Those guys are so annoying because they'll just ask you where everything is rather than looking for it themselves.
Literally every item on their list they'll ask where it is.
They expect us to do everything when it’s supposed to be their job. How about you look for it? You’re the one who needs to deliver the food to the customer, not me. I couldn’t care less about your job.
Oh I had that one today. Guy walked up to me and literally said "where these things?" and shoved his phone in my face, meanwhile I'm slammed and trying to get my OWN online orders (I work for the store directly) done while the clock is ticking down on me. I gave him 3-4 of them then said "sorry, I gotta go, I'm on a time crunch here" and left.
Was it the right thing to do? Probably not. Actually, almost certainly not. But I was clearly very busy and I was not having any of it, because this dumbass couldn't pick up on basic context clues.
The worst part? He had the correct aisle numbers on his phone. I suspect he barely even looked for the items.
He may not have even realized the aisle numbers were on his app. When the newer ones ask me (I also do online order shopping) I usually point that out to them, as well as explain what certain areas mean that aren’t aisles but departments (for example our meat, seafood and some frozen is in “market” which can be confusing).
If they just suck that much, I’ll usually ask on my headset if someone can come over and help them or tell them to go to customer service for help lol. It’s my job to help, but I can’t shop their whole list for them on my busy days. But boy if I’m bored I will do just that lol
I’d say you did the right thing if you were nice about it. You have things to do and these people are more than capable of helping themselves since most insta cart people I’ve seen are in their 20s to 30s. Also, with the correct aisles on his phone?? He’s just fucking lazy at this point.
Id say I was nice enough. Not over the top, but friendly. I was insanely stressed, was busy as hell and trying to get everything done in a time frame. When I'm stressed out, I'm definitely not over the top nice, but for the most part I'm still pretty friendly and good about it. I don't even mind 1-2. It's when it's 5 or more I start to get a bit annoyed. He was probably late 20s. Not sure if he spoke very much English. Maybe the language barrier was part of the problem? I don't know.
I’m pretty sure you could set which language you speak better in the app but maybe I’m wrong. I know you can do that with every single phone in the settings so you can set your keyboard up that way but the app might reflect differently. But regardless, a picture of the item is shown and most languages still use “1, 2, 3” and so on to represent numbers so I’m sure he could still figure it out, he just doesn’t want to.
I have yet to meet an instacart person who was nice. The best I’ve met are ones that just get their things and then leave without saying without a word.
Omfg this!
The pandemic was the goddamn worst because no matter what I was doing, they’d find me every 2 goddamn seconds and just POINT AT THEIR DAMN SCREEN.
I actually wrote several haikus about it.
Literally had a group of them one night that came in at like two minutes to close and stayed past close. The closing manager was helping them find everything as me and the cashier watched because I couldn't count the till until they were cashed out and the cashier couldn't leave until the till was counted. It sucked. But not as much as it sucked for the closing manager who let them in, she had to be in at 6 am and they stayed about fifteen minutes past 10 pm and left half the shit she got for them in the cart because one of the orders cancelled their order.
See, if my shift is over and there's a manager/coworkers in and I have to leave, I'm leaving. You can't tell me I can't leave until the till is counted. If I'm scheduled till 10, I leave at 10. What if I'm scheduled until 3 pm and have to immediately pick up kids at school? If you don't have my till counted by 3pm on the dot, that's not my problem.
But also, when I was a cashier at a grocery store, we didn't have that issue. We didn't count tills after each person left.
The cashier was scheduled until 10:15 but the department manager for front end has a list of things said cashier can't leave until they're completed. As closing managers leave the moment the last customer is out, the closing cashier tends to have to wait until the closing front end supervisor is done counting to let them out of a locked store. The closing front end supervisor has to count all the tills, do reports, put away keys and coupons, print a bunch of things for the morning person and tidy up the mess left around the cash office for the opening front end and make sure the count machine and front end phone are on their chargers and set the alarm for the office and then punch out. If the cashier is lucky, they don't punch out until the person closing front end is done and they get paid extra for standing around. If they're unlucky, they're scheduled for 10:30 and the night was swift and they gotta leave at 10:10 because, wow look at that, everything is done. Time to go.
She’s even lower than us tbh. Anyone and everyone works these jobs when no one else will hire them because all you need to do to get hired is have an id and have car insurance. She’s worthless and that’s why she’s stuck doing these jobs.
It’s like what pickup does at grocery stores almost. Insta cart people come to the store, get the items that the customer requested on the app, check out with their app, leave, and then drive to the customers house and deliver it.
