Customers at an Adelaide shopping centre have reported getting more than they bargained for, after small electric shocks forced some to take extreme measures when retrieving items from shelves.
The issue at the Brighton Foodland supermarket was reported yesterday in a Facebook post that has since generated dozens of responses.
"Anyone else get massive electric shocks when doing the shopping at Brighton Foodland," asked Shane Lavida.
"It's not a pleasant experience and I was never a natural break dancer until I started getting zapped there."
Foodland said the problem had been caused by static electricity, and that it was taking steps to reduce it.
Mr Lavida's post prompted other shoppers to come forward with similar accounts.
"My kids always laugh at me because I go and grab stuff and go 'ooh!'" local singer Becky Blake, a Brighton regular, told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz.
"It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens fairly regularly, so you sort of walk in going, 'Am I going to get shocked today?'"
Another customer recounted her smart watch registering a surge in her heartbeat while she was in the store.
"My pulse went from 85 walking around shopping there to 135 with the shock," Desley Watson-Raston said.
"I've been shopping there since 2019 and I get it every time. I've complained probably a dozen times.
"You don't get a shock in amongst the fruit and veggies, so you can move around there quite easily, but once you get to the fridges, that's when it starts — it goes right the way through to the dog aisle."
Dr Watson-Raston has resorted to using a makeshift lasso.
"I use a dog lead that I get off the rack and I whip it like a whip to get the dog food down — that's one method," she said.
"You can end up with the lead catching on the metal thing, and you've got to flick it back up to get it off."
Anti-static wheel trial
Mr Lavida said he wasn't surprised that others had also noticed the jolts.
"It's ... a static electricity thing, like the old science experiments we used to do; like the carpet and the balloon," he said.
"In the end I actually started to use the back of my hand to take that first initial shock."
Foodland chief executive Franklin dos Santos said the store was exploring ways to "eliminate the shock, because it's not occurring to everybody".
"The store has done absolutely everything they can to try and address the issue at the moment," he said.
"Fundamentally, there's a lot of moisture that occurs in the supermarket. If you think about the fridges, you think about the environment that you're in, they discharge refrigeration moisture into the air.
"We've had engineers in the store, electronic engineers, we've put dehumidifiers into the air conditioner to take the moisture out and the store is now trialling trolleys with anti-static wheels."
But he added that the Brighton outlet was a "beautiful store" and suggested rubber-soled shoes as one precaution for affected customers to consider.
