Perils of Online Grocery Shopping

For health reasons, I’ve been doing almost all the grocery shopping online.

It isn’t more convenient, because the shopping process involves a fair amount of following along as the shopper ignores one’s fallback instructions and either does or doesn’t text for instructions. (I think of it as “the world’s worst video game”.) Unlike in-person, I don’t get much control over timing, as the shopping will happen some random time up to 3 hours before the delivery time. And the delivery window is also only notional; I suspect that the ratio of would-be shoppers to customers has gone down and as a result my often sizable orders with good tips get grabbed early. Indeed, they are often delivered well before the window I set, which can also make for conflict with online meetings and the like.

And it is expensive: I figure between the app’s markup over the store prices, and the tip, I’m paying at least 25% more than if I went myself.

And it’s frustrating when some types of things that I think I could find in person are not offered on the app. [Yes, there’s a ‘special requests’ mechanism, but it is a bit of a pain.] And it’s also frustrating when stuff theoretically on the app turn out to be not available, although I imagine that this likely would be equally frustrating in person too, given supply chain issues.

Today, however, I experienced a new online grocery shopping problem–or at least one new to me.

Amidst an order with several items, I asked for this:
. 

I got most of what I asked for, but in addition to the chicken I asked for (or meant to ask for?), I also got (and got duly charged for), this:

Yes, I got FIVE chickens. Five. I didn’t save a copy of the original order (I sure will from now on) so I can’t prove I didn’t do something to cause the app to record an order for a record number of chickens, although I can’t see how I could have done that.

So now I have five chickens. Guess I know what we’re eating this week. And next.

Plus I have a new appetite for chicken jokes. (Bonus: Painful chicken jokes from Iraq 2004.)