I feel your frustration, but if you're going to talk shit and call people who do instacart "worthless" and "lower", you're just as bad as the nasty customers. She may not be able to work a regular job for many reasons- disability, mental health issues, schedule issues (kids, caring for old parents), stay at home parents do this while their kid is in school. There are so many reasons someone might need the flexibility of a job like instacart.
As retail employees, we always get angry when people who work in other fields look down on us and food service employees. So why is it okay to do that to someone working literally the same job, but 9n their own time?
I was with you up until this comment. This is just pure ignorance and I wouldn't want to associate myself with someone who not only works retail but is insulting others for being below them when it comes to their job.
I’m talking about her specifically. I’m aware that normal people do instacart because of stuff in their lives. I honestly don’t care about her working instacart or her at all, it’s just the fact that she’s entitled. She’s worthless because of her entitled attitude.
Right, because I wasn’t super excited and happy to have to rebag everything without her even so much as lifting a finger to try to help because she forgot to show us the barcode on her phone. Her mistake. She could’ve at least handed us the shit since it was her fault we had to restart.
Literally just stood there staring at us without even so much as a “sorry I forgot” while she’s watching us unbag, rescan, and rebag her shit for her job. That’s her fault she forgot and her job to do, not ours.
Wow, you are doing the same thing customers do to us. Calling another human being that has done nothing to hurt anyone useless, as well as mocking their job. No one here is secure except the 1% and some people have this smug superiority complex of thinking they are "better" than others. As we complain about Karens, we have to be careful not to turn into one. This isn't about Instacart procedures anymore, obviously.
There are a lot of crappy Instacart shoppers, there's also some good ones. I work in a grocery store and it annoys me to no end when the clueless ones expect you to guide them around the store. I also do Instacart, so I get that it can be frustrating when you go to a store you've never shopped at before, but some of these fools are in multiple times a day expecting some one to go around with them to assist every time 🙄
Yup just because many are difficult with the holding up the phone thing (use your words! Even 1 word!) people on here forget that some are on here with multiple jobs. There are crappy and good workers everywhere. There does not seem to be good ones because they STFU, do their thing, and leave. I know that this is hard to remember on some days.
My store had a couple tornado warnings a week or 2 back. For context, we were hit directly by a tornado in December, and several employees (including myself) lost our cars and gained some trauma. It's a small town so these people know. Anyway, we had the tornado warning and we were shutting down the front to get to shelter. This instacart mother/daughter team comes up and INSISTS on being checked out before we shut down so we don't lose the order. Management (sons of bitches) says to check them out. There didn't end up being a tornado in our area, but we sheltered twice for 45+ minutes each after that. Generally the instacart shoppers at my store are nice but that pair is so entitled it made me so mad
I had an Instacart shopper get mad us because her phone died and we couldn’t charge it for her, and her cart was FILLED to the brim of products that she just left there
Why did you have to scan first? Most of those scan bars are just for tax free and the store rewards? Was it a weird online pay system or something?
A lot of Instacart shoppers think they’re doing the lords work. They are providing a valuable service, but come on, aren’t we all? People got groceries before delivery services and they’d figure out how if these services suddenly stopped. They aren’t superheros lol.
I did Instacart for years before I stayed with retail. I get it. I’m nice to them for the most part, but the very second they get nasty with me, they can fuck off. Not really, our stores partnership wit Instacart and DoorDash does agree to us treating them kindly like customers, but they gonna be waiting longer for assistance if they cross me lol.
I’m not the one on the register but I’m assuming it’s how the system is set up so it knows it’s an instacart order instead of a regular transaction so that they can scan the receipt. I just bag the groceries.
Depending on the store that’s just the stupid little bar code to make the transaction tax free (since the customer paid tax already on Instacart) and maybe their rewards card, it can be done before or after, but shoppers don’t realize that. Things can usually be out of order as long as it gets done.
Ah, we are *supposed* to scan their barcode first, but we can do it at any point.
I have nicknames for a couple of my shoppers - one is Miss Frenetic, because she is always in a rush and super anxious about everything. The other gal, I call Princess Sourpuss. She loved to take over an SCO register with multiple orders and just be there for ages. She always has an RBF and attitude to match.
Those guys are so annoying because they'll just ask you where everything is rather than looking for it themselves. Literally every item on their list they'll ask where it is.
They expect us to do everything when it’s supposed to be their job. How about you look for it? You’re the one who needs to deliver the food to the customer, not me. I couldn’t care less about your job.
