Personal Grocery Shopper

Amidst the chaos of Spring and Summer 2020, I found some normalcy. When colleges began sending students home for the semester, I went home to Tennessee and found I had extra time on my hands and I wanted that time to mean something. While others might have been binge-watching Netflix, I put on my mask and grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer, and went to the grocery store. It may sound like an odd job, but it was meaningful to me because I found a job shopping for and delivering groceries to those who were not comfortable going out into the unknown with the potential for exposure to COVID-19. I absolutely loved working for Instacart. I communicated with the customer to let them know what items were out of stock in order to find suitable replacements and made sure that every customers’ needs were met before I marked the order as complete. I maintained my 5-star rating through my attention to detail and patience. To progress, I took certifications to be able to shop for orders with restricted items such as alcohol or prescriptions. After a day of shopping, I would input all of the statistics from the orders such as mileage, stores, base pay, tips, and hours worked. I developed an excel spreadsheet to help calculate my efficiency and which stores were most profitable for shopping. Adding my touch of optimization and spreadsheets is what I love doing and part of what made this job so enjoyable during such unpredictable times.