I should say right up front that this is just as much of a rave as it is a post. I recognise that I might simply be airing a pet peeve that everyone else in the world just accepts and gets on with things.
With that caveat: I hate supermarket trolleys that don’t have fixed rear wheels. The ones you get in Coles, Woolworths and some IGAs are hard to steer, hard to control and are a hazard to public health in a sloped car park. Furthermore, it is my fervent wish that whoever designed this abominable piece of equipment and all those who were part of the approval process spend all of eternity pushing a fully loaded one around.
I accept that I might just be a pedantic pain in the ass. What I have much more trouble accepting is the attitude of putting the store first and the customer second. It is symptomatic of an approach that looks at operations from a point of view of “efficiency” so as to answer the question, “what will benefit the company?”
Today’s trolley has all four wheels that can spin around at will. This steering dexterity means that it is a lot easier to herd the trolleys and put them into their corral at the front of the store. As such, this benefits only one person: the trolley jockey. As such, this disadvantages only everyone else. Anyone who has tried to steer and turn a fully laden trolley will know that it takes a bit of effort to be able to manage the process – and that is just in the flats of the supermarket aisles.
Look, I actually like supermarket shopping. I like exploring and seeing what is out there. I like buying new things that my family might like to have, though my flights of shopping fancy usually turn out to be expensive forays into recycling. However, I cut down on the number of purchases I make outside of the big weekly shop simply because I don’t want to put up with a trolley that wasn’t designed for my needs.
Therein lies the object lesson: Successful retail businesses are all about the consumer and doing the little things right. Great retailers give you a reason to come back, a reason to stay longer when you are there and a reason to recommend them to your friends.
The Big Two supermarkets are not great retailers. They survive, and in the past have thrived, on the fact that they have a monopoly on possible locations. Woolworths in particular has for too long thought only of what is good for Woolworths and now they just don’t understand why their customers are abandoning them.
While Woolies mulls over those questions I’ll be doing my supplementary shops at Aldi, where they always give me a reason to come back, and at Costco where I like to take my friends and where they have trolleys with fixed rear wheels.