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Grocery Shopping Inconveniently

Convenience. I remember when stores like Wal-Mart and Target and Sam’s Club started making parking spaces for drive-up order pick-up only. How often will that parking actually get used for that purpose? I wondered. In fact, when my husband and I would go to stores with those specially designated spots, we often noticed how much they weren’t being used. All those parking spaces up close to the building, in some cases they even had a special overhang built to… I don’t know… maybe protect store employees from inclement weather while putting groceries in customer’s vehicles? I never really asked.

Spending time to shop online to then go and pick up your groceries at the store didn’t make a lot of sense to me. How do you really save time? You still have to shop, compare prices, search for preferred brands, put them in your cart, review your order, and pay the bill. It always seemed easier to spend that time at the store. Half the time I’m not necessarily picky about brand or type. I just know if I want a salad, I need to look for lettuce, spinach, or a variety of greens, tomatoes, carrots, maybe cucumbers, mushrooms and other produce that can entirely vary depending on what looks freshest that day. I can’t determine that online.

Today I decided to venture the online grocery shopping arena in an attempt to avoid public spaces as much as possible. It seemed like a better way to get my groceries with the least amount of human contact. Since I shop at Target frequently, I went to their website to see what options were available to me. They offered same-day delivery and next-day pick-up for grocery items. Next-day pick-up seemed like the best option because then I wouldn’t have to pay the shipping or join their “Shipt” club….after a simple four-week trial period a $99 annual charge would be added to my account unless I remembered to cancel within the trial period time-frame. I hate paying delivery fees and avoid it whenever possible. Next-day pick-up it is.

I start thinking of items I needed: milk, bananas, bread, yogurt, cheese… searching options for size and brand, etc. None of these items can be purchased for the next-day pick-up option. (sigh) Okay, fine. I’ll try this delivery thing and hopefully remember to cancel the trial-delivery-club-thing within four weeks. After spending more than an hour selecting non-perishable food items for next-day pick-up and perishable food items for same-day delivery, I attempted to checkout.

Apparently you can’t do both types of purchases in the same shopping cart, so I saved the perishable items for later to run a separate transaction, paid for the next-day pick-up order, went back to the saved items and loaded them back into my cart, and attempted to checkout again. However, the minimum order for same-day delivery was $35. I needed to spend $4 more in order to place this order. Okay. I went and found another perishable food item that could be added to my cart, attempted to check out… No delivery slots available for today or tomorrow. Try again another time. (sigh) 

I think I’ll just go to Target tomorrow.