Cart Boss

Cart Boss – the Right Way (and de Wrong Wae)

Please read this.  ‘Cause if you don’t, you could be doing it wrong.   Cart Boss is a very reliable tool and can unlock shopping carts within a fraction of a second. If it is used properly.  If you find that it doesn’t work sometimes, or that it takes like 5 seconds and a whole lot of force to use on a shopping cart, read on. TL;DR?  Skip to Video

Before doing anything else, put it on your keychain.  That’s where it belongs.  You should never take it off your keychain for any reason whatsoever.  If you do, a gutter will suddenly appear in front of your feet, and the Cart Boss will jump out of your hands and fall through this gutter.  This phenomenon has puzzled scientists for years.

The right way?  Use two hands.  The fast way?  Use two hands.  The cool way?  Still, use two hands.  Do it right and it’ll look like this:

The wrong way? One hand:

Don’t do this, it won’t work half the time.  You’ll get the feeling everyone is watching and cringing.  Even if they aren’t. So, the right way: Grab the back bar and while inserting cart boss, push the bar and cart boss toward one another.  Take the bar out, then remove the cart boss with a quarter turn.  Like this:

In picture form:

Why use two hands?  It’s a design flaw in the mechanism that even affects coins.  Yes, even when inserting a coin, if there is tension in the chain pulling the bar away from the lock, nothing will unlock the mechanism, not even a coin.  Tension?  Yes, the carts do pull on each other at times, when all chained up like that.  Try it yourself sometime – while pulling the bar backwards, insert a coin, and notice how it the bar will not release.

A lot of shopping carts will do this.  Same thing applies to Cart Boss.  Sure, you could get away with using just one hand – Cart Boss, coin, fake coin, bread clip, but it won’t always work because of possible tension in the chain.  So use two hands, you don’t want to look like a fool trying too hard to get a shopping cart. Why the quarter turn?  When you insert a coin into the mechanism, you cannot pull it back out, because two fingers activate to prevent the coin from coming back out.  To make it past these fingers, you’ll need to turn Cart Boss to the side, and slide it out. Now, Cart Boss works with most shopping carts, but not all.  These ones are compatible:

We refer to these as “single slot mechanisms”. Notice that there is a single slot for a coin.  These are actually the most common type of cart nowadays in Canada.  Other countries, maybe. Now, if you’re unlucky enough that your local store has the rare artifact of a cart below, well, you’re out of luck.  Cart Boss doesn’t work with these ones:

We call them “Plug” types, or “Double Slot” types.  The shape of the bar reminds me of the kind of bulbous plug that goes into a wall socket.  Double slot, because they have TWO slots, not just one, unlike the one shown earlier, which only has a coin slot.  One slot is for the plug, and one is for the coin:

So why doesn’t a shopping cart key like the Cart Boss work with this? For the mechanism to unlock, both the coin and the key need to be inserted at the same time.  Can you have Cart Boss and the round key inserted at the same time? Lets see…

No.  It’s either one or the other, they can’t fit in the same space.  When they discover the 4th spatial dimension then we will revisit this. And very rarely the slot might be all full of dirt and grime.  Nothing will fit in there and it’s not your job to clean it out.  Just grab another cart instead, there are tons of them around. Final thing to keep in mind:  Make sure you have the right Cart Boss size for the you want to unlock.  Quarter Cart Boss will NOT work on a loonie accepting cart even though it is small enough to fit.  If you suspect that your Cart Boss is a different size, just check the size of the head of the Cart Boss with the size of a coin from your wallet, it should match exactly.  Or use a ruler – Quarter length is 5cm and Loonie is 5.5cm. Do it the right way like this, and even the plastic Cart Boss will work for a very long time.  I still have my plastic Cart Boss on my keychain from 2 years ago (yes I never, ever took it off) from when we started the Cart Boss project, and it is still good as new.  Yes, even plastic can last that long if used right (but still, aluminum is better lol) Thanks for reading!  Now you’ll be ready to unlock shopping carts at extreme speeds.  Nowadays we need to do everything as efficiently and reliably as possible because time is more scarce than ever before. To recap:

  1. Use two hands, and quarter turn to remove✋🤚
  2. Use the right cart type 🛒
  3. Use the right coin size
  4. Put it on your key-ring ASAP 🔑
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