This store's parking-garage sign is basically identical to
the Uptown one, just with some different colors and the inclusion of the old Safeway logo -- which may well have been removed when the other store got its Lifestyle v2 remodel, since it does appear to have space for it. Another commonality with my Safeway -- this store has a small ground-level parking area in addition to the underground one (probably for accessibility reasons), but they failed to install a convenient cart return for it, leading to carts being left strewn around! (It probably doesn't help in this case that you need to use the sidewalk to get between the store entrance and the parking area, which appears to have set off the anti-theft locks on at least two of the carts seen here! The Uptown store does have a direct path between its entrance and parking area, but it's still quite common to see carts abandoned and locked because someone strayed a bit too close to the sidewalk.)
Interesting, now that you mention it, the Uptown Houston Randall's, which is only a couple years older than this Safeway, also does not have any cart corrals either on the small surface parking lot it has! That said, at least based on what was captured by Google Street View, the Uptown Houston Randall's doesn't have a problem with out of control carts. Maybe that's because the anti-theft locks don't work and people have wandered off with them, lol. Link: https://goo.gl/maps/wU6ziSWxwAKcGWh76
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, there is that red Chevrolet Spark parked right next to the 'Spark' sign in your photo!
Haha, that wouldn't surprise me! Looking through Street View, it looks like at least some of their carts don't even have anti-theft locks (which has been a problem at my local Safeway and others around here... Safeway still keeps pulling old carts out of storage somewhere, and often they send non-locking ones to stores that seriously need locking carts, and then they promptly disappear. They do seem to have given up on finding ones that are cart escalator-compatible, though, which isn't surprising since I've the cart escalator actually working a grand total of once in the year and a half I've been shopping there.). Or perhaps Randalls just aren't as poorly staffed as Seattle-area Safeways!
DeleteYep, that's where the joke in the title came from 😉