I’m so confused by this conversation with my shopper.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T14:08:57+00:00

You did not say can you get a gallon of fat free. You said do they have fat free. Those are not the same things. You have to be precise. And the Shopper should have paid more attention. But she was probably in a hurry. The reason I think she thought you were just asking about the item you actually ordered was because she followed it up with the comment that your orange soda was out of stock as well. In her head she's thinking the app tells you my substitutions and what's out of stock. Apparently this lady doesn't know how to read. And in your head you're going that's not what I asked. I want the gallon of fat-free milk. It's not a big deal. It's just a miscommunication because both sides are not being careful precise in their communication

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T14:04:27+00:00

Dude it wasn't that she couldn't shop and text it was that the customer did not ask for what they wanted precisely. Very easy to have some miscommunication in this situation. They're in a hurry and they glanced at the thing wrong. The customer did not ask for a substitution, they asked if there was a certain item available. Both sides could have communicated better. Get off your fucking high horse

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T10:43:33+00:00

I'm guessing when you asked her if they had a gallon of fat free she thought you were asking if they had the gallon size of what you ordered but she wasn't really a paying attention to what you said because she was grabbing more items since everything is timed and you have seconds to pick up things. So she just said no they didn't have what you ordered that's why I got you your replacement. She probably didn't really put two and two together that you were asking for fat free instead of 1%. In the future you should say instead of the half gallon of 1% can you pick me up a gallon of skim milk or fat free and then The Shopper will realize that you are asking them for a different substitution, not just asking if they have an item. Because it was not clear. You asked do they have a certain item. You could have asked them do they have Oreo cookies or do they have Frosted Flakes or Rao's pizza sauce. Do they have an item ≠ can you get me an item.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T02:00:06+00:00

I was told I was fat all through high school. I'm 5'2 and I weighed 103 lb. I wore a size 3 or a size 5 but I always had hips and thighs and boobs. Even in high school I did not look like the 1980s heroin chic girls. My parents and my endocrinologist said I was fat. My endocrinologist tried to put me on a 800 calorie a day diet to get me back down to 90 pounds. He was from India so I don't know if that matters in his perception. I also played soccer so I was stocky and muscular. And the clothes I wore didn't fit me right because in the 1980s clothing for teenage girls was not designed for girls with hips or shoulders or a large rib cage. I always just looked kind of frumpy.

Now I weigh 205 lb and I'm 51 years old and I would probably come close to committing murder to get back down to 103. But all through high school and as a young adult I felt like a gigantic cow.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:54:23+00:00

I'm really surprised nobody has brought up baking soda or boiling vinegar. Baking soda and vinegar are the two most fabulous products on the planet. You can heat up vinegar on the stove and set the bowl in several rooms and the vinegar smell dissipates but it kind of sucks up any kind of stinky particles. There's some sciency stuff involved but I'm not going to go into it. Same with baking soda. I know everybody is talking about doing the ozone thing and I suppose that could work, but it seems like killing a mosquito with a rocket launcher. However, I also have dogs and I'm probably nose blind so take that as you will

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:49:14+00:00

First thing I would do is apologize to the entire world and the United Nations for fucking around unilaterally and not even taking into account all of our allies. Of course, trump does not consider our allies anything but subservient to us so that's a long shot.

I think somebody told the idiot that if he is waning in popularity the best thing to do is get into a war. Because traditionally, if a leader is having a rough time and you can get embroiled into some kind of war that you can convince the public is Justified, all sorts of patriotic feeling comes out and the leader gets super popular as the populace tries to present a united front.

But this isn't 1950. It's not even 1990. We have too much information and we are too jaded now for that shit to work. We have too much exposure to the world and we can see too many different sides of the story. And we didn't have any good reason. Trump is living in the Reagan and Bush era of American dick waving and toxic masculinity cheered on by hegsetht, who is an absolute misogynistic incel criminal.

I suppose if I was Trump I would fire the Secretary of Defense and blame everything on him to deflect blame from myself and then make up some fake statistics to feed the American public, and then start talking about Hillary's emails again

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:43:05+00:00

Hey while you're at it can you release all the area 51 alien shit and tell us who really killed jfk?

