Instacart Insanity

Yesterday, I woke up with high ambitions, a new sense of motivation, and good spirit - hope you all did too! By the end of the day though, I was once again stricken with a deep concern for humanity.

I convinced myself to go on a cleaning spree, since I have been sick with flu symptoms for the past week. Being a considerate citizen, I decided to stop the spread of viruses and stayed home to work on my task diligently instead of my usual Saturday grocery shopping. While scrubbing fingerprints off my stainless-steel fridge, I thought to save time by ordering groceries off Instacart for the week. Wow, now that’s efficient time management and productivity, right?!

I scrolled through the available stores and chose to go with BJs because, let’s face it, they have better berries. I ordered myself a pack of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, whole wheat bread, meatless patties, some bananas, some flavored seltzer water (my most recent obsession – thanks Joseph), and some Scrubbing Bubbles bathtub cleaner (to dissolve the stains from my green hair dye).

What I ordered.

That’s where my fate crossed paths with Kalifa -- not Wiz Khalifa, that would have been wicked cool -- but Instacart shopper and delivery driver, Kalifa. Now, I’m not one to judge this lady, but man oh man, I just don’t know how someone could mess up this bad.

My suspicions began when I did not receive a single chat message and she was marking each item as “found” in rapid succession. Either this woman was the Flash working part-time as an Instacart shopper, or she was a witch who could think of an item and summon it to her hands. Kalifa’s shopping process took a grand total of three minutes from the time I was notified that she began shopping to when I got the notification that she finished – I’m not sure you can even walk around BJs in that short of a time. Whatever was happening, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I messaged her a thank you, and she immediately disabled the messaging. Kalifa – what you doing girlfriend?

Kalifa finally arrived with the order and, impressively, she listened to directions and dropped it off in front of my apartment door instead of leaving it on the front porch of the building, like most people. I almost thought about tipping her generously for a hassle-free, speedy delivery. But when I saw the items she left, I lost the last remaining ounce of hope I had left for the human-race. We are DOOMED.

I now have an entire whole chicken, 4lbs of ground beef, 4lbs of stew meat, a family pack of chicken breasts, a jar of minced garlic, Zebra Cakes, 2 giant tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese, and a bag of dog treats. Imagine the other side of this story -- whoever ordered all this stuff -- I feel bad for them. Damn they got a box full of berries and healthy shit instead of their 10lbs of meat. This is what I get for trying to be healthy – this must be a sign from the universe.

What Kalifa delivered.

After reporting the issue and receiving a full refund, I still had no berry parfait and instead, a heap of random food that I will never eat and no place to store it. I immediately messaged my friend and he advised me to hand out large packages of free meat to my neighbors. I wasn’t sure if that would be considered strange – Paul may avoid helping me out the next time my circuit box trips. So, then I asked my 6-year-old niece for some ideas, and she told me to save it for next Thanksgiving. This was a pretty good idea, but then I would need to buy a deep freezer.

I figured it was a better option to call the local homeless shelter and food bank and leave them a message explaining the situation and that I wanted to donate it all – I hope that’s a thing during the Covid pandemic.

If not, I guess the only way I can think of to solve this problem is to adopt a puppy, or 12!

On the bright side, I do now have a cleaner house – thanks for the bathroom cleaner Kalifa. Good luck to you..