket is, and offload your bit of shopping into the trolley, and wheel it back to the car.

Too much hassle? Well, stop forgetting your bags then!

I do think this is a weird non-issue, and that you're being awkward to be honest.

Just because you forget your bag(s) that doesn't mean the store are to blame for the extra plastic bags having to be bought. It's all on you.

You're not being U as you were just going to take it to your car and unload, and nothing really wrong there, but YABU for not knowing it is a thing and you can't just take the basket out of the shop
Although I'm with you on who wants a ruddy great big basket lying around, there's enough clutter here as there is lol, they can keep it

I’ve occasionally done it in the village shop, but let the staff know first, and I do go straight back to return it Wouldn’t do it in a supermarket or now with Covid. Usually have a folding bag in my coat pocket alongside my mask.

Where I live you can leave either a tenner or your bank card with the person at the tobacco/stamp/2 items or less checkouty bit near the door and they let you take the trolley away with you. I dont own a car but only live 2 minutes away so its actually incredibly useful to be able to wheel the trolley home and then return it (others do this too, Im not a wierdo). I dont know why they dont do it in the UK.

That said, is it possible they are monitering customer numbers in store by the number of trolleys/shopping baskets taken. Thats the way they are doing it here and if so I can understand them being more fussed about people wandering of with baskets as it messes the system up.

Years ago in France, it was ok to use your shopping basket/bag as a basket then empty it at the checkout and refill after paying...shame we can’t do that in the UK, there’s so much suspicion from shop staff nowadays, they’d just think you were stealing
I do that in my local coop with my own wicker basket when I stop by for a few things. No one has ever said anything - surely you're not classed as stealing if you haven't left the shop, anyway?

It’s not crazy at all. When the carrier bag charges came in, they lost so many baskets that they were forced to put security tags on the remaining ones because the customers were either stealing them so they could easily transport the shopping from their car to their home, or they were just abandoning them in the car park because they were either too lazy to return them or they considered it to be someone else’s job to come and get it.

my supermarket does not have security tags on the baskets Perhaps you shop in a supermarket where the demographic is so willing to return their baskets that the store didn’t lose half their stock in the first month of carrier bag charges. Not the same in every supermarket. I haven’t noticed these anywhere else then I’d respectfully suggest that you haven’t been paying attention & neither have I noticed any baskets thrown into canals but I have seen plenty of trolleys maybe something for you to think about Alternatively, maybe you could consider that the reason you don’t see baskets in canals is partly because they are small and would probably sink without trace and partly because they’re now tagged and security guards still have to spend a large proportion of their day stopping people from waltzing off with them, while trollies are in the car park and not so easily monitored.

Playing ‘hunt the trolley’ in a huge car park is a lot easier than playing ‘hunt the basket’, especially when they’ve been lobbed into bushes, and I believe a tree on one occasion and left behind other customers cars to be unwittingly driven over. Everyone here might have had every intention of returning their basket to the store but a large part of the general public can’t be trusted not to be an entitled arsehole about it.

If the environment is that important to you, I’m wondering why you don’t take two minutes to place a stash of bags in your car boot, so you don’t have to choose between additional plastic consumption and making a security guard’s job much harder than it needs to be.

I use the baskets in the car park when I forget my bags. I leave it in the trolley bay.
I also put my shopping in a bag as I go when I remember my bags. This is great with scan as you go.
Yanbu

I think you have too much time on your hands

I was in my local Aldi the other week and only wanted a few things - more than I could hold in my hands but not enough to warrant a trolley. I asked a staff member where all the baskets were because there were no stacks of them by the tills. She said 'ah, we have about SIX baskets in store and they'll all be in use somewhere'. Apparently that town really likes its Aldi baskets and had cleaned them out!

I always forget my bags.....especially now I have to remember my mask as-well....it's just all too much

I robbed a wicker basket from Lakeland once. I assumed it was part of the order I was collecting for MIL.

Wondered why the security guy was looking at me funny. I just stared back, flung it in the boot and drove off.

It's a handy little blanket store now

In El Salvador there are shopping assistants who follow you through the store. You pick up what you want, hand it to your escort, and she puts it in a basket and carries it for you. When you pay and check out the shopping assistant wraps the items for you and places them in your personal bag or basket. It was a little odd arriving home with a wrapped box of tissue, but easy to shop.
(There was also a sign at the front of most shops saying in Spanish and English "Concealed weapons please check with the purser for the comfort of other shoppers.")

