About four years ago, I had a key break off in a padlock at a local food co-op. The merchants let me use a hammer and cold chisel they happened to have on hand to cut the chain, and I wrote a post here about it, thinking that I wouldn't have gotten the same sort of help at Kroger.

Then today, wonderfully ironically, I was at Kroger with my children, and my second daughter lost her key. I have four padlocks with identical keys for my children, but my daughter was borrowing her mother's bike, since she blew out a sidewall and hasn't replaced the tire yet. So no duplicate key. After we'd looked around the store for a while and been by the lost-and-found a couple of times, two of the security guys came out to help. They ended up digging a pair of fairly dull bolt cutters. Those got us more than half-way through the thick braided cable, but wouldn't finish the job. (I remember Sheldon Brown saying that cable could be more secure than chain.) We took turns cutting the rest of the wires one at a time with scissors and a knife I had in my toolkit. So I'd like to applaud Kroger, and especially the man who so patiently helped me cut through my cable today.

and they sell pie too.

They used to give an .05 $ credit for every carry out bag you didn't use.. I had the checker put stuff directly in my empty pannier.

but they quit doing that .. Safeway never Tried.

Support your local unions!

Good on them. I prefer them as the local grocer of choice.

As a bonus, you've learned an important lesson about parenting, something my father told me when my son was born in 1980: never give the baby the keys.