+rolleys and stuff.

Today, there was an article on the front page of Straits Times (home) that talkied about how more and more cases of trolley theft are occuring, up to more than 200 a month. The article listed some ways that supermarkets have tried to prevent such thefts, and so far none have been effective. Apparently, now NTUC Fairprice is going to change tactics, focusing on public education which aims to deter people from such thefts rather than try to prevent the people from stealing the trolleys.

I feel that this is actually a smarter way than outright forcing people not to take the trolleys. After all, if you really want to steal a trolley, no one can stop you. Whether it is remotely locking the wheels of the trolley, or making people deposit money in for the trolley, if a person has intent to take the trolley...he'll just take it, deposit or no deposit. The new method to be addopted actually makes the people not want to steal the trolley in the first place.

The difference between the two ways of reducing trolley loss can be likened to, say, a man with a knife who wants to kill another man. If you take his knife away and bind him in chains to prevent him from doing so, he will simply find a way to break free of the chains and buy another knife, than proceed to exterminate his target. However, if you somehow make him think taht killing another man is the wrong thing to do, he will simply put down his knife and walk away, never to even entertain thoughts of doing such a thing again.

Obviously, binding the man in chains and taking away his knife is akin to remote wheel locking, etc, but changing his mindset is the same as...changing the mindset of the inconsiderate shoppers.

While this new move by NTUC is to be applauded, I feel that there are some other measures that can be taken to reduce trolley theft as well. For example, since one of th emain causes of people not returning trolleys is laziness, NTUC could put more trolley stations further away from the main store itself, or station some employees a distance from the store to collect the trolleys from customers as well as to help out in carrying their groceries.

...

Yup.