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“I’m Immediately Canceling The Order”: Woman Goes Viral For Not Wanting Male Instacart Shoppers Doing Her Order And Explaining Why
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“I’m Immediately Canceling The Order”: Woman Goes Viral For Not Wanting Male Instacart Shoppers Doing Her Order And Explaining Why

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Before the pandemic, the most common way of getting groceries was physically going to the supermarket. But because of quarantine and people needing to self-isolate, various online grocery stores became very popular and they maintained their popularity even after many of the restrictions were lifted as this way of shopping saves time and effort.

While the service is really convenient, TikTok user @_iamjamila had an interesting observation. She claims that if she sees that her shopper is male, she will cancel the order because in her experience, female shoppers are more thoughtful and provide a better service, but she was always disappointed if the shopper was a man.

More info: TikTok

Instacart customer cancels her orders if she sees that her shopper is a man because in her experience, they always mess up her order

Image credits: _iamjamila

Jamila is a recent graduate of Georgia State University and is trying herself out in different career fields. She is a writer, a content creator, a lifestyle YouTuber and blogger, the founder of Ring A Bell Productions and on top of that, she is also a mother.

On TikTok she has nearly 33k followers and as Jamila says in her bio, she “makes funny videos every now and then.” From time to time her videos go viral and recently one of them was viewed by 908k people and received 239k likes.

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Image credits: _iamjamila

As mentioned, during the pandemic, more people were forced to use online grocery shops because of either self-isolation or because they wanted to have as little contact with other people as possible.

The Nielsen COVID-19 Shopper Behavior Survey showed that 34 percent of the respondents “said they shopped for groceries online more since COVID-19, and 60 percent of these households reported planning to continue shopping online after COVID-19.”

Companies like Door-Dash, Instacart, and Postmates experienced huge growth during the pandemic. For example, Instacart hired 30,000 people from mid-March to mid-April 2020 to make sure they are able to take customers’ orders.

Trends show that even more people will opt for online grocery shopping and according to Insider Intelligence, “in 2025, the average annual spend per digital grocery buyer will increase from $856.47 in 2021 to $1,524.84.”

She actually calls the male shoppers stupid as they will never contact her if an item she wants is out of stock, unlike the female shoppers

"I'm Immediately Canceling The Order": Woman Goes Viral For Not Wanting Male Instacart Shoppers Doing Her Order And Explaining Why

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Image credits: _iamjamila

One of those people who choose to use Instacart is Jamila. In the above mentioned viral video, she says what may sound offensive, which is that when she sees that her Instacart shopper is a boy, she will cancel her order.

She calls the boys stupid and goes into what she means. When Jamila gets a woman shopper, she contacts her and asks if she is fine with her replacing an item that is sold out with another one. A woman shopper will try to get the better-looking fruit and vegetables.

And when Jamila’s shopper is a man, he will bring the wrong items and won’t reach out to tell her that a certain item in her basket is sold out. They won’t look at what fruit and vegetables they are putting in the bag, so she will end up with dirty and even rotten food. Men shoppers take more time and they mix groceries that should be put in different bags.

The TikToker compared male shoppers to her little brother shopping and she believes that they don’t think when they are doing their job.

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In Jamila’s experience, male shoppers take longer and mix all the products that she would prefer bagged separately

Image credits: _iamjamila

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In an interview for BuzzFeed, Jamila revealed that she had a hunch why there is such a difference in the quality of the service between men and women: “I think women are used to having to do more, especially when it comes to domestic duties.”

She also thought that men sometimes do some of the chores badly on purpose to not be asked to do it again and that it might explain why they are not good as shoppers: “Men will be sent to the store with a clear and concise list of very basic items and will come back with wrong items, or better yet, none at all. This is in hopes of not being asked to do this task anymore. And because this is a very common practice with men, it carries into their service, specifically with Instacart shopping.”

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She suspects this difference in quality has roots in women being raised to be good at domestic duties while men will purposefully fail at them to avoid being further asked at all

Image credits: Steve Rainwater (not the actual photo)

Jamila’s experience was not isolated and a surprising number of people in the comments started sharing their own experiences of male shoppers bringing them the most ridiculous replacement items when they didn’t find the specific one the customer ordered. People also complained about male shoppers not being very attentive with the amounts of things they put in the bags, which leaves customers with too much of something they didn’t even want.

You can watch the viral video below

@_iamjamila I’m going on strike #OscarsAtHome #rant #fyp #instacart ♬ original sound – jamila bell

Have you ever noticed that your grocery order collected by a woman is nicer than one collected by a man? Do you agree with Jamila about why this could be? Let us know in the comments!

