Tue 27 Sep 2005
Buying groceries here in Hungary is different in many ways than grocery shopping in the U.S., but probably one of the most unique things are the Zamboni machines. They don’t condition ice, instead they clean the floors in constant, random motion. They drive around perpetually like an indoor street sweeper. At some point during any trip to the market you’ll have to dodge one, and then you’ll have to avoid slipping on the wet tiles left in their wake. But, hey, our floors are clean!
4 Responses to “ Grocery store Zamboni’s ”
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October 6th, 2005 at 11:01 pm[...] It was four months living here before I made it into the grocery store with a shopping cart. The first problem was remembering that the cart pickup was near the car out in the parking lot, not near the shopping mall door. The second problem was leaving the house with the right coins to get a cart. See the yellow circle highlight in the picture? That is the coin deposit device, and it ensures you are motivated to return the cart to the corral. This is brilliant! Why pay some kid minimum wage to shlep all the carts back into place? Let everyone put their own carts back. Enterprising panhandlers will often do it for you, too. Unfortunately, those little devices consumed all the brilliance of this cart’s designer. By the time he got to the wheels, all his good ideas had vanished. Indeed, even basic his logic was gone. All four wheels rotate on these things, rendering them nearly impossible to control. If you find yourself shopping with slippery shoes or high heels, (I have never found myself shopping with high heels, but I have heard it happens) your back will do all the work instead. At the end of the check-out process, the only thing you want to do is go home, lie down, and remember your tennis shoes next time. There is another cultural norm here that involves shopping carts, too. Rather than push these things wherever people go in the store, they leave their cart at the head of the aisle and fill it up from there. That way the Zamboni machines have to dodge their cart, and not the other way around! [...]
September 27th, 2005 at 9:14 am
This also causes problems for women who might be wearing heels or other non-gripping shoes. The floors are slick AND all four wheels of the carts spin. This is very different than US carts. I end up wrestling with my cart a lot to make it go the direction I want it to go. When wearing the wrong shoes, I do almost end up ice skating, which really makes this thing into a zamboni!(And makes for a frustrating trip to the store!)
September 27th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
Oh my gosh! The shopping carts make no sense. For whatever they gain by having the cart deposit device attached to the cart (which makes you motivated to return the cart to the cart parking area), they lose by making all four wheels rotate. Trying to corner a full cart is enough to throw your back out. Do that with slick shoes and you are likely to crash the cart into the next solid object in its path!
The subject of four rotating wheel carts warrants a blog post in itself!
September 27th, 2005 at 10:17 pm
You’ve got to admit though that they make for tighter cornering…which when needing to avoid the zamboni…
JH