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.
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
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.
In Jamila's experience, male shoppers take longer and mix all the products that she would prefer bagged separately
Image credits: _iamjamila
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.”
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
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
