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My Virgin Experience #2: Grocery Delivery
You might have read the post about my virgin experience of pizza delivery. You would think it would have prepared us for our first adventure into grocery delivery. Not hardly.
We finally convinced ourselves that grocery shopping in a store with potential coronavirus zombies disguised as real human beings was not a good idea. Many people insisted that having our groceries selected and delivered by strangers made more sense. Since I am very picky about the food I buy, I was skeptical. Selecting raspberries that aren’t moldy or strawberries that are ripe at the end of the season are iffy propositions. But I finally relented.
Ordering online was actually fun. It took two of us to do it; we knew that Publix was likely to substitute our preferences with ghastly choices. But surprisingly we were promised almost everything we wanted. No toilet paper, of course, but we were well-stocked. At that point, our cart was full and we were notified that our groceries would arrive in the next four hours.
Now you need to understand, especially those of you who haven’t ventured into grocery delivery, that your cell phone and messaging app are critical to the success of this process. Yes, I am able to receive messages, but sometime in the past I stopped the annoying “ping” that came with every text, even though I rarely send or receive them.
Uh-oh.
Something made me glance at my phone and oh my gosh there was already a message! I clicked on the message icon, and Brenda had sent me a message already! I clicked on her message, and there was a link—what? I quickly clicked on the link, and there was a photo of a different almond milk than the Silk I’d requested—Blue Diamond! I hate Blue Diamond almond milk. So, I sent a text back telling her that.
Wrong.
I was supposed to either “approve” or “reject” the substitute.
Too late (I discovered later).
Suddenly, as I was peering down at my phone, another message appeared! The store didn’t have Dawn dishwashing soap. This time I pounded the Reject button. No way I was taking their substitute.
I finally realized I was going to get all kinds of undesirable products if I didn’t figure out how to put the “ping” back on my phone. As I searched my Sound Notifications, another message popped up! Oh no! I found out how to get my “ping” back, but then I realized that I had to respond rapidly to the messages.
Okay! Now I get it! This is like a game show! When the bell goes off, I’m supposed to race to my phone, find the button, pound it as fast as I can, and reject if I must! Woo-hoo! I won the prize behind door #1!
Ahem.
I also realized that I had to be able to be a fast draw, so I put my phone in my pocket. When the “ping” went off, I drew that phone out in record time and raced through the instructions! I must have cut 10 seconds off my GRT—Grocery Response Time. Now I was getting the hang of it.
I was exhausted.
Brenda showed up toting our groceries, and following the detailed instructions of @westernchauvinist, we sterilized our stuff. My husband was thrilled to learn that the store not only had his Tostito Corn Chips/Restaurant Style, but they had the Party Size! He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
So now we know the rules of the road. We are better prepared to have our groceries delivered, and have toned our shopping muscles.
Maybe I should try out for “The Price is Right?”
Published in General
@michaelkennedy, I know you worked as a doc in Mission Viejo. I was just thinking that my husband was diagnosed by a pulmonary doctor in MV. Did you by any chance know a doc named Tammelin? I think that was his name. Red hair, red beard. It would be funny if we shared an acquaintance!
I knew Bruce very well. He cared for my wife for a while as she has COPD and recurrent pneumonia. He finally suggested she go to an immunology guy in Mission Viejo who made the diagnosis of high IgE immunodeficiency.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27514600
We had many cases together. Not close friends socially. Good doc.
I knew Bruce very well. He cared for my wife for a while as she has COPD and recurrent pneumonia. He finally suggested she go to an immunology guy in Mission Viejo who made the diagnosis of high IgE immunodeficiency.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27514600
We had many cases together. Not close friends socially. Good doc.
More trouble saving a comment. Don’t know if it will appear.
I’ve been getting error messages when my comment does, in fact, get posted properly. False negative.
Small world!! I liked him, although we had a funny thing happen. He took stuff from Jerry’s lungs to test since he hadn’t been diagnosed yet. The tests came back that he showed a fungus from S.E Asia! Where he’d never been! So we knew it wasn’t that, and decided to just see what developed. Later I bumped into the doc–I was at the hospital for some reason–and told him that it must have been an incorrect test. He smiled and said it happens. (We decided it wasn’t worth re-testing.) Years later Jerry had the diagnosis of bronchiectasis. As you probably know, there’s no cure, no treatment and he won’t die from it; he’ll die of something else. But he’s a trooper about it. Just a LOT of coughing.
Yep. Me too.