Trolley rescue - the sixth emergency service

The police have a hard job; making the streets a safer place to walk, making sure cars aren’t parked in places where pushchairs can’t get past and seeming not to care when you have a crime committed against you.  The people of the Fire Service also have difficult jobs, as do Paramedics, the coast guard and the AA.  The sixth emergency service however, has things a little easier.  Whilst shopping in a local supermarket recently I noticed a telephone number on the handle of my trolley.  It instructed me to call should I witness a trolley that is 'lost'.  I assume it meant 'away from where it's supposed to be' rather than struggling with it's emotional identity.

On my jaunts to the surrounding countryside to where I live, I invariably see supermarket trolleys, wheels up in a small brook or on their side in a bush by the side of a disused railway track.  My mind doesn’t immediately wander to the pointless hooliganism that is the theft of these trolleys to be abandoned in such places but the sheer admiration of the guile and determination of these people to get the trolley so far away from its starting point without being seen.  I also find myself awestruck by the places these people can put the trolleys when they abandon them.  Up trees, down ravines – I once saw one over a give way sign.  It gave me an idea; just how far will Trolley Rescue go to recover a trolley? 

 

If this was a TV documentary, I’d place a trolley somewhere, ring the number and wait.  Throughout the programme, I’d place trolleys in increasingly precarious locations and situations.  The first I’d place just outside one of the trolley bays in the supermarket car park – just to see if they treat it as a crank call or a genuine cry for help.  The second I’d place on the pavement just outside the car park to see if they send their special ‘recovery vehicle’ or just the guy in the yellow reflect-o-coat.  (You can buy those coats on the high street.  All you need to do is print the logo of your choice on the back, ‘Security’, ‘Attendant’ or even ‘Whisperer of Destiny’ and you can just stand around telling people to do stuff; and they don’t question you – they just nod and do it, even if you’re just in a random street).

Trolley Resuce Motto - "We are ready to retrieve you"

 



The third I’d place in a quiet suburban road, the fourth would be placed on the grass in the middle of a busy motorway roundabout, the fifth in the lion enclosure at the zoo and the sixth up Mount Snowdon.  Surely there will be a point where the cost of recovering the trolley will outweigh the value – we just have to find that line.

I also wonder if they do get crank calls.  Trolley rescue, “My trousers are in next doors garden and they have a big dog!”