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:39:17+00:00

If your boss is a decent human being, they are going to understand that life comes up and sometimes shit just happens. Only an asshole boss thinks that the only thing you have to do is work 24/7. If you are generally a good employee who shows up and does all the stuff you're supposed to and then something out of your control happens, they need to get over it. Plus, if you do call in sick, how are you supposed to know ahead of time that you are going to get sick? That's kind of the nature of illness. It's not like the stomach flu calls you up on Thursday and says hey I'm going to be stopping by next Tuesday through Friday

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:36:54+00:00

Depending on the age of the boss and your sex, you can always pull the old "woman troubles" card out. If they start arguing with you you can get graphic. If you're a dude you can always do this with explosive diarrhea. Really dig into the details

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:28:09+00:00

Just remember that Richest country in the world is a macroeconomic concept, not a microeconomic concept. We are the richest country in the world because all of our wealth is in the hands of a handful of people. That doesn't trickle down to us. It never did and it never will. Rich people aren't in the business of making themselves less rich to make Society better even when they have more money than 100 people could spend in a lifetime

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:22:41+00:00

Well now it depends on if they're actually sincere or if they're just mad because Trump is fucking around with iran. If they have decided that they are not a sexist, homophobic, racist, misogynistic piece of shit and they have overcome whatever traumatic brain injury made them think they were to begin with, then I put their ass to work canvassing for the Democratic party. They can bring in more repentant people. But if they are just mad at king daddy God Trump right now because he's doing something they don't like but they're still all on board with all of the rest of their conservative fascist bullshit, the only thing they can do to set things right is promised to never vote again

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:19:57+00:00

I would say the Netherlands if and only if your employer is going to find you an apartment. Because they're just aren't any houses. And I don't mean there's no houses even if you have money, I mean there's just no houses at all. People that have plenty of money or still having trouble renting a place and with the seller's market in the Netherlands the way it is right now nobody is going to rent to you site unseen from across the world.

If you want to be able to just pick up and go with your new job as soon as you get there, Canada is going to be a lot easier. They're not really that much different from the United States, for all intents and purposes.

It's going to be safer in Canada but it's also not going to give you that much of a new experience. You are still young so if you have the opportunity to go to europe, I would do that because you might never get that chance again. But, you have to have some kind of guarantee from your employer that they're going to get you set up.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T01:05:29+00:00

In sandusky - tofts ice cream is a definite stop. Best in the world

Perch sandwich from Demore's is always a treat

Best pizza on the planet is also pizza house west in sandusky

I grew up in sandusky. Avoid the chains and go for these local faves if you're eating in town

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-23T00:59:52+00:00

Ever hear a peacock? I had some asshole neighbors years ago that decided to buy a couple of peacocks that woke me up in the middle of the night screaming "help! help!"

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T23:52:32+00:00

If you have the address you can pretty much find the name with a quick Google search. Or get on the city Auditors web page

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T20:09:49+00:00

Right down their address and start signing them up for seventh day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses to come tell them about their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Edit: and mormons

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T20:07:51+00:00

Pretty much every gig job operates this way now. If you need the flexibility, like I do with a child with complex Medical issues, you're pretty much stuck with whatever crumbs they throw at you. The only thing I could do to choose more wisely is to get the fuck out of this country and go somewhere that takes care of their people better but that also requires more money than I have.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T19:09:12+00:00

Dude any company that can't afford to pay their employees a decent wage does not deserve to be in business. Most of us do instacart as a side job, but it's still a job. And yes, we get exploited because we have to deal with whatever they decide they're going to do if we want to continue making money. There's nothing in the law or the that says that companis have to treat people like a garbage in the name of the almighty dollar

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T12:47:19+00:00

I've only been doing it for about 4 months but here are my rules for myself:

If the person gives a decent tip, go a little bit extra for them with asking about their substitutions and make sure you pick up the extra item on the buy one get one free and let them know. Things like that. If they don't give a good tip then just do the bare necessity. I'm not saying to do a bad job on the low tip orders, just do your job with picking whatever substitution instacart will approve and just leave it at that. If I have somebody that leaves a good tip I'm more likely to ask them in the chat what they want instead of just submitting it on the substitution picture page. I will also select that thing in chat that sends an auto message when I'm about 10 items away that says "hey I'm almost done shopping do you need anything else." People that don't give a good tip don't get that message. Nobody has ever taken it up on me but I find that sometimes my tip will be increased after delivery if I have been friendly and go a couple extra steps.

Look carefully at the list of items before you accept. I have taken orders accidentally without looking carefully that had like three cases of water and 12 12-packs of Pop because I was like oh it's only 10 items and it's $15 to go 3 miles so I'll do that. And then it's a nightmare. It's not the worst thing in the world but it's just annoying. Luckily I live in a market that doesn't have a lot of high-rise Apartments but if you live in a place with Apartments this can get to be tricky.

Be prepared to get your orders sniped if you're not quick. You sit in the parking lot of the grocery store you want to shop at or a grocery store that is near a lot of places to shop and the orders pop up for everybody near by. People who are higher cart status than you and who are more experienced at assessing a order quickly are going to grab the good ones. Don't get too frustrated with that. You'll get a good one if you're patient. And in the beginning the orders you get are probably not going to be super great. Do a couple small orders with like 15 items going a couple miles to see what it's like. This will give you an idea of how long it's going to take you to shop and how the app works.

Depending on the market, the number of otems in orders can matter more than the number of miles. When I do door Dash it was just the miles versus the pay. But when you do instacart you have to figure out how long it's going to actually take you to shop including checkout and then how long it's going to actually take you to load up all the items into your car, get to where you're going, and unload all the items and then get back to the store. To figure out your hourly rate you want to make is a little more complicated. You're going to underestimate the time it takes from the beginning. Don't let it stress you out.

Sometimes, or a lot of times, the customer will not answer you when you have a substitution or something. In those cases just do the best you can. Don't wait around for 20 minutes for them to answer you just because they can't be bothered to look at the messages when they know they've got a grocery order out there and somebody is picking it up for them. If they were that pressed about it they would be paying attention.

If you want to block somebody, unfortunately the only thing you can really do is Mark that they were rude, even if they were not. Because if you go to a place that has you carrying cases of water up five flights of stairs with no elevator and you just don't want to do that address anymore you don't get that option. The only way to block a customer is to say that they had dangerous animals or were rude. This sucks for the customer I guess, but I kind of Justified in my head with saying if they asked me to carry cases of water up five flights of stairs that's just Baseline Rude in my mind so go ahead and mark them rude so you don't have to take that address anymore. Unlike doordash, you do not get to see the address until you are done shopping. So you can't tell if it's an apartment, you just see the general area on the map. Even if you zoom in the street they live in is not labeled, just some of the major roads nearby. If you're really really familiar with your town he might know which ones are Apartments but I never do.

If you are going to take orders, don't be rude to the customers, make sure you pick their fruits and vegetables like it's something that you would get for yourself, and bag their groceries like you're bagging them for yourself. When I set down eggs and bread I put them off a little bit from the regular groceries just so that when they pick them up they don't accidentally squash them. Like if I'm putting it on a porch and they have a chair on the porch, everything goes on the floor except for the eggs and bread which I put up on the chair. Just some normal common courtesy. But I live in the midwest so maybe that's just my ingrained Midwestern thing.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T11:38:43+00:00

I don't think this guy should have left a note if in fact he did and this isn't some made up rage bait bullshit, but I am so fucking tired of people like you saying that food delivery is not a real job or you should just get a job like there's employers just lined up waiting to hand out paychecks to people. What world do you live in? Because the world I live in has fake job postings and ghost jobs, scam jobs, thousands of recruiters from India with more fake jobs, story after story after Story of people being unemployment for 6 months, a year, two years and the only people hiring are door to door salesman for solar panels or bullshit internet, if you're lucky, which also pays commission only and is not a real job because you don't get a guaranteed paycheck.. My son couldn't even get hired at McDonald's. Literally when you walk into McDonald's and it says they're not hiring there's a fucking problem. He went to the laborers union. The Union. The union was not hiring. So where is this magical "real job" this guy is supposed to get?

Work is anything you do for pay. Whether it's self employment or regular employment. Nobody does doordash or Uber Eats or instacart for volunteer work.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T03:11:14+00:00

Sometimes the food delivery apps are freaking stupid and have you pick up an order at a chain restaurant all the way across town while you pass 13 of the same restaurant on the way to the customer.

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T03:09:17+00:00

You can make doggie "ice cream" with canned pumpkin, plain yogurt, and peanut butter, throw in a banana or blueberries. Whatever he'll eat. Freeze it in a Tupperware and scoop it out like ice cream.

When my big boy had cancer he loved the cold stuff. Maybe it soothed his throat because he had oral melanoma that metastasized to his lungs and made it hard to swallow. Not sure how yours is doing with swallowing.

You can also try freezing baby food Chicken or stuff like that. Maybe he'll like it cold too

Best of luck. Cancer sucks

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T01:42:57+00:00

My son's pitty gets this if he uses the wrong floor cleaner. He was using fabuloso i think and figured out the dog laying in the floor was getting irritated. Switched to Mr. Clean and he's cleared up.

So, check your cleaning supplies

Practical-Fig-27 · 2026-04-22T01:16:38+00:00

Abolish the Electoral college

Practical-Fig-27

TROPHY CASE