A surprising number of people related to Jamila and had bad experiences with getting something completely different than they ordered when their shopper was a man

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Jurgita Dominauskaitė

Jurgita Dominauskaitė

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Having started as a content creator that made articles for Bored Panda from scratch I climbed my way up to being and editor and then had team lead responsibilities added as well. So it was a pretty natural transition from writing articles and titles as well as preparing the visual part for the articles to making sure others are doing those same tasks as I did before well, answering their questions and guiding them when needed. Eventually I realized editing gives me the most enjoyment and I'm focusing only on that right now.

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Jurgita Dominauskaitė

Jurgita Dominauskaitė

Author, BoredPanda staff

Having started as a content creator that made articles for Bored Panda from scratch I climbed my way up to being and editor and then had team lead responsibilities added as well. So it was a pretty natural transition from writing articles and titles as well as preparing the visual part for the articles to making sure others are doing those same tasks as I did before well, answering their questions and guiding them when needed. Eventually I realized editing gives me the most enjoyment and I'm focusing only on that right now.

Saulė Tolstych

Saulė Tolstych

Author, Community member

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Saulė is a photo editor at Bored Panda with bachelor's degree in Multimedia and Computer Design. The thing that relaxes her the best is going into YouTube rabbit hole. In her free time she loves painting, embroidering and taking walks in nature.

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Saulė Tolstych

Saulė Tolstych

Author, Community member

Saulė is a photo editor at Bored Panda with bachelor's degree in Multimedia and Computer Design. The thing that relaxes her the best is going into YouTube rabbit hole. In her free time she loves painting, embroidering and taking walks in nature.

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A Jones
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I might get down voted, but hey here I go. I'm just gonna say this is rather sexist. There be guys in my fam/friend that are decent shoppers. Also had a few Instacarts where they did a good job on foods I selected and asked for alts. Things are different on a case-by-case basis.

Ms.GB
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's not fair for her to discount someones abilities based on their sex but after reading this I have to say that I have had the same experience with male vs. female shoppers. I still wouldn't cancel my order just because it was a guy I just make sure to message the person male or female if there is something in my order I really need to be correct or if there is something I need to be specific about.

Load More Replies...
MotherofGuineaPigs
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had a male Instacart shopper and he texted me about everything. When he came to drop off he thanked me and apologized for all the questions, I said no problem I appreciated being asked if he didn't know. I buy a lot of produce (for the guinea pigs too). He told me that he was learning how to shop properly and asked if I could choose him as a preferred shopper so that he could learn more about shopping for produce in particular. I have had crappy shoppers of both sexes. I appreciate the ones that try. He is doing great by the way.

wolves mom
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wait, how do you get a preferred shopper? I’ve been asking for this option! Also, some of my best shoppers were men and the last woman shopper I had bagged my order together with another giving me 5 items I didn’t need and missing 7 of the things I ordered. This isn’t a gender problem, it’s a people problem.

Load More Replies...
Truth Monster
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is like a person saying that if they see a stereotypical black person's name, they cancel the order because they never get the order right. If you agree that my example is wildly racist, you should also agree that what she is saying is hella sexist.

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A Jones
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I might get down voted, but hey here I go. I'm just gonna say this is rather sexist. There be guys in my fam/friend that are decent shoppers. Also had a few Instacarts where they did a good job on foods I selected and asked for alts. Things are different on a case-by-case basis.

Ms.GB
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's not fair for her to discount someones abilities based on their sex but after reading this I have to say that I have had the same experience with male vs. female shoppers. I still wouldn't cancel my order just because it was a guy I just make sure to message the person male or female if there is something in my order I really need to be correct or if there is something I need to be specific about.

Load More Replies...
MotherofGuineaPigs
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had a male Instacart shopper and he texted me about everything. When he came to drop off he thanked me and apologized for all the questions, I said no problem I appreciated being asked if he didn't know. I buy a lot of produce (for the guinea pigs too). He told me that he was learning how to shop properly and asked if I could choose him as a preferred shopper so that he could learn more about shopping for produce in particular. I have had crappy shoppers of both sexes. I appreciate the ones that try. He is doing great by the way.

wolves mom
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wait, how do you get a preferred shopper? I’ve been asking for this option! Also, some of my best shoppers were men and the last woman shopper I had bagged my order together with another giving me 5 items I didn’t need and missing 7 of the things I ordered. This isn’t a gender problem, it’s a people problem.

Load More Replies...
Truth Monster
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is like a person saying that if they see a stereotypical black person's name, they cancel the order because they never get the order right. If you agree that my example is wildly racist, you should also agree that what she is saying is hella sexist.

Load More Comments
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