Whomp!

Oh yes, I am simply three pennies shy of this Ben Franklin-level grocery expense. Let me just retrieve my baglet of small, metal discs so that I may produce for you a mere five percent of one paper unit of legal tender. Better yet, why don't I collect these circular photographs of presidents past in a large, transparent container so that I may injure my internal musculature lugging it to a kiosk for an Amazon gift card worth one medium-quality spatula.

What happened to the GF he got right before his hiatus?

I’m confused. Are there some stores where you need to pay to rent the cart?

Aldi

from what I've heard, it was never actually his gf, but some Twitter attention whore he thought was interested in him

I've heard they exist in some places so costumers return their cars instead of leaving them around in the parking lot. Never seen one though.

Imagine living where people don't just return it because it's the right thing to do...

I’ve never been to an Aldi, why do they make yOHH it’s German, that explains everything

He wrote it like it was a real person, kind of sad. I can see why he disappeared for almost five years.

It's more to encourage you to return it to its proper place instead of just leaving it all over the parking lot. Most places have since just employed cart wranglers and anti-theft technology.

Stop kink-shaming the Germans anon. Or keep doing it I guess, since masochists probably enjoy that sort of thing.

OHH it’s German, that explains everything

Yes, Germans have invented a simple incentive system to get people to return their carts to the corral instead of being left strewn across the parking lot like in American stores.

who knew Anon Babble was so middle-class

Du wirst den Wagen zurückbringen, Hans.

pay to rent the cart

Never seen one though

You need to get out more.

whomst the fuck calls it a buggy?
oof... well I hope he resumes the other comic too.
yeah it's remarkably efficient. and the best part is, if you're still lazy? you hand it off to someone poor who could use the free quarter.

Einkaufswagen*

It doesn't even have to be a quarter, you can use a 3D printed plastic chip instead if you have a 3D printer, or buy one (ironically for several dollars).

yeah i was gonna say, this obviously isn't letting you 'cheat' in any way, since you are definitely going to take your cart back if you have something plugged in that cost you a couple bucks. Though I suppose you could just as easily walk through the parking lot, grab a stray cart, and bam, free one of these.

Not pay, more like a deposit. The shopping carts have short chains that connect them to each other when not in use. You put in a quarter to unlock your cart from the one in front of it. When you're done shopping, you put your cart back with the others and chain them together, which gives you back your quarter.
It's a great system, because it encourages people to put their cart back. There's always going to be people who are too lazy to do even that, which means every once and a while you'll pass a cart with a quarter in it while putting back your own. Bring that one back with you, get a free bonus quarter.

It also makes shit like this incredibly stupid, because YOU GET YOUR QUARTER BACK. Why would you spend multiple dollars to "cheat" a system that costs you nothing? Say nothing on the possibly of jamming the mechanism with your shitty piece of metal/plastic.

Says "buggy"

Uses American dollars

Seriously in what fucking country/parallel dimension does this occur!?

Also did that to cut down on costs. Instead of having to pay a cart wrangler, they incentivize people to do it themselves. Prices at Aldi are pretty low and doing stuff like that and not having shopping bags is what helps get them there.

a lot of people don't carry coins around any more, or might only have two dimes and a nickel like that guy
these things you can just clip onto your keys and then always have

But even then you might as well just drill a hole in a quarter

I'm Canadian, multiple stores use the system. We also... have quarters.

just keep a quarter in your car

Those aren’t for cheating as much as it’s handy to have if you’re not the type to carry loose change. People will typically have their keys for driving and to unlock their house/apartment. Just stick it on your keychain and you always have it.

Why would you spend multiple dollars to "cheat" a system that costs you nothing?

Unironically just because you can clip it on your keys and don't have to worry about having change. It's not about cheating anything it's just a convenience thing.

you can also just punch a hole through a quarter

see

well I imagine the idea is nobody has any fucking cash anymore. it's not only heavy and hard to use, it's unsafe to carry any in a post parking-lot-fentanyl-OD-equals-murder world. I always have to be the one to tip the sushi guy or pull out a quarter for aldi when I go there with my mom or something, she just doesn't have anything but plastic.
and honestly I'm mostly carrying a wallet because it feels like just yesterday that I first had a wallet and money, and keys, and a cell phone.. god, that was 22 years ago.

I have never seen this in the US, are the euros really so lazy to need a deposit system?

I think Aldi (a German chain) is the only place that does this in the US.

buying a tool to punch a hole in a quarter is more expensive than just buying the plastic thing for two bucks

come to think of it, I have zero idea how you would do that. I don't even know how I'd attach a chain to it.
maybe a drill with a diamond tip bit? and I guess a keyring.

use the tools you already own
literally just a nail and a hammer will work
ask to borrow a friend's/family member's tools for a moment
or just, you know, keep a quarter in your car

literally just a nail and a hammer will work

No it won't, have you ever actually used a hammer and nail? You're gonna deform the quarter before making a hole, making it worthless for the carts.

not only that, but you'd have to place the quarter on top of something with a hole in it to let the nail pass through. otherwise congrats, you just nailed a quarter to something and it won't come off.

It's been so long since I've even seen coins I struggled to piece together what combination of 3 coins would add up to 25 cents. A 15 cent coin and two 5 cent coins? Ridiculous! Whoever thought of a 15 cent coin? Then I realized the two smaller coins were actually worth more than the bigger coin.

you just nailed a quarter to something and it won't come off.

