As you may or may not know, I have started working for a couple of popular delivery services to keep contributing financially to the family. I started with Favor because their marketing is very good. I mean, it's hard to say no. Unfortunately, Favor was cool for like, a
day. Then I realized how much gas I was using and mileage I was putting on the car for $8 an hour and that was the end of that. Plus, it was insanely stressful. Driving can make me anxious and I constantly felt pressed for time so that just heightened the anxiety. It was not a match for my personality. I was discouraged but not beaten (and, frankly, still desperate) so I looked into Shipt.
Shipt is pretty great. It's a grocery delivery service that I've actually used many times in the past. I feel like the company is more supportive, has a better app, and is just a lot easier for someone like me. Less driving, less confusion, less room for error. I do wish Shipt would adopt Favor's minimum tipping policy, but it's still better money than Favor was on a good day.
(Side note - Favor is owned by HEB and if they would let you do only grocery deliveries on their app, I would totally participate again. Just putting that out in the universe.)
I tell you all of this so that you have a little background going in to this story. This is the story of a no good, very bad shop.
I put myself on the schedule for Shipt not really having much expectation of being busy. The market saturation in my area ensures that I don't get many offers. To my surprise, I was offered 2 shops in rapid succession. The first shop was a doozie and it was a bit of a risk because it had a lot of items but not a lot of time before the delivery window. At the same time, a big order means better money and I need money so... not really a tough choice.
Well, it was an adventure. I wasn't familiar with the grocery store that I was shopping so trying to find the items was frustrating. It was an HEBplus so it's stupid-huge like Cabellas but with pantry items instead of hunting and fishing gear. I had to ask directions to the cheese. I feel ridiculous just typing that.
The store was PACKED. Everyone was shopping that day and there were at least 2 HEB in-store shoppers with their giant carts, taking up room in the narrow aisles. I love them, they work hard and they have a lot going on. But, man oh man, there was really not enough room for them, me, and all the regular shoppers.
Side note - I love that shoppers have professional courtesy. Whenever any of the "professional" shoppers see each other, no matter what platform we are working for, we always offer each other sympathetic smiles, try to stay out of each other's way, and shout out well wishes and encouragement. Stay strong fellow shoppers!
Back to the adventure. So many of the items on my 55 item shopping list were not available. I was constantly texting the client with substitutions and their sizes and prices for comparison. Waiting on a response is difficult because you are dead in the water until you get a yea or nay. There are times when I am confident enough with a substitution and I will just stick it in the cart and keep shopping while I wait for confirmation but, if I'm not sure, I stay in that aisle because backtracking feels like defeat. But being an unmoving blob in the pasta aisle is also a problem. Regular shoppers don't see a person providing great customer service, they see an obnoxious woman taking up space while she frantically texts and mutters under her breath.
The cart got heavy quickly because this particular client wanted a lot of canned items. The order was at least 3/4 canned and bottled. In fact, they wanted something like 20 cans of soup and only 6 of them were duplicates. So 14 individual cans of soup with very similar names... it was madness. I could
feel the time ticking away as I struggled to find yet another can of chicken noodle soup that was somehow different from all the other previous chicken noodle soups that were already in the cart. How are there so many unique vegetable beef soups when they are all made by Progresso??? I was sweaty and flustered by the time I found them all.
In the middle of the shop (and, coincidentally, the middle of this grocery store), it all just kinda fell apart. You know those bulk supplies of water, 32 bottles of 16.9oz water bottles, all plastic-wrapped together? This client needed 4 of them. Plus an 18 pack of Gatorade. Plus 4 different brands of soda in 4 different container-types. I mean, the soda wasn't really a problem but I was so WTF-ed out by then, it seemed like a ludicrous request.
The basket was beyond full and I still had like 15 more items. It's so heavy, I had to brace myself and push with non-existent muscle groups to get it rolling. I looked ridiculous. I felt like I was thrust into some strange Cross-fit/Supermarket Sweep crossover without my consent.
I finally had to admit defeat and call Shipt to get my second shop reassigned. There's no way I was delivering the current order on time, much less segueing into another shop successfully. That sucked for me but hopefully the client got their order on time.
Side note - omg, the people who work as Shipt shopper support are the nicest people
in the world. So understanding and helpful. Bless you, beautiful support people!
The rest of the shop is a blur of trying to find substitutes and shoving a 2 ton cart up and down aisles without audible grunting.
Checking out was fun because the teenagers on the register found the order as bizarre as I did. They made me promise not to deliver the groceries into a weird bunker for my own safety. They also conspicuously did
not offer to help me out to my car (I really can't blame them) so my pride and I unloaded the survival rations (???) into the trunk of my tiny car.
Life disappointed me yet again here, folks; there was standing water in my cooler bag. Now, I'm not blaming that on my husband... but I'm not NOT blaming it on him either. It could have been either of us. So it could have definitely been him.
Anyway, I can't put the cold stuff in the cooler and deliver wet bags because I imagined how horrified I would be if someone delivered wet grocery bags to me and there were no leaks in my grocery items. I would have to wonder why the bags were wet and my imagination is fertile so that would not go well. In the end, I just hoped that the house was truly only 7 minutes away like the GPS promised me and there wouldn't be any more funny business.
At the client's home, they had widely-spaced cement pavers and I ended up rolling my ankle on one of my 6-7 trips to the door. The disappointment of delivering this weird order and not seeing an obvious religious sect or 18 Kids and Counting was nearly overwhelming. No tinfoil hats or old-timey aprons or even a wall covered in newspaper articles with a lot of arrows and question marks in red ink. It was just a regular mom in workout gear and one toddler and a cat. Lame.
After all of this, the cherry on the top is that I forgot to mark the order as delivered until I got to my house like 10 minutes later so it seemed even later than it was. GAH!
Here's my summary - is Shipt a great program for shoppers and clients? Absolutely. Are you going to have tough shops? Inevitably. There are too many variables for it to always go smoothly. Did I get tipped for the giant, late order? Yes I did, $10. Not bad, but I definitely treated myself to some caramel M&Ms and that was probably more satisfying.
