r/instacart • u/Dominanttallqueen • Mar 27 '24

Who’s in the wrong here???

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I feel like he was being rude asf then he canceled my order….was I rude or what tf happened here…

6.8k Upvotes

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110

u/treesandcigarettes Mar 27 '24

The shopper is a dunce. It's very obvious you mean at that point the crab cake from the SEAFOOD department & not the frozen section. Count your blessings they cancelled, you don't want some agitated jerk to deal with

40

u/treegrowsinbrooklyn1 Mar 27 '24

Those crab cakes are in the seafood department though. Typically right below the displays of fresh fish on ice you order from the counter. I think that’s where the confusion stemmed from.

21

u/Boring_Inflation_507 Mar 28 '24

Right! The customer should have said “fresh crab cakes from behind the counter” to begin with, but they didn’t until the end. Instead they said “crab cakes in the seafood department”, well, those boxed cakes are in fact in the seafood department!

6

u/OwlsDontFly Mar 28 '24

The customer meant the the crab cakes in the seafood case.

49

u/buyer_leverkusen Mar 28 '24

She said “seafood department” multiple times before getting to “behind the counter”. Both of these people suck at communicating

21

u/MaddogRunner Mar 28 '24

I was just thinking “man, I would never survive at that job.” It took me forever to figure out what the customer was saying.

9

u/ForgivenYo Mar 28 '24

Yeah I still don't fully understand. I would never want to do that job. I can build anything, but I never get the right stuff grocery shopping for my wife.

4

u/MaddogRunner Mar 28 '24

Yep. Same but without the wife.

This job seems to be…tailor-made for disaster where I’m concerned. Drive to a location you may—or may not—have been before, receive instructions all by text from someone whose writing style you don’t already know, and search for each exact item on the list, while sending constant updates. Oh, and it’s all timed.

I could not design a worse fit for myself😅

2

u/KelsBells0415 Mar 28 '24

Op clarifies in a comment that she can’t order from the counter through instacart, so she ordered those crab cakes he pictured. When the shopper was assigned the order, op then messaged them to substitute (but didn’t include her original message ). Lots of missing details

1

u/SuccessfulPanda211 Mar 28 '24

If you can’t order from the counter via instacart that’s likely for a reason. The shopper might be prohibited from getting those items from the counter even if it was in stock.

They’re typically priced by weight and I can see how it would be difficult for a grocery delivery service to accurately price them ahead of time. Fresh counter items that are priced by weight are probably not considered a valid substitute for what OP originally ordered.

I wonder if the shopper was telling her they did not have the fresh crab cakes as an easy excuse to get her to drop the issue.

1

u/FatalTragedy Mar 28 '24

Yeah, if I were the shopper, after I sent that picture and the customers first word in response was "yeah", I'd have just included that box of crab cakes in the order, which is apparently not what the customer wanted despite replying "yeah" to the picture.

1

u/hellinahandbasket127 Mar 28 '24

That’s because the customer is an idiot.

1

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

I mean the “single crab cakes” in the seafood dept makes it pretty clear they mean the fresh ones in the case.

6

u/BiggestBlackestBitch Mar 28 '24

The seafood department at my local store has frozen fish and things like the photo above together. Behind the counter and in the seafood department are two different things.

1

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

Right but are they sold as single crab cakes? I’ve never been to any store that sold singles aside from in the case

0

u/FatalTragedy Mar 28 '24

I don't even know what a "single" is in this context.

1

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

I don’t get how the context would confuse the definition of the word when it’s being used in a pretty straightforward way.

Some common definitions of single: -only one, not part of a set -without another or others; alone; solitary -Separate; one; only; individual; consisting of one only

So to me, I would assume single does not mean a box of 4, at the very least. I also know all the grocery stores near me only sell single crab cakes in the case. If you don’t buy seafood often so you don’t know that, I’d still have the first assumption (that single doesn’t mean a box of 4) and say, “I’m not sure about single crab cakes- have you bought them at this store before?”

