Archived cart attendants

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Hello, im a cart attendant and was wondering if its a bad thing to push 15-21 carts by hand because i dont like using the cart pusher lol its the new plastic carts, i know policy is 7 but 15+ is so easy for me and i dont see how you could keep up pushing 7 by hand on some days
 
Policy is policy for a reason. If you get hurt and you are pushing 8 carts Spot has every right to deny whatever work comp claims are filed.
 
I was complaining about them for a long time when we first got them at our store about 6 months ago. You just have to learn to drive them all over again with the cart pusher. I liked the older, heavier styles so much better because they drove in a straight line, but now I don't complain, I just got used to them. Don't push more than 7 at a time by hand, or your you can get in trouble. When I train new cart attendants, I start them off on about 12 or 14 with the cart pusher at a time and no more.

The new lighter carts are lighter, wider, and ride only on the front wheels when you have them linked together. Therefore there is nothing to keep them stationary if the wind kicks up since the front wheels they are riding on spin in any direction (they actually act like a sail if you have too many on there and can snap from side to side if you try to take to many). Just practice and over time you will get used to it. I've heard of other CA's using ropes and stuff. I don't. Go to an empty part of the parking lot and try snapping that front cart around and seeing how the carts react. I just had to learn when to snap the front cart in a different direction, how to drive that front cart to make my carts go straight, etc. Now I push 25 - 30 with ease unless the wind is gusting. If you have an old style cart on the pusher, have the sft install one of the new styles on there. It made a world of difference for us just fyi.

Bottom line, start out small and work your way up with the pusher. It only takes me 15 minutes now to get every cart out of our parking lot in 2 runs.
 
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Stop pushing more than 7-8 carts. We don't want to see you in trouble. I don't like the pusher too. When they ask why I don't use it.I tell them I like the excersize. Which is the truth.
 
At my store, they don't really care how many you push at a time. They do let you know the policy is 7, but they don't really enforce it. I've pushed in about 20 by hand when our cart pusher was down. Of course it's ymmv with how certain people will react to you pushing more.

As for the cart pusher and plastic carts, it does take some getting use to. Like one of the posters above said, see if you can get the plastic version installed on the cart pusher if it isn't already. Also, be careful with the plastic carts. They do have a bit of a wonky way of controlling. If it's windy, I try to stay around 15 max out of my 25 limit that I can put on the pusher. Any more than that can pose a risk of the line of carts crashing into cars from the wind. Also, when it comes to turning a line of carts with he pusher, I tend to push on the front cart in the direction I want it to go. One last thing, I tend to have an issue where the carts won't travel in a perfectly straight line. I've found myself having to pull the front cart in the opposite direction if it's getting to close to a row of cars.
 
dear god pushing seven.

I'm hardlines and when I push carts clearing out my department when the CAs are busy I can barely get five. Mostly because there's guests and the carts keep rolling off my line.

How the hell do you do seven.
 
Bit easier when you have more space outside, but you kinda gotta manhandle them and try to oversteer from the back.
 
dear god pushing seven.

I'm hardlines and when I push carts clearing out my department when the CAs are busy I can barely get five. Mostly because there's guests and the carts keep rolling off my line.

How the hell do you do seven.

It's a lot easier to control carts on an asphalt parking lot versus flat slick aisle floors.

I wouldn't push too many carts.. Yeah it's a safety hazard; but, more importantly, you probably aren't making big bucks pushing carts and probably shouldn't overwork yourself. When I was a cart attendant, and even more now when I have to run out and do it during my GSA shifts, I refuse to run around out of breath and super sweaty to push carts at what is barely above minimum wage. I grab what I'm comfortable with pushing (usually 7 because that isn't very many) and just walk them back into the store. Unless you're super busy and are on the verge of running out every 5 minutes, don't stress or overwork yourself. Just my opinion :)
 
The plastic carts are the worst do push by hand. They don't stay together as the metal ones, and turn awkwardly. 7 is definitely wise.

But why do you not want to use the cart pusher? Its there for a reason. There was times, where my stores' cart pushers were down, and pushing everything even with multiple people was hard to keep up with. But sometimes, if a store doesn't have the enough traffic there is no need to use the cart pusher.

Since I had the assistance of a hill at one other store and no cart machine, pushing 20+ metal carts from the side or from a corral wasn't hard.
 
Yeah, I learned my lesson when I pushed 15 at a time one day when the Pusher was out. Hurt my knee and back during the last hour of the day. Neeeevveeeer again.
 
I noticed that if you push the carts from the front of the basket you have more control than pushing them from the handles. This work well on windy days.
 
I know I could get one Cart Machine to push 60-70 carts at full going at a slow pace. I only did that on my final run of the night.

I would line all the carts on the side of the corrals, and make one single shot to the side of the store to park the carts.
 
ive been doing it for around 5 monthsish and reason i dont like the pusher is for some reason it stops at random and of course the carts dont stop with it lol ive gotten to the point where 15-18 is easy for me by hand nobody usually says anything but at my store they dont really pay attention to what i do outside at all. i usually close on carts and most of the time i get all carts in an hour early or sooner so keeping up is no problem did strain my rotator cuff and tricep but that was purely my fault as i was rushing and pulled carts out of the corral too fast and they got stuck was only like 2-3 carts to so wasnt against policy
 
i rarely push 7 at once unless its slow at my target but then i still push 15 just to keep up lol
 
What really grinds my gears is that we used to have almost 500 carts. Now it's slashed in half since we got our new ones. We had all our new carts sitting outside for black Friday. They were all gone before the store even opened. Come next black Friday, we're going to be out with a lot of angry guests wondering why we don't have any.
 
our SFT finally did a much-needed count for cart replenishment last week! Can't wait to be fully stocked.
 
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