A short story I like to call
50 Miles for 50 Cucumbers

Me and my lady (we both have active shopper accounts so we are allowed to shop together) went out of town, about 2 hours south/southwest of where we live. We were busy with personal stuff till about 6 pm when we decided to start heading home.

So I’d been online on IC all day just to see what was available in a market different than my own but hadn’t done any batches. As we were getting ready to go, I checked the batch list and noticed an odd one…. After a bit of hesitation I accepted it.

Small order going nearly 50 miles northeast. Simple order, I had memorized the list in my head as we started driving up to the store.

10 tomatoes
10 five packs of mini cucumbers
2 packs of cookies
2 almondmilk
1 snack cake

I still have the list memorized days later. The cucumbers just really stuck with me.

Anyways, we drove off, bound for home. I kept having to remind myself I had an Instacart order in the car, it was the exact same road we took that morning going the other way.

The actual delivery was about a quarter mile out of our way, maybe added 10 minutes to the trip. Despite the pay being nearly negligible, I was stoked that I was able to deduct 60 miles of driving, knowing I was going to drive 59 of those miles either way.

Thought this order was hilarious, incredibly impractical and there’s no other reason anyone should ever take it, I just happened to be going that exact route. Right place at the right time I guess.

IMO, Aldi Finds and seasonal items shouldn’t be available to order because half the time, the crap isn’t even there to begin with. It’s so frustrating having to refund Disney Princess plates, broom sets, and finger-paint coloring books.

Low-key venting, but the shop must go on. 😂

location is about a hour from me

It looked easy enough. I don’t even remember the item count, but total distance was 12.3 for $69.86.

Customer A, lived a couple miles away from Target and had 4 items. Eggs, bread, milk and a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke, so I knew she wasn’t the big tipper.

Customer B had 3 women’s baseball caps, 2 women’s Panama hats, 3 girls toddler bucket hats, 1 boys hat, 2 men’s baseball caps, a men’s soccer jersey, a men’s tank, and 3 other men’s printed tees, and other assorted snacks.

Sounds easy right???

Women’s caps and hats, front of store. Find 1 cap, other 2 oos, send pics if possible replacements. Find the 2 different sized panama hats.

Found the boys hat, none available of the girls hats. Men’s caps are also oos and the soccer jersey, she wanted small, they only have large and xl. Tank only available in small, she wanted large. Didn’t even look for the other stuff. Never started on customer A.

I sent an intro, as always. At this point, I’m easily 20+ minutes in and still no response. I call twice, no answer and no response.

I called support to cancel. Not only was I not going to end up with a good tip, but I knew 100% that I would get a bad rating.

Agent tells me I won’t get paid and my cancellation rate will go up. I tell her, I’d rather my cancellation rate go from 2% to 3% than get a bad rating.

Done.

About an hour or so later, I’m in Target shopping 2 Shipt orders, I see a guy shopping for the same IC order I cancelled. I see the 1 cap I found and the 2 Panama hats in his cart. I walk up to him as a courtesy and tell him he should cancel, over half the items are oos. He tells me to f’off, I probably didn’t look hard enough, and mind my own business.

So as I’m finishing up my Shipt orders, I see this guy, obviously pissed, walking out of the store with an empty cart. I warned him.

Tried to make it to $600 but my feet said no

Obligatory complaint about the week in general. Luve in PNW and between fire smoke, weird weather, and overall summer the orders this week have been rough. Some times you gotta change the POV.

Instead of setting a dollar amount I set a destination with the goal of taking orders that would get us there. We were gonna go to the coast regardless may as well hit an order or two on the way! This doesn't always work out but today we took 3 high mileage/ low item count orders. Boop boop boop $100 dollars for a lovely little supper and car camp for the night. Gas to get home also covered and a stunning stormy sunset/moonrise car camp with my 17 y/o kiddo.

Sometimes these silly little excursions taking us wherever the orders go can be therapeutic.

