After avoiding it for more than three years I finally came down with Covid, and so this week used a grocery delivery service for the first time. I’ve typically been a slow adopter of consumer services that make it easier for you to never leave the house, because I’m the kind of person who already never leaves the house. Plus, I consider grocery shopping to be a kind of adventure, each aisle a path that could lead one to fortune, ruin, or even the rare BOGO on Lucky Charms.
Covid hasn’t been bad, but I’m trying not to take that show on the road and spread the virus to people who might not handle it as well as I have. After two days that were a little rough, it seems already to be subsiding. Frequent and excessive sweating for no discernible reason is now the primary symptom. Still, I’m likely contagious beyond the weekend, and so whatever needs I have that are currently unaccounted for in the cupboards and refrigerator have been left outside my door courtesy of a Shipt delivery driver with fluorescent red hair named Christy.
I imagine it must be interesting to be a shopper for a service like that—a window into the dietary worlds of other people. Christy, for example, no doubt knew immediately that she was dealing with someone who was sick, as she picked up chicken and beef bone broth, NyQuil and its daytime equivalent, nasal spray, various fruit juices, cans of soup, and two frozen pizzas to celebrate whenever I’m finally feeling well enough to eat solid food.
What surprised me most was how thoughtful she was in her organization. In one bag were all the medicines, in another the broth and juices, and while the soups were divided equally among bags for weight distribution, the frozen pizzas were nestled together to stay cool until reuniting with a freezer. This presentation cued me that I was not cut out for such “gig” work. When I bag my own groceries, I tend to shove things off the conveyor belt as though they are the last crumbs from the spout of a two pound box of Pepperidge farm goldfish tumbling forth into the wreckage of my mouth.
Numerous stores are available to choose from through Shipt and other services like it, with products ranging from food and booze to fashion and fitness. I imagine these drivers have regular customers who they get to know somewhat intimately while never meeting them personally, since most drop offs are contactless. There is surely, for example, the someone who drinks too much. And the someone who only eats frozen pizzas. There’s the someone who has a great sex life (we hate that someone). And the someone whose sex life has paid off with a frequently pooping baby.
On a larger scale, that window my Shipt shopper is able to gaze through upon my life or yours is not unlike the window that the online marketplace uses to track our every search, interest, and purchase. They are like Christy in that sense, but while Christy may come to passively perceive, Big Data actively algorithms their insights with perhaps more nefarious intent. And without the cool hair.
Sooner or later, Christy could probably begin shopping for me without me even having to place an order, knowing in advance that it was time again for a two-pound box of goldfish, another frozen pizza. Though I suppose there’s nothing like an unexpected case of Covid to keep her guessing.
Quote of the day: “I feel as though I’ve had one foot in the grave since the day I was born. A sentimentality for all things past, coupled with a simultaneous lament for a future that I know cannot possibly live up to the longing I feel for it in a present I’m not particularly fond of anyway.” –Adam Overland (this is my blog, after all).
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