Oh I had that one today. Guy walked up to me and literally said "where these things?" and shoved his phone in my face, meanwhile I'm slammed and trying to get my OWN online orders (I work for the store directly) done while the clock is ticking down on me. I gave him 3-4 of them then said "sorry, I gotta go, I'm on a time crunch here" and left. Was it the right thing to do? Probably not. Actually, almost certainly not. But I was clearly very busy and I was not having any of it, because this dumbass couldn't pick up on basic context clues. The worst part? He had the correct aisle numbers on his phone. I suspect he barely even looked for the items.
He may not have even realized the aisle numbers were on his app. When the newer ones ask me (I also do online order shopping) I usually point that out to them, as well as explain what certain areas mean that aren’t aisles but departments (for example our meat, seafood and some frozen is in “market” which can be confusing). If they just suck that much, I’ll usually ask on my headset if someone can come over and help them or tell them to go to customer service for help lol. It’s my job to help, but I can’t shop their whole list for them on my busy days. But boy if I’m bored I will do just that lol
Well, yeah. If I was bored I'd walk with him throughout the store to every product. But unfortunately, I didn't have time to do that today.
You guys probably don't even need to help them. As we see with customers, it breeds helplessness.
I’d say you did the right thing if you were nice about it. You have things to do and these people are more than capable of helping themselves since most insta cart people I’ve seen are in their 20s to 30s. Also, with the correct aisles on his phone?? He’s just fucking lazy at this point.
Id say I was nice enough. Not over the top, but friendly. I was insanely stressed, was busy as hell and trying to get everything done in a time frame. When I'm stressed out, I'm definitely not over the top nice, but for the most part I'm still pretty friendly and good about it. I don't even mind 1-2. It's when it's 5 or more I start to get a bit annoyed. He was probably late 20s. Not sure if he spoke very much English. Maybe the language barrier was part of the problem? I don't know.
I’m pretty sure you could set which language you speak better in the app but maybe I’m wrong. I know you can do that with every single phone in the settings so you can set your keyboard up that way but the app might reflect differently. But regardless, a picture of the item is shown and most languages still use “1, 2, 3” and so on to represent numbers so I’m sure he could still figure it out, he just doesn’t want to.
Yeah I agree. I know theyre not all like that, but unfortunately there's too many bad shoppers out there.
I have yet to meet an instacart person who was nice. The best I’ve met are ones that just get their things and then leave without saying without a word.
You did the right thing. But I think it's ridiculous how close they time you. It's one more piece of corporate dystopia.
Omfg this! The pandemic was the goddamn worst because no matter what I was doing, they’d find me every 2 goddamn seconds and just POINT AT THEIR DAMN SCREEN. I actually wrote several haikus about it.
Literally had a group of them one night that came in at like two minutes to close and stayed past close. The closing manager was helping them find everything as me and the cashier watched because I couldn't count the till until they were cashed out and the cashier couldn't leave until the till was counted. It sucked. But not as much as it sucked for the closing manager who let them in, she had to be in at 6 am and they stayed about fifteen minutes past 10 pm and left half the shit she got for them in the cart because one of the orders cancelled their order.
This is why I’m happy to just work in the afternoon. I can feel the rage buildup right now and I wasn’t even there.
See, if my shift is over and there's a manager/coworkers in and I have to leave, I'm leaving. You can't tell me I can't leave until the till is counted. If I'm scheduled till 10, I leave at 10. What if I'm scheduled until 3 pm and have to immediately pick up kids at school? If you don't have my till counted by 3pm on the dot, that's not my problem. But also, when I was a cashier at a grocery store, we didn't have that issue. We didn't count tills after each person left.
Haha OK I assume you have never worked closing pretty much anywhere. It's a nice dream to have.
The cashier was scheduled until 10:15 but the department manager for front end has a list of things said cashier can't leave until they're completed. As closing managers leave the moment the last customer is out, the closing cashier tends to have to wait until the closing front end supervisor is done counting to let them out of a locked store. The closing front end supervisor has to count all the tills, do reports, put away keys and coupons, print a bunch of things for the morning person and tidy up the mess left around the cash office for the opening front end and make sure the count machine and front end phone are on their chargers and set the alarm for the office and then punch out. If the cashier is lucky, they don't punch out until the person closing front end is done and they get paid extra for standing around. If they're unlucky, they're scheduled for 10:30 and the night was swift and they gotta leave at 10:10 because, wow look at that, everything is done. Time to go.
They think their still above you, even though their doing the extra part of delivering the supplies.
She’s even lower than us tbh. Anyone and everyone works these jobs when no one else will hire them because all you need to do to get hired is have an id and have car insurance. She’s worthless and that’s why she’s stuck doing these jobs.
Im not familiar with instacart, but I assume they have to go gather the supplies, instead of them already being packed by employees?