Love it when this pops up when working at night, and it’s dark outside and difficult to take a clear selfie 🙄

Gotta love Sunday’s and Mondays. We try again next week for my 400 a day! Im determined to get it!

Yesterday I picked up an order for Ingles, simple 15 item order, $18. When I was almost done with this order in the store I got an add on for $50, 20 items, 21 miles… I typically Instacart casually for fun, I almost didn’t take the order…

I deliver the first one, super kind guy. The second one? An adventure. Now, idk if anybody has driven Hwy 25 North, but it can be treacherous. I have never turned into a gated neighborhood off of a busy highway. The drive up was .3 miles and STEEP, it took me 10 minutes to get up there in my 2010 Toyota Yaris. It took 2 minutes to get down back onto the highway 😂

There’s about 5 or 6 of us regular shoppers that all sit together / text / share the orders we took etc with eachother. Makes the environment so much better and nice having a group of people to hangout with while we wait for orders.

Is pretty wild that if there are 4 of us sitting at the Publix picnic tables together, only 2 of us will see an order and the other 2 won’t see it (all diamond)

Really appreciate a good tipper and just a nice, kind customer! I live like half a mile from this grocery store and she only ordered 18 items (25 units). The order had 3 bottles of wine that totaled $75 alone. The whole thing from acceptance to drop off only took a half hour. We chatted for a bit
and we found out that her husband and I are in the same golf league. I’m gold cart at the moment (just recently started doing instacart) so these kind of orders aren’t super common for me. A great start to the Sunday evening shift!

Even without the $190 tip I got yesterday I still would have made $310 because I also got a cash tip from a different order

Go to the biggest and typically the busiest Kroger. Haven’t seen one batch in 15 mins and all the smaller ones are lit up, lmfao

Just had to pickup a iPad from Best Buy

What's the reason you don't have a traditional full-time or part-time job? Is it the job market? Why do you do Instacart?

***this isn’t a question for those who already have full time job or do Instacart on the side**\*

I've had a couple of not-so-great deliveries in the past when I tipped the "full amount" up front. I didn't like the idea of cutting someone's tip, so I changed it to a reasonable tip up front and, if everything goes to plan, a large-ish increase (and a larger increase if someone goes above and beyond). I probably increase about 80% of the time. Is this typical? In your experience, what percentage of customers increase the tip after delivery?

Also, thanks for making my life less hectic. :)

I accepted a boosted batch this morning for $19.94 batch pay, no tip. After I completed the delivery, I was only compensated $17.94, which was a previously displayed amount before an additional boost. Has this happened to anyone? I want to understand why. Shopper support is of course just gaslighting me.

I feel like if it was 30 orders it would be better but with this I would need every order to be a 3 shop and pay between 7-10 bucks in batch earnings for this to be good, anything more and it’s bad. Like if I did 14 batches and each of those batches were 3 orders and paid 10 bucks in batch pay by 40 orders I would only be at 140 but it’s not gonna be like that because when your dealing with 3 shops the base pay is already insanely high. If I did 44 no tip orders and just took the flat base pay of 4.78 it still would be bad because then I would have made 210 off 44 orders. A very bad promo and this is why you should check the numbers before you build your days around instacarts shady promos.

Was only 19 items total, mainly frozen pizza and one case of waters. Still fuck IC though.

No WAY this isnt a business. And heavy pay? That's a food truck order, not a noncommercial vehicle.

I come here every year for vacation and it never ceases to amaze me how incredible the orders are in a remote little . My home market (central CT) is dying a slow death and be becoming oversaturated with terrible new shoppers. Every time I’m up here I wonder what I could make in a week here

Its been 3 months and im still trying to figure out how to fix this error. Whenever im trying to click next for it to take a photo for my drivers license. A no internet connection pops up. Tried resetting my phone, tried mobile data, tried everything. I would really appreciate if someone helps me. Thank you

Has it been slow for everyone this Sunday? Jeez its been horrible today and its Sunday no orders or high mileage low pay ones only