Member-only story

I Ordered Groceries for Delivery… and Got Someone Else’s

COVID entered our home. The right grocery order did not.

Amanda Kay Oaks
6 min readJan 24, 2022
Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels

If there is one thing about adult life I savor, it’s grocery shopping. I adore roaming the aisles and picking up ingredients for the week’s recipes, spontaneously encountering new products or forgotten favorites as I peruse.

Since I moved in with him, my partner Andy and I go to the grocery together. I make the list, he cooks the meals. Like my dad, Andy likes to rush through the grocery as quickly as possible, whereas my default mode is a lazy meander. So our tandem trips are a bit less relaxing than my former solo shopper days, but still a valued weekly ritual.

Why am I telling you this? Because this past week, Andy and I tested positive for COVID, which meant we had to find another way to get food into the house.

Thankfully our symptoms were/are relatively mild, and we’re doing okay, all things considered. But the groceries, my friends. The groceries.

I know many people consider curbside pickup a luxury from which they will never turn back, but I’ve never really understood the appeal outside of necessity. Maybe I’m just too much of a control freak or maybe I just love random impulse snack acquisition too much, but I did not relish the idea of a grocery personal shopper.

Because we both felt poorly, I decided to have the groceries delivered rather than force one of us to venture out to pick up curbside. Because I don’t trust another human to shop appropriately for me, I opted only for the essentials.

The essentials being my favorite Nuun Immunity tablets, Gatorade, ketchup, potato smiles, and Morningstar Farms Buffalo Chik nuggets. Plus, you know, toilet paper and some food for Andy.

We’d ordered contact free Grubhub delivery for dinner the past few days, and I was excited to cook up my own food and get my hands on something to drink besides tea and water. Satisfied I had achieved peak pandemic adulting by ordering groceries, I continued my daily sick routine of DayQuil, Skyrim, nap, Dayquil.

What I did not know, because this fact was not readily available on the grocery chain’s website, was that my groceries would be delivered by…

--

--

Amanda Kay Oaks
Amanda Kay Oaks

Written by Amanda Kay Oaks

Pittsburgh-based writer & wearer of many metaphorical hats. Making words about books, pop culture, witchery, health, travel, and more! She/her.

Responses (11)

Write a response