Are male shoppers really that bad?
“If you are not the CEO of DoorDash or Instacart, keep scrolling. This is not for you,” began a clearly frustrated woman, named Sammi, in her TikTok video. Apparently, Sammi had just made a grocery order, and her male shopper had allegedly gotten four out of five items completely wrong—causing her to “beg” for these apps to begin allowing customers to choose the sex of their delivery driver.
“I am begging you to make an update on your app where I can request a female shopper,” she said, going on to share the saga of what baffling mistakes were made.
First, there was the half gallon of store-brand milk she ordered, versus the quarter gallon of Tuscan milk she received, which she found hard to believe the store would be completely out of the item she requested.
There was also the Chopped Caesar Salad Kit she ordered, and got the Ultimate Caesar Salad Kit instead. This she was expecting, since you have to look “slightly harder” at the specific wording on the package, and “a man would never…he would just pick the one he sees first."
Similarly, Sammi requested mozzarella pearls, which require a bit more sleuthing, and got a log of mozzarella instead.
This next one is pretty egregious. Sammi also requested Land O’Lakes Garlic and Herb Butter, and even told the male shopper to refund the item if it wasn’t available rather than finding a replacement. And yet, the shopper still went ahead and replaced it with Land O’Lakes Canola Oil Butter.
Thankfully, the shopper did get the store brand Italian seasoning right. Phew. Plus Sammi did get a refund for her items. But nonetheless, she still thinks customers should be allowed to screen for female shoppers who would be more likely to do the job right. Flustered, she even said, “I just think we should make it to where men cannot be shoppers for Instacart or Doordash but that would be discrimination.”
These lamentations aren’t exactly new. The general consensus via the internet is that male Instacart shoppers tend to be pretty dreadful.
Plenty of folks in the comments of Sammi’s video shared their own terrible experiences.
“A man substituted my ground beef for a watermelon and I’m still confused about it,” said one person.
Another added, “I ordered a 400 gram bag of pistachios and got a 1kg tub of jelly beans.”
A few women even shared the outrageous substitutes they received when ordered menstrual products.
“I ordered tampons & was substituted white mushrooms. I have been telling this story for like 4 years because I am still not over it,” one viewer wrote.
“I one time ordered overnight always pads and ended up with a package of napkins so I unfortunately feel your pain,” another echoed.
On the flip side, many had stories of female shoppers who went above and beyond, paying attention to the little details and putting in a little extra care.
“I had a lady who once asked if I wanted parmesan because it was on sale and she thought it would go well with what else I had ordered,” one person recalled.
Another shared, “I had a woman throw in a get well card (with her own money) because she could tell all the items I was ordering were for being sick: chicken noodle soup ingredients, and a ton of medicines. Elite.”
Still another said, “My last lady shopper messaged me concerned that the grapes didn’t look good and she didn’t want me to have bad ones. Meanwhile the dude brought me expired lunch meat.”
While this situation is certainly frustrating, and many, many women can share stories of even their husbands or boyfriends making headscratching interpretations of a grocery list (or just asking them a million questions over text messages), there might be more to it than that. As Mike Romagnoli, an Instacart shopper in the Toronto, Canada area since 2019, told Huffpost, it might be mostly due to a language barrier—since many are also immigrants.
“I have watched guys at checkout just refund a dozen items they couldn’t find instead of talking to a customer about possible replacements,” Romagnoli shared.
So, yes, maybe there’s a bit of weaponized incompetence (male shoppers feigning ignorance to avoid working “slightly harder”), or maybe this points to how men and women are often different about looking at specific details, or maybe this is a result of society not ingraining grocery shopping skills into boys. But there are also probably other factors at play too. So potentially penalizing good male shoppers perhaps isn’t the most effective solution. But the frustrations are nonetheless valid.
