Everyone has had a day when you just don’t want to go to the store. Once upon a time, it used to mean we’d go without groceries or convince someone, usually a blood relative or a roommate, to do it for us, but now we have a variety of options. And though they are performing an important function for many of us, delivery drivers for apps like Instacart are routinely shorted.
Tiktoker Victoriawilkins53 (@sagetori111) detailed one of her worst customer experiences in her series of videos detailing the life of an Instacart shopper. In a two-part video, viewed collectively over 17,000 times, Wilkins shares a story about a particularly difficult customer.
“So let me tell y’all about one of the worst Instacart customers I’ve ever had,” she begins as she leans over her kitchen counter and refills a spice jar. “So, I get this two-person order. It’s for Costco. I hate Costco…Anyways I go do the order. Two customers: Customer A got seven items I think, and Customer B got like 25 I think. A lot of items for Costco.”
“I go and I start shopping and I send them a message. They don’t say anything that’s normal, cool, whatever. I’m shopping everything is going good, and I got Customer A pretty much complete and I’m working on Customer B’s order. Well, they didn’t have the bacon she wanted, but they had one that was basically exactly the same it was just in a different brand but it was like a dollar cheaper. Well I go in and see if she has picked a replacement and I see the exact replacement she picked, so I go ahead and scan it in.”
This is where Wilkins’ story takes a dark turn.
@sagetori111 Definitely in my top 5 of worst customers. Please be kind to people! #instacart #instacartshopper #instacartstorytime #storytime #instacartdelivery #deliverystory #rudecustomer #badcustomer #customerserviceproblems #instacartpartner #fooddelivery #terriblecustomer #groceryshopping #foodtiktok #costco #costcostorytime #deliverydriver #karen #karenstories #dontberude ♬ original sound – victoriawilkins53
@sagetori111 I blocked her and asked instacart to ban her dont know if they did. I know everyone has bad days but you cant treat people like that. #instacart #instacartshopper #instacartstorytime #storytime #instacartdelivery #deliverystory #rudecustomer #badcustomer #customerserviceproblems #instacartpartner #fooddelivery #terriblecustomer #groceryshopping #foodtiktok #costco #costcostorytime ♬ original sound – victoriawilkins53
“And not even, I kid you not, a minute later I get this long message talking about she doesn’t want that crap, don’t change her stuff, that she’s calling the store right now… Now, I have been doing this long enough to know that right then and there I should’ve canceled the order. But me wanting the money I didn’t do that. I was like oh, OK sure.”
“She calls them and a lady up-front tells her they have it in their inventory. So she is messaging me frantically, [telling] me I need to go find it and I should not be taking shortcuts, and being lazy and whatnot. So, I find an employee and eventually I ask him and he is like, ‘oh, I do think we have some but we haven’t even unpacked it yet.’ Thankfully, he was nice. He went and got the stupid item that she wanted.”
Commenters quickly sided with Wilkins as she relayed her tale:
“This used to happen for me doing Instacart at Aldi. They kept changing their minds n changing what they want. I get it girl,” one said.
“I watch these whilst instacarting. Most people are so nice but you always get the rotten egg,” a fellow Instacarter sympathized.
Wilkins continues, “So, I message her, I apologize, I tell her they have not even taken it off the truck yