Food recalls have seemed to be on the up lately with McDonald’s Quarter Pounders’ E. coli outbreak and the USDA’s 300-page recall document for possible listeria contamination. So, what does this TikToker do when a customer’s Instacart receipt lists numerous recall notices?
Emma Jane (or @emmabobemmafeefifofemma3) posted a TikTok on Oct. 27 after finishing an Instacart order at a Ralph’s grocery store in San Luis Obispo, California. At this time, her video has over 4,000 views.
Why did this Instacart shopper give her customer part of the receipt?
“I’m an Instacart shopper and I just did my first batch of the day, and I got the longest receipt I’ve ever received,” Emma begins her video. She pulls up the receipt to show the camera and repeats “recall notice” as she reads down the list.
She then explains her problem. “Now, Instacart does not want us to give customers their paper receipts because you pay more per item over Instacart than you do in the store and they don’t want you to see that.”
Instacart’s prices typically vary from in-store prices, and shoppers are instructed to leave receipts out, per Instacart’s document site.
So, Emma removes the itemized list and leaves the customer with the list of recall notices. She tears off the top of the receipt and folds the rest of the paper neatly as she speaks. “Why would I not give them recall notices for products that they just bought?” she explains.
“This has never happened to me,” Emma says. “In the five years I’ve done Instacart, never.”
Viewers voice their surprise
Commenters on Emma’s video shared her level of shock at the receipt length.
One wrote, “That’s a CVS level receipt. And so happy you gave them the recalls.”
Another said, “Is the entire receipt recalled?”
“It’s ridiculous that the store doesn’t take recalled items off the shelf….” a third commented, to which another person clarified, “They do, those are recall notices for items they had previously sold in that store.”
Have other Instacart receipts been full of recalls?
Emma is not the only person on TikTok to speak on these crazy long recall receipts. One customer, Ashley (@thereallash2), posted on Oct. 26 the lengthy recall list that the shopper left for her in her Instacart order from Kroger. Ashley’s video has received over 140,000 views.
In a follow-up video, Ashley clarifies to a concerned commenter that the recalled items on the receipt were not the items she bought. This sentiment is similar to what one commenter said on Emma’s video, which is that these receipts only list general recall notices.
Ralph’s, the grocery store that Emma visited, is a subsidiary of Kroger, the store from which Ashley ordered. This explains why both women received lengthy receipts as they probably list the same recalled items.
@emmabobemmafeefifofemma3 #recall #instacart #chickenrecall #taylorfarms ♬ original sound – EmmaJane
Should shoppers be concerned?
It may feel that recalls have been on the rise recently, but HuffPost explains that a greater number of recalls may mean that our detection methods have been more successful and, therefore, reliable in recent years.
Because food recalls are common, shoppers should review what the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report.
Some ways to stay updated are reading your grocery chain’s recall alerts, searching for specific products on the FDA’s website, reviewing public safety alerts on the USDA’s website, or signing up for the FDA’s recall subscription service.
The Daily Dot reached out to Emma via both TikTok comment and DM, as well as to Kroger via email for more information.
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