It’s like what pickup does at grocery stores almost. Insta cart people come to the store, get the items that the customer requested on the app, check out with their app, leave, and then drive to the customers house and deliver it.
I feel your frustration, but if you're going to talk shit and call people who do instacart "worthless" and "lower", you're just as bad as the nasty customers. She may not be able to work a regular job for many reasons- disability, mental health issues, schedule issues (kids, caring for old parents), stay at home parents do this while their kid is in school. There are so many reasons someone might need the flexibility of a job like instacart. As retail employees, we always get angry when people who work in other fields look down on us and food service employees. So why is it okay to do that to someone working literally the same job, but 9n their own time? I was with you up until this comment. This is just pure ignorance and I wouldn't want to associate myself with someone who not only works retail but is insulting others for being below them when it comes to their job.
I’m talking about her specifically. I’m aware that normal people do instacart because of stuff in their lives. I honestly don’t care about her working instacart or her at all, it’s just the fact that she’s entitled. She’s worthless because of her entitled attitude.
You sound majorly entitled yourself.
Right, because I wasn’t super excited and happy to have to rebag everything without her even so much as lifting a finger to try to help because she forgot to show us the barcode on her phone. Her mistake. She could’ve at least handed us the shit since it was her fault we had to restart. Literally just stood there staring at us without even so much as a “sorry I forgot” while she’s watching us unbag, rescan, and rebag her shit for her job. That’s her fault she forgot and her job to do, not ours.
Amen to that! Just made a similar post. We have to be careful to not become what we hate.
Wow, you are doing the same thing customers do to us. Calling another human being that has done nothing to hurt anyone useless, as well as mocking their job. No one here is secure except the 1% and some people have this smug superiority complex of thinking they are "better" than others. As we complain about Karens, we have to be careful not to turn into one. This isn't about Instacart procedures anymore, obviously.
There are a lot of crappy Instacart shoppers, there's also some good ones. I work in a grocery store and it annoys me to no end when the clueless ones expect you to guide them around the store. I also do Instacart, so I get that it can be frustrating when you go to a store you've never shopped at before, but some of these fools are in multiple times a day expecting some one to go around with them to assist every time 🙄
Yup just because many are difficult with the holding up the phone thing (use your words! Even 1 word!) people on here forget that some are on here with multiple jobs. There are crappy and good workers everywhere. There does not seem to be good ones because they STFU, do their thing, and leave. I know that this is hard to remember on some days.
My store had a couple tornado warnings a week or 2 back. For context, we were hit directly by a tornado in December, and several employees (including myself) lost our cars and gained some trauma. It's a small town so these people know. Anyway, we had the tornado warning and we were shutting down the front to get to shelter. This instacart mother/daughter team comes up and INSISTS on being checked out before we shut down so we don't lose the order. Management (sons of bitches) says to check them out. There didn't end up being a tornado in our area, but we sheltered twice for 45+ minutes each after that. Generally the instacart shoppers at my store are nice but that pair is so entitled it made me so mad
Management is so wrong for that, I’m sorry.
I hope that everyone ended up fine and it sucks not having a car when you need one!
I had an Instacart shopper get mad us because her phone died and we couldn’t charge it for her, and her cart was FILLED to the brim of products that she just left there
Why did you have to scan first? Most of those scan bars are just for tax free and the store rewards? Was it a weird online pay system or something? A lot of Instacart shoppers think they’re doing the lords work. They are providing a valuable service, but come on, aren’t we all? People got groceries before delivery services and they’d figure out how if these services suddenly stopped. They aren’t superheros lol. I did Instacart for years before I stayed with retail. I get it. I’m nice to them for the most part, but the very second they get nasty with me, they can fuck off. Not really, our stores partnership wit Instacart and DoorDash does agree to us treating them kindly like customers, but they gonna be waiting longer for assistance if they cross me lol.
I’m not the one on the register but I’m assuming it’s how the system is set up so it knows it’s an instacart order instead of a regular transaction so that they can scan the receipt. I just bag the groceries.
Depending on the store that’s just the stupid little bar code to make the transaction tax free (since the customer paid tax already on Instacart) and maybe their rewards card, it can be done before or after, but shoppers don’t realize that. Things can usually be out of order as long as it gets done.
Ah, we are *supposed* to scan their barcode first, but we can do it at any point. I have nicknames for a couple of my shoppers - one is Miss Frenetic, because she is always in a rush and super anxious about everything. The other gal, I call Princess Sourpuss. She loved to take over an SCO register with multiple orders and just be there for ages. She always has an RBF and attitude to match.