Wrangle carts, earn quarters

     Whenever I hear of "food deserts," those urban neighborhoods without access to grocery stores and fresh food, I feel a pang of guilt. Because whatever the opposite of a food desert is — a food oasis? — I live there. 

     A marvelous, if pricy, grocery, Sunset Foods, is within walking distance of my house, and another half dozen supermarkets are within a 10 minute drive: Jewel, with its bargains ($7.99 a pound for steak, I mean, c'mon!), Whole Foods, not as pretentious since Amazon bought it, plus you can bring your unwanted Amazon packages there to return. Trader Joe's, with its quirky corporate identity and ephemeral store brands, products that appear, catch your fancy, then vanish forever. Over on Milwaukee Avenue, Fresh Farms Market, with its Polish candies, fresh-baked dark Eastern European bread and juice oranges. Not to forget Costco and Target.
     You'd think that would be enough. Sunday we went shopping at Kohl's, and had to pop next door to Aldi — a chance for my wife to get her shopping done. I'd never gone before.

     Immediately we were confronted with a dilemma. The shopping carts are chained together, requiring a quarter to free one. It seemed too much trouble.

    "Let's just grab a basket," I said, already feeling my humor curdle. Paying for carts? But there were no baskets inside the store. We weren't in Sunset. My wife fished for a quarter, came up empty — who carries quarters? For what purpose would anyone do that? — and a kind woman passing by simply gave her a quarter. They're basically worthless.
     Aldi was new and kinda empty, not enough products filling the void and what they had were off-brands that I'd never heard of. Millville? I'd have left immediately, but my wife declared the prices low, and wanted to walk every aisle, exploring. 

    "Have you no pride?" I muttered, immediately realizing that I have enough for the both of us. I wondered where "Aldi" came from, and later found it to be an abbreviation of "Albrecht-Diskont," a discount grocery chain founded in Germany in 1962 by brothers Theo and Carl Albrecht. It has over 10,000 stores in 22 countries. The place didn't seem very European.

     She picked up tangerines and canned pears and tomatoes and such. While she paid, I stepped outside to take a few photos and examine the cart system. Signs that I hadn't noticed before — I should have, there were two big ones — revealed you get your quarter returned. That was the point. They weren't charging for the carts, they were extorting a quarter from their customers to corral the carts. "You better bring our cart back if you ever want to see your quarter again, buddy." Thus saving on hiring a cart wrangler, like the man Sunset has stationed full time in the parking lot. I watched a shopper return his cart, the quarter poking back out the same slot it had gone into.
     My wife came out with the cart and a small pile of the groceries. No bags. Just like Costco. The no bags situation irked me at first. It seems rude. I briefly contemplated scooping up the groceries in our arms, in order to leave the cart there. But there were a few too many. We'd parked at the far end of the parking lot, away from other cars. We rolled over. I got in and started the car, and my wife volunteered to return the cart. I hit the stopwatch on my phone.

     Two minutes and 50 seconds, to return the cart and come back as opposed to stranding it on the little raised oval of grass next to the car and letting somebody else do it. Call it three minutes. For a quarter. Or, times 20, $5 an hour to be temporarily dragooned as an Aldi cart wrangler. The psychology of the thing was interesting. It obviously worked. The parking lot, empty of carts, while at Sunset they accumulate.
     My wife came back, and told me that after returning the cart and getting her quarter, she again encountered the helpful woman who had given it to her, and returned the woman's quarter, the kind of small human encounter that embroiders life and makes it bearable.
     Still, my wife announced that Aldi would not join the rotation of grocery stores we patronize. Not because of the cart system or the weird unfamiliar brands, but because there weren't enough of them — the store didn't have a wide enough range of foodstuffs to make going there worthwhile. You save money but don't get your shopping done. 

    Editor's note: given the huge reader reaction to a post on Aldi — this was the most read thing I've written over the past 12 months — you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be back. Until then, those who are confused over what is happening here might want to avail themselves to the concept of the Dunk Tank Clown.