20 January, 2009

Sainsburys Redhill, Trolley Deposit "theft"?

The guy that ties Sainsbury's trolleys up in knots in Redhill
Well, well, well...look what we have here...!

While I was waiting for the 100 bus yesterday (new train times mean I am always going to miss the 435 that drops me practically on my doorstep *grinds teeth*) when I actually happened to catch sight of the person that ties Sainsbury's trolleys up in knots in central Redhill...they are often to be found in the early hours littering the pedestrian areas in various amusing and devilishly clever unintended arrangements of stretched chain and balancing metal before the young lads from the store yomp out to search car park and alleyway to find/disentangle and return them to store...as they cost quite a lot of money, apparently...

He actually isn't what I imagined at all (and may, of course, not be the only culprit) but I had (for some reason) pictured a black bin liner carrying, dog-on-a-string, carrier bag covering leaky shoe sort of fellow, with a large beard...this chap was a well-to-do, slightly overweight, middle-aged, posh-ski jacketed gentleman of Asian origin, which for some reason surprised me a great deal (especially the fact that he was brazenly collecting people's abandoned deposits at about twenty to seven in the evening, while the store was still open)...in times like these though, who knows what kind of lengths people will be prepared to go to for a few extra quid... :(

His technique was actually quite a clever one, to block off the chain installed by the taxi rank and then collect the abandoned ones as people frankly couldn't be bothered to walk all the way back to store and then try and stagger back with all the bags in their hands (or risk leaving them unattended while they ran the trolley back to claim their quid...I estimate (if he kept up the rate that I observed) he would have easily cleared £6 an hour, maybe as much as £12 during peak shopping times (tax free), not as much as the ludicrously lucrative Thameslink Tramp...but certainly not a bad salary, considering the work involved...

1 comment:

boohoo said...

Now that's a way to make some extra cash... ;)