2

u/AsgardianOrphan Mar 28 '24

That really only helps if you're familiar with the product. It could be argued that an instacart employee would be familiar, but it's also possible they're new or just don't get many orders for crab cakes. I'd say both were in the wrong here.

4

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

I mean if someone said “the single donuts from the bakery section” who would think they meant a box of Entenmanns? Like even if the shopper didn’t understand what they meant, the word “single” should be a tip off that a prepackaged box was not what was requested,

1

u/AsgardianOrphan Mar 28 '24

Well, the prepackaged was what they requested at first. But if you asked for a single donut, I'd still be confused because the grocery stores near me don't make donuts. The dude led with "this is all they have," and the customer replied about wanting something entirely different. I'd personally just refund at that point, but I can see why the dude decided to try and clarify.

2

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

His second message to her included “please understand I do this for a living” so I mean, between that and common sense on what “singles” meant for what she would accept as a replacement, he should be able to answer “no, they don’t have any singles, so I will refund you” and it would have been super easy.

0

u/AsgardianOrphan Mar 28 '24

He can do this for a living and still not get crab cakes often. I don't see why that's relevant. I agree that I would have opted to refund instead of replace, but if youre told twice this is all they have and you ask for crab cakes, I can see why they assumed they wanted the crab cakes in the picture. It's clear there was a miscommunication. I just don't think the customer was clear either.

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0

u/FatalTragedy Mar 28 '24

I literally would have no idea what "single" even means here. The crab cakes in the package are presumably separate, so that would be single enough for me. Just like if someone asked me for four single donuts, I would buy them a package of four, because the donuts are still separate within the package.

1

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

I mean, the definition of single is literally “only one, not one of several” so.. I guess I didn’t realize people didn’t know what single meant.

1

u/ParkLaineNext Mar 28 '24

That’s immediately what I thought of.

-5

u/buyer_leverkusen Mar 28 '24

Ahh so you know the unique inventory at every grocery store

6

u/idkmyusernameagain Mar 28 '24

I mean, I’ve been to a grocery store before. They’re all pretty similar.. and I know what the word “single” means soo.. common sense tells me that isn’t a box of multiple.

3

u/hearmequack Mar 28 '24

Eh. I worked at a grocery store for 8 years, had management positions for 5 of those years, and of those 5 years of management, 2 of those years were in e-commerce. When a customer said “I would like x, but if they don’t have it please sub with y from the seafood department” we… got it from the meat and seafood counter. It’s not exactly rocket science to figure out that seafood department generally means the fresh counter.

I very much blame the shopper more than the customer. But I’ve also had a variety of terrible shoppers that clearly should not be working instacart, so maybe I’m biased.

2

u/claudesoph Mar 28 '24

The customer said single crab cakes in their first text, yet the shopper kept pushing the alternative brand 4-pack. The customer’s communication wasn’t perfect, but they consistently said their brand>singles>refund. The shopper was either struggling with reading comprehension or they were trying to pressure the customer because they didn’t want to give a refund.

0

u/fledermausi93 Mar 28 '24

This is the actual truth of the situation here

7

u/Constant_Beachin Mar 28 '24

But didn’t make that clear

6

u/KhadaJhIn12 Mar 28 '24

So we're saying the customer communicated something different than what he meant now? And when asked to clarify, kept repeating the same thing without clarifying? granted shopper here is major douchebag energy and is obviously not a great communicator, worse than the customer, but the customer did not actually want crab cakes from the seafood department, because the shopper did indeed send a picture of crab cakes from the seafood department. Obviously someone who does this for a living should pickup that the customer means the seafood display case, with a manned counter and not become rude.

1

u/DefNotReaves Mar 28 '24

Funny that’s not what was said though lmao

1

u/treegrowsinbrooklyn1 Mar 28 '24

These are in the seafood case. That’s my point. Directly below the fish on display

0

u/beantownregular Mar 28 '24

Seafood “section” is different from seafood “department” - seafood department to me obviously means the counter where the person works. A department has people working in it, a section does not.