I use a heavier bag for life usually but I have a few of the 10p plastic ones which I folded into a small triangle (loads of tutorials on youtube) and attached to my keyring/keep in my jacket pocket/keep in the back of my purse so there's generally always one available.

Aldi near me has a tannoy asking customers to pack at their car if possible

YABU. Bring your own bag like everyone else. If you forge you have to pay for one.
I don't have a car, can I take my basket home as long as I bring it back the next day? No, I have to spend 10p on a new bag just like you should be doing.

But the whole basic idea of charging for plastic bags isn't to punish and teach a lesson to those who forget on occasion to bring their own (or enough if they end up buying more) for their own lack of preparedness - it's to prevent more of them being produced and getting into circulation in the first place. If a shopper doesn't have one available with them, it's much better for the planet if a shopper can get their shopping to their car without using a new one at all. In many cases, they will have their own bags in the car, but just forgot to bring them into the shop.

If baskets can't be taken out to the car park without it being assumed that the customer will steal it, what's so different with trolleys? They're free to borrow or cost only £1 at most, so there's no greater theft deterrent with them, other than the physical size of them (although you could still bundle one into the boot of a large estate and use it at home as a barbecue or gardening trolley, if you really wanted to). In fact, quite a few people without cars will take a free/£1 trolley all the way home with them and keep it in their shed/garden/wherever until their next visit, so that's not even a given.

I can't help wondering if it's also a demographic profiling tactic, in that they think people using trolleys will be decent, upright, respectable, well-earning family men/women who own cars; whereas the people using a basket will likely be poorer/teenagers/students/non-nationals/non-car owners and therefore must be more likely to steal, right....?

I think you have too much time on your hands Seriously?

@WitchQueenofDarkness

I use my own bag walking around the local convenience store, I empty it at the checkout and then put my shopping straight back in so I don't need to touch any of the baskets they provide.

I'm surprised more people don't do it

One of my local shops has a notice specifically requesting that people don't do that.

Back to the OP, some shops have notices requesting that baskets are not taken off the premises.

I can't help wondering if it's also a demographic profiling tactic, in that they think people using trolleys will be decent, upright, respectable, well-earning family men/women who own cars; whereas the people using a basket will likely be poorer/teenagers/students/non-nationals/non-car owners and therefore must be more likely to steal, right....?

Baskets are more portable and can easily be out in the boot/back seat of a car, a trolley can't. A customer walking away with a trolley or trying to hoist it into the boot is going to be more noticeable.

It's why razor blades are locked up in supermarkets and bulky bags of rice are not.

I can't help wondering if it's also a demographic profiling tactic, in that they think people using trolleys will be decent, upright, respectable, well-earning family men/women who own cars; whereas the people using a basket will likely be poorer/teenagers/students/non-nationals/non-car owners and therefore must be more likely to steal, right....?

I think that is really fucking offensive and you have some serious internalised bias going on but, trying my best to wind my neck in, you might be overthinking it a bit. They tag the baskets because they are small and kept in store. They don’t tag the trollies because most people could not physically carry the amount of shopping that a trolley would hold and they rely on the grate things at the pedestrian entrances to prevent trolley theft.

We also used to have to do a count once a year before opening of the baskets, trolleys, green/black produce crates, delivery cages etc. Every single shop did it on the same day - count them and how many are on the shop floor/damaged etc. so they could probably see from year to year which one was more likely to be nicked.

I would never be so cheeky than to leave a supermarket with an item that I hadn't paid for. Not sure why you'd leave with a basket.

I think that is really fucking offensive and you have some serious internalised bias going on

I completely agree that, if this is indeed what the supermarkets are thinking, then it is extremely offensive and prejudiced of them to have this mindset. That was the whole thrust of my post.

I don't see why your ire is directed at me: I don't even own a shop, much less share this offensive reasoning that I proposed could be part of the thinking of some of them in not trusting customers with baskets to bring them back, when they do for customers with trolleys.

As I said, yes, of course there is the difference in portability between the two, but if supermarkets never or rarely had trolleys stolen/go missing, why do so many of them charge a deposit (albeit a nominal £1 which would be a bargain to somebody dead-set on keeping one anyway)?

I would never be so cheeky than to leave a supermarket with an item that I hadn't paid for. Not sure why you'd leave with a basket.

What, so do you also think it's extremely cheeky for people to leave the store with a trolley that they haven't paid a deposit for, unload their bought goods into their car and then return it to the store?