Instacaptured

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for deals, I can tell you I have no control over tariffs, but I have a very particular set of skills.

Skills I have acquired over a brief career in the grocery game. If you let my family go, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you; I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for your goods, find them, and I will deliver. You'll never see it coming.

Except, you will, because GPS is built into the app."

It started like any regular batch. The order came in on my Instacart app, and I accepted it immediately. Seemed simple enough. A regular grocery list with one exception.

A private message was attached to the purchase.

"We have your family. Get the grocery order within thirty minutes, or they're goners."

Maybe it was the use of the old-timey word "goners," or that life was getting a little dull, but I immediately accepted the message as truth.

My brain began reeling with calculations on how quickly I must arrive at the Walmart to start shopping.

Two trains are driving toward one another. The first train leaves Edmonton at 5 a.m., travelling 40 km per hour. The second train leaves Calgary at 7 a.m., travelling 30 km per hour. The distance between Edmonton and Calgary is 281 kilometres. What is the EXACT time that the collision will occur?

Trick question! There won't be a collision because there are rail traffic control officers for that sort of thing.

Jesus, I'm on fire today!

Now, back to my calculations about this grocery order.

It's good that the Walmart is only 2 minutes away from my house because that math problem ate up a good chunk of time. I am terrible at math.

Running into the great belly of the beast, I grabbed a shopping cart and began my quest. 14 items, 24 minutes.

It was going to be tight.

The produce section was simple, two cucumbers, Granny Smith apples, a turnup (wtf?), white onions, and a bunch of bananas. I can pick that shit out in my sleep, bitch.  

Great Value brown bread (that's going to be tough to pack in a hurry), a package of Italian hot sausages, a package of Great Value bacon, a flat of eggs, 4L milk, 500mls of plain yogurt—these people are psychopaths, that much is clear.

But wait, there's more!

Harvest Crunch Raisin and Oats granola.

The Walmart was out of Harvest Crunch Raisin and Oats granola!

"Where is your Harvest Crunch Raisin and Oats granola?" I demanded, approaching a store rep. The boy looked like an unkempt Chris Hemsworth but had no Thor-like qualities as he stared dumbly at me.

"Now is not the time for dick measuring, Hemsworth! Answer the question—I've got a batch order to complete!"

"Uhhhh, I dunno, I guess if it's not on the shelf, we don't have it."

I grabbed his little blue vest, pulled his chiselled face close to mine and menacingly whispered, "You either give me what I need, or I dump this 4L of homogenized milk all over your freshly mopped floor."

"I think I might have seen one in my go-back cart."

I didn't wait for the dullard to dig it out. Instead, I dove into the goods and fished it out myself.

And then I was back on track. The last item on the list? Cat food.

"Get outta my way! Move! This Meow Mix I WILL deliver!"

"No running in the store, Ma'am," an indignant employee chirped.

"One push of a button, and I can have 38 Instacarters here to help me with this order," it was a bluff; of course, we Instacart shoppers are all archenemies vying for the same batch orders streaming into the app. But these people didn't know that.

With the 48-pack of salmon and chicken stew snuggled neatly in my cart, I raced to the self-checkout. It was then that I realized I hadn't been scanning the bar codes of the items as I was picking them up. The app would register the order as incomplete without those scans!

So I ran, and I scanned.

Tossing the items into the air while snapping pics of each barcode with the scanner app on my phone was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

Once at the checkout, I rung those suckers through with the scanner gun and popped off the lot of them in no time flat. With raw meats in one bag, eggs in another and bread neatly placed on top, I darted out the automatic doors and headed for my car.

I had 3 minutes to arrive at my delivery destination.

At one point, I found myself soaring over a construction site in my Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Jeep. Adventure is out there. Go find it.

The GPS navigator told me to veer left, but I went right. Not because I knew better but because I'm terrible at following directions.

Finally, my mark was in sight. I screeched to a halt on the front lawn, grabbed the bags from the passenger seat and started pounding on the front door.

17 seconds to spare.

The customers, two stoner kids with bloodshot eyes and bedhead hair, laughed when they opened the door to find a middle-aged woman dripping in sweat and anxiety, laden with groceries because I ain't no two-trip kind of woman.

"Duuuude, we were totally kidding when we said we had your family! You really nailed it with the timing, though. Congrats, man."

A hotter-headed Instacart professional would be angry for such a prank, but not me. The kids gave me a top-notch rating, and as I looked back at the smouldering rubble I left in my wake, I realized the experience taught me how to really get shit done while on the job.

Totally worth it.