There’s a running theory amongst Instacart customers that male Instacart shoppers are inferior to their non-male counterparts.
Those who believe this theory cite negative experiences with male Instacart drivers, saying that they will claim items are out of stock when they’re not or that they will make odd replacements. For example, one user claimed that their male Instacart driver sent a photo to prove that an item was not in stock—only for the user to see the item in question in the photo. Another alleged that their male shopper substituted an onion for a green apple.
However, few stories come close to the one recently shared by TikTok user Carmen (@carmellanthony). In a video with over 123,000 views, Carmen stitches with another video to claim that her Instacart shopper brought her two loose chicken breasts.
“The chicken breast that I ordered was brought to me like this,” she says, showing raw chicken breasts lying atop other grocery items. “When I tell you I was in shock — like, I don’t even know how this is possible. Just fully spread out all over the other groceries.”
@carmellanthony male insta cart shoppers could not care any less like i was in tears 😭😭😭 #fyp #greenscreenvideo ♬ original sound – BIG C
It would have been difficult or near impossible for the Instacart shopper to not be aware of this issue, Carmen says.
“I know he had to have seen it because the bag wasn’t tied up,” she details. “The audacity was actually astounding.”
She closes the video by saying that incidents like these are one of the reasons why she does not use Instacart often.
At first, some commenters speculated about how something like this could have happened.
“He absolutely bought a bigger package and just pulled out two for you, and kept the rest,” stated a user. “They were not bagged like this in the store lol.”
However, others were simply content to list their own experiences with male Instacart shoppers.
“I had a male shopper and I ordered 5lbs of cat food his substitute was 20lbs of dog food,” recalled a user.
“Tell me why this man tried telling me WALMART didn’t have GARLIC,” added another.
“A guy once said there no white bread at Aldi,” offered a third. “There was a whole bread aisle I said look again.”
“I once had a man replace an apple with a jar of pickles!” exclaimed a further TikToker. “Not another type of apple, not another fruit, PICKLES.”
That said, others quickly countered with their own, positive experiences.
“My husband did insta shopping before our baby was born, and he got 5 stars just cause he bagged properly,” said a commenter. “Like, it’s not hard.”
“I was nervous today but My male instacart shopper was top tier,” shared a second. “He held the flour in his hand so it wouldn’t get wet in the bag. Had to add extra tip.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Instacart and Carmen via email.
Update 12:11pm CT September 11: In an email to the Daily Dot, Carmen says that Instacart worked to resolve the issue.
“Instacart did end up refunding me for the all of the items affected following the video,” she detailed. “Their customer care team was pretty understanding about the situation.”
As for how it happened, Carmen isn’t sure.
“I have no clue how the order got delivered in that state – I do remember the day of the order it took me forever to get the delivery. It was brought to me past that selected delivery window, so maybe the driver was in a rush with a bunch of other orders and was being careless,” she stated. “I’ve never known a grocery store to hand over meat in that state so I’m not too sure how the driver got from point A to point B with the chicken just out like that.”
“I’ve had some annoying delivery experiences like getting dandelion root instead of spinach or a cucumbers instead of zucchini, etc. — NOTHING this extreme,” she continued. “This one was beyond me. I try not to use delivery too frequently to avoid getting poor quality product or the incorrect thing, and ya, after this I will be doing my own grocery shopping.”
