Thread by @N7IRL

Given the number of people who've just started doing Instacart, I have a feeling Instacart probably really isn't going to feel much of an impact from people striking.

If people are apparently okay breaking TOS to use third-party apps, I don't think they care about solidarity.

What Instacart WILL end up feeling is the number of shoppers, both short term and long term, who quit working because the pay isn't worth the effort and it's especially not worth watching batches appear and then immediately disappear with barely a chance to accept one.

And they're going to feel the number of customers who stop shopping through them because of too many issues with shitty shoppers, most of whom are going to be from the waves of people who just started doing Instacart and are already pissing off store employees.

I don't know how much of the problem is people using these third-party apps to snag batches faster and how much is just new shoppers quickly grabbing whatever appears but it's aggravating watching this past week as it's been damn near impossible to get any batch at all.

I don't begrudge people newly finding themselves needing SOME way to make money and seeing Instacart as an option.

I do begrudge and actively hate anyone using anything other than their own reflexes to grab a batch when one is offered.

And it would be fucking great if there weren't so many new shoppers demonstrating zero interest in actually learning on the job.

I almost wish Instacart would set up a difficulty level for stores. Beginners get Safeway, Lucky, etc. Experts get HMart and other specialized stores.

You first start shopping, you get the batches that can be done fairly easily, at stores that are familiar.

Spend a while shopping, you get sent to the stores where half the stock isn't marked in English and there's 5 different ways of slicing one cut of beef.

Maybe then new shoppers wouldn't spend their entire time shopping asking employees to basically walk them through the entire list.

Though, it's probably wishful thinking to assume they'd not just do the same exact thing at Safeway.

Shopping for Instacart isn't the most difficult job one could do.

BUT.

There's a number of details that make the difference between a good shopper who reliably gets good ratings and shoppers who those good shoppers end up hearing complaints about.

It's not always clear how to decide between a replacement or a refund.

There's various details to consider in picking a replacement.

Some customers give good feedback that makes it easier, others never respond, yet others respond but need everything explained to them.

A good shopper is conscientious, communicates well, exercises good judgment, and knows when to go a bit above and beyond.

...Which a lot of the time it's hard to be motivated to do, considering Instacart's shitty pay rates.

And right now most people just need some way to be making SOME money.

Which lately has meant more times when there's more shoppers than there are customers.

And since Instacart fails at infrastructure, orders get throttled and that happens more often.

Customers are being made to wait because Instacart's servers can't handle too many orders at once.

Shoppers are being made to wait because those servers are also handling too many shoppers, many of whom are just sitting and refreshing the on-demand page.

Customers end up less happy, shoppers who've actually been trying to do a good job get increasingly frustrated, and the only people who are happy are the ones paying some weekly fee to get all the high value batches shunted their way so they can half-ass the shopping.

I don't know what Instacart plans to do about the third-party bullshit, especially since it seems like it's the same people being shut down and just popping up again with the same bullshit.

But they need to do something, or it's going to hurt them in the long run.