Virtual Groceries

Virtual Groceries

March 31, 2020

Our big box store in the area is offering safe zones for senior shopping.  If I get up early, I can shop with all the other seniors from 7-9 am on Tuesday and Thursday.  That’s on top of the store being located a half an hour away.  Let me be honest, I’m not much of a morning person.  I can get up early if I need to but since I retired, I prefer to sleep late and even stay in bed playing on my phone after I wake.  I knew to really beat the senior rush I’d need to be there as soon as possible to the stores early open hours.  That meant I would need to wake at six am (I know, I can hear some of you saying, Poor Baby!) in order to get ready and drive to the store by seven.  Although I wasn’t looking forward to the hours, I told Melissa I was prepared to make the sacrifice so we could get the needed supplies.

Melissa knows my habits and how I feel about rising early.  She went on-line and began to search for possible ways to get our supplies that didn’t force me to get up.  When she opened the site to the box store, she found you can order and pay for most of your needs on-line.  They even bring them out to your car.  Only a few of the items we wanted were restricted to in-store only, and that was due to demand.  What we couldn’t or didn’t want to get from this store was available locally and again the local market had started on-line shopping and pickup several months ago.  It all sounded too easy to be true.

We did run into a snag with on-line grocery shopping.  After Melissa made her selection for the items wanted, she tried to enter her order.  The web site told her the purchase was unavailable.  It seems the store only had a limited number of people per day that could be shopped for and picked up.  That made sense as someone else had to run around the store and shop for all the items we had ordered virtually. Even though she was driving to the store and never leaving the car, she was still forced to stand in line. Melissa logged onto the site at midnight to avoid the crowd and order our groceries for tomorrow. She told me nobody else had scheduled a pickup and we could have gotten the first pickup at eight in the morning.  Thankfully she scheduled for eleven.

THOUGHTS:  Retailers and groceries are not only staying open while most of their customers stay home, they are also finding innovative ways to keep safe while supplying essential services.  I realize making me feel safe is good for business, but it still means making accommodations to serve my needs.  It causes me to stop and thank not only the business owners, but also the countless workers.