When you are shopping at a store, it is important to keep an eye on your stuff so that nobody takes it from you.

What would you do if a customer has their cart taken, and her purse was in it as well?

That is what happened at the furniture store in this story, so the worker tracked down her items, which were dumped in a pillow bin, and found the customers who took it.

Shopping Cart Thieves

I currently work at a large Swedish furniture store in the US, and there’s an epidemic that becomes a daily struggle; shopping cart thieves.

People do what they have to do.

No, I don’t mind the homeless folk who steal shopping carts from the lot and use them to carry their things.

I mean the people who walk into our store, realize they want to buy more things than can fit in their arms, and rather than go get a cart… they find the nearest cart in use and dump all the contents onto the floor.

This is just rude.

Then just take that cart for themself.

I deal with this daily; my cart of go backs will be gone if I leave it longer than thirty seconds. We’ve gotten to the habit of zip tying our carts to the shelves when we go on break. Though, this doesn’t always work.

Wow, what kind of person does this?

I’ve seen people wreck shelves, or go through our computer desks until they find scissors to cut those zip ties.

I’ve also taped signs asking them not to take my cart, with instructions to the nearest cart station, only to find my cart gone and found later after checkout (so the person walked around with a huge sign saying it wasn’t their cart and they didn’t care).

How can it get worse than that?

A few weeks ago, we had a particularly awful example of this happen. A tiny old Asian woman who barely spoke English came to me in a frantic hurry.

She explained to me that someone stole her cart; with all the things she was buying AND her purse still in it! And to make matters worse, she was buying the last item in stock of what she wanted, so now she couldn’t get what she drove to our store to get (and we’re the only store of our kind within hours of driving). And of course, the purse situation was bad.

It is good that they are helping her.

I told my coworker, who was nearby at the time, and the two of them began looking through the room together seeing if the cart was pushed somewhere strange.

While they did that, I decided to see if I could catch whomever took the cart red-handed.

Hopefully they found the thieves.

I ran from room to room, looking for her cart. Then I saw two teenagers with a mostly empty cart, whom I saw in my area at the time the lady was shopping (the only contents in their cart were from my zone).

Thinking they might have seen the culprit, I walked up to them for assistance.

Good, this person is being polite and professional.

Me: Hey there! You two wouldn’t happen to remember seeing a cart full of grey cushion covers, and a purse, would you? Someone took a woman’s cart and we’re trying to find it…

Guy: What? We didn’t take anyone’s cart!!

Me: I… didn’t say you did. Well, if you see any carts like that, let a team member know!

Yeah, they are acting very guilty.

It dawned on me at that moment that those teenagers were totally the ones who stole her cart. I asked them in a super friendly tone, and I didn’t accuse them of anything.

The fact they instantly jumped to that reaction was completely one of those guilty kind of reactions.

Since I found them one room away from where the cart return area was, I grabbed a new cart and headed back to the area she was at.

Wow, those kids actually hid her stuff.

When I got back, the other coworker had found all of the lady’s things (including her purse) dumped in a bin of pillows, with more pillows thrown on top to cover the evidence.

Thankfully it was all there, and we got her everything back. She thanked me multiple times, and then she was on her way.

What is wrong with people?

So, lesson learned; If you shop at any furniture stores, don’t leave your cart out of your sight for even a second.

Thieves are everywhere.

I can imagine that this would be very frustrating. Maybe they need cameras and call people out.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

I’ve never heard of people doing this, but it seems really common.

I’ve seen these too. Great idea.

I can’t imagine people doing this.

This would get really frustrating.

What kind of person does this?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.