Shipt Wrecked

Sometimes, things seem great.  Sometimes, things seem to be worth the cost.  Sometimes, things make you think "Well, technology, you're becoming more worthwhile in my life." 

SHIPT.  You did seem great.  You did seem to be worth the cost (and perhaps then some).  You did make me reconsider my on-again-off-again love affair with technology (mostly off-again...seriously, I try to get over you and you keep hanging around and hanging around and making me think twice/thrice/fourthice about how much I should love you.

But Shipt...you bite.  Big time.

First blush - $100 a year to have someone else pick up my groceries for me and then deliver them to me?!?  I'm just about as cheap as they come with new-fangeled doo-hickies and thing-a-ma-bobs, but this seems like moolah well spent. 

We be cheap around this here place.  I do not own/use a smart phone.  The boy does not own/use a smart phone.  I hear that there's a new one coming out.  $1000.  That (doesn't) make sense.

Second blush - My new grocery store situation has expanded by a couple of possibilities, none of which are regularly not busy.  And, I don't have the luxury of much kid-free time to stroll happily up & down the aisles in my pixie chinos & wedges like one might see in a happy-camper advertisement.  My kids enjoy racing the shopping cart up and down the toothpaste aisles, talking LOUDLY even if I'm standing right behind them, and engaging in games of we'll-pretend-that-Mommy-can't-see-us.  I maybe pretended that they weren't my children and calmly went to the frozen section & found 2 pints of ice cream just this week.  Hypothetically speaking.  Basically, it's a bit of a hassle to take them, and we're a 1-small, 1-medium trips a week kind of family now.

Third blush - The price went down a few weeks ago.  Really down.  Like 50% down.  And I signed up.  I'ma never gonna take those kids to that place again, at least for a year while someone else endures the struggle for me.

Fourth blush - I hated it.  I hated the mark-ups on just about everything (1-lb. of grapes for $14? a box of basic Puffs for $2.49?)  I hated the limited selection (for the love of a bag of organic carrots...I know they're lurking somewhere!).  I hated the time it took me to scroll endlessly through too much I'm-never-going-to-buy-this stuff in order to find the 1 kind of yogurt that I want.  I figure that the time spent scrolling would go down the more I used the service and could just reference back against my previous orders.  Admittedly, I like that part.  But it took a s-w-e-e-t forever to get my $35 order when factoring in cost & actual want/need.  Even taking my children with me, I can do that quicker.

Fifth blush - Hidden costs are for the birds.  I didn't know that there would be mark-ups.  Silly me to think that once I paid for a service, I would then pay the cost that the brick & mortar store charges.  And for someone who has never had pizza delivered and who almost never tips when it is optional because seriously, a $35 haircut doesn't need to have an additional charge, I did not see the tipping of the Shipt person coming.  That was it for me.

I had it for about 48-hours.  I made one order with it.  I like it in theory, and I think that there are other slightly different services that may be more worth my time/money, but this one just is NOT.  But, the person I talked with via live chat on a Sunday afternoon was lovely and refunded the service fee without question.

Props to those who are making these grocery services work.  Back when I was a teenager and helping my grandparents with their grocery shopping, I had a couple of thoughts about how cool this kind of a personalized grocery shopper could be.  But gag.  If this is the best it can be...pass.  

Update: The Job

I’m actually typing this in an email to myself while eating cucumbers, cheese & hummus at my desk.  That’s my kinda mid-day break.

There might be crackers happening soon.

There will probably be coffee.  Actually…I’m going to make some.  BRB (as the kids say)

So I’ve had something of a revelation: the electric kettle + pour over coffee maker combination.  My new full-time gig is at a place that is so big that it necessitates 7-minute passing periods.  That gives me more than enough time to brew a cup of coffee the slow way.  And because I’m an equal opportuni-tea beverage drinker, it makes it that much easier to have my daily cup of green (New Year’s resolution 2017 for the win!) as well.  But right now, I’m going dark.

It’s an in-class writing kind of day from start to finish, so I’m at my desk for a considerable chunk of time.  Which is good, ‘cause I’m getting a big hunk of work done.  Which is bad, said no one ever.

And here’s my Update: NEW JOB

It’s OK.  It feels normal to be back in the daily grind.  It feels good to have some consistency to hold onto.  It feels GREAT not to have to coordinate 3-5 weeknights where I have class and the boy has meets or practice.  

The 2 biggest changes happen at the bookend parts of each day.  It’s a logistical dance getting everyone ready and out the door by 6:45 in the morning. Our girls are big breakfast eaters, which can drag onnnn interminably if we let it.  There’s still too much of the “C’mon, we gotta go!”  So I’m working on that.  But all told, they’re doing g-r-e-a-t, beyond my expectations of what it was going to be like.  I’m still shuddering in anticipation of the LONG and DARKER than DARK winter months when sluggish attitudes prevail and tempers are snappy.  I haven’t been able to figure out how to flex schedule the three darkest months of the year so that I teach virtually from, say, Bali.  I’m working on it.

The boy is doing the drive right now back to his one & only teaching job.  The truest shame in this is not that I’m solely in charge of before/after school shuttling, or that I’m the one who is rushing around every morning making sure that 2 littles are set & ready, or even that we’re putting miles upon miles on our car (again).  NO M’AAM/SIR.  The boy drives MY car now everyday because it’s considerably cheaper at the pump for that daily mileage.  

The thing is, we upgraded when buying this car because I was driving so much and because we went cheaper on a previous car that we bought for me.  That car is absolutely fine, but it turns out, we really believe that paying a little more to have some of the perks is definitely worth it given how much we drive.  And now, I’m back with that base model purchase, and I miss my whip dearly.   

 

BUT.  So it goes.  That's just the cost of doing business, so to speak.  It's like how my running is down to about 1/3 of what it used to be - just enough to help not gain back any pounds, I hope.  I don't have a normal treadmill-TV combo anymore (which, frankly, IS what I prefer), so I've been pounding the neighborhood pavement.  And it's s-o-o-o boring, just me and the sound of my feet with the occasional whiff of a neighbor's grill.  I don't know how you other 99% do it.  I've tried the earphone thing a few times before on early morning runs when the only thing on TV includes infomercials and the morning news (which is more aptly the morning weather-update-commercial-commerical-commercial-more-weather-update-small-puffy-news-piece).  So I do miss the ability to just take off for 30 or 45 minutes and veg out with some mindless home makeover shmarm.  

 

And it's Friday, which means that anything else I really have to say is skewed by the wierdness that is the end of a workweek (even a short one).  Cheers to the weekend and some grading.  May there be a big cup of coffee and a brownie in it somewhere.