You clearly haven't ever used a hammer either, wtf do you think the other side of the head is for

punching the hole with a nail instead of just using a drill is dumb but it would work pretty easily
quarters are soft, just put a bit of wood under it, it'll probably deform a bit but you can hammer it flat again easy enough

americans in charge of never learning about wood

I literally just took a hammer and nail and tried and there's no way this works easily. Maybe if you have a vice and use a heavy hammer, but there's no way you're easily putting a hole in a coin with just a nail and regular claw hammer.

okay fair, you could hammer it PARTWAY in.. but that's far from ideal for a number of reasons. you'd want a nice clean hole on the other side, you would not want any of the quarter being driven into the hole. because that's gonna be a lot harder to pull out than the nail.
Now see what I would do is set it atop two planks, straddling the crack, then put two more planks on top, stabilizing the quarter. then those planks can even kinda hold the nail in place for you while you hammer it.

If there's one board that knows a lot about wood it's Anon Babblemblr.

I will also admit though, the coin doesn't deform at all, I was wrong about that. Coins are a lot stronger than I thought.

basically that's how any solid object works.. either something is easily punched, or it's durable enough to keep its shape from awkward punching that doesn't use a specialized tool. it can't be both.

there we go, quarter with a hole in it
I couldn't find a smaller nail off the cuff but I used a shitty claw hammer and a random bit of wood
only took a couple fairly weak blows to punch through, then hammered it back flat, which closed the hole up a bit so I punched back through from the other side and flattened it again and that was it

I stand fucking corrected. The issue wasn't the hammer or vice, it was my weak-ass nail. Good job anon, you proved me wrong.

I already carry a lucky coin my dad gave me as a kid, which is conveniently quarter sized.

buggy is the popular term in the South

I live in Texas, why should I go Krautmart where I have rent a cart when could I go to HEB and use one of their FREE carts to experience all their wonderful deals and products such as

H-E-B Organic® Fruits and Vegetables

H-E-B True Grit® Cleaning Products

H-E-B Black Gold® Sexual Lubrication Aid

H-E-B Beef® Beef Products

and of course

H-E-B Sushiya®

all made in the Lone Star State? Why, I don’t there’s any store better to supply a hard working Texan family such as my own. Yes sir, at H-E-B®: Here, Everything’s Better

Lotta white homeless guys steal them around here

We say buggy in Georgia

New Yorkers call it a trolly

The joke would've been enhanced if he drew the dates on the coins.
Imagine if the dimes were from 1964 or sooner and the nickle was a war nickle.
Those three coins would then be worth around $6.50 total.

i'm confused

Clearly. The first panel of the fucking comic explained it. This is why Ben Garrison labels every part of his comics because of people like you.

I know this is a joke post but Central Market is unironically the way better fancy food store than Whole Foods. Whole Foods has the same shit as everywhere else just more expensive, Central Market has some genuinely wild stuff that you can't get anywhere else.

The point of the plastic things is just for convenience for those who don't carry change all the time. You can just have it on a keychain and not have to go "Oh crap do I have a quarter?"

He also spells Boogeyman the Bong way. He's just based.

I love that half of this thread is autism about cart coins. Perfectly on-brand for Whomp. Btw I love you Ronnie!

Why would you spend multiple dollars to "cheat" a system that costs you nothing

Because you can put it on your keychain and always have it on you? I have one on my keychain and one in the drink holder in my car. It means I don't have to lug around coin and I know I always have one on me. I don't see what's shocking or bad about that. It's reusable, it has a hook on my keys and it means I don't have people go 'Hey here's the coin, gimmie the cart'. I can just go 'Sorry I have a token'. I don't want to touch their germ riddled coin.

We could turn it into coin collector autism, anon. It would be easy.
You've seen what Ronnie did with the jars, imagine if he got into coin roll hunting. It's like gotcha machines, only you never lose money unless some horrible monster out there shoved a penny in a nickel or quarter roll and you lose 4 to 24 cents. But then, sometimes, you'll get an overfilled roll and get free money.

And that's not even getting into why you hunt the rolls in the first place.

I hunt silver coins but hunting regular coins is too autistic even for me.

Ehhh to be honest, that was half me fucking around, half me genuinely shilling HEB. I had to go visit family in Arkansas recently and maybe it was just because they live in a smaller town but their closest grocery store was a Kroger’s with the Walmart an hour away and it was so limited and expensive compared to the HEB near where I live it felt like I entered the third world by comparison

Dude I believe you, I genuinely also love HEB. Way better quality than Walmart but also way better prices than the Kroger shit. I live out in NM now and I hate that we don't have HEB.

The quarter thing is fine. The stores themselves are shit. There's no real aisles or sense of flow, it's just a giant free for all of people going every direction and shit. I've said to friends it's like a grocery store designed by someone who wants customers to have a miserable experience.

There's no real aisles

Every Aldi store has literally 3 aisles, what are you talking about

or four, I guess

And that is why you would hunt them.
Loads of people also collect copper pennies for the day copper prices finally skyrocket.

But we all know what pennies have only stayed in circulation as long as they have because they were repurposed into talismans meant to repel extra-dimensional entities which have been attempting to attack the US since a secret cabal of Nazi mystics partially succeeded in compelling them to attack the US near the end of the war. Their ubiquitous presence keeps the populated regions relatively safe.
If the pennies stop being minted we only have like 200 years before the billions of little copper protectors out there deteriorate to the point they can no long fulfill this purpose.

I can go to a normal grocery store or even a Walmart and have more order. It's laid out more like a giant Walgreens with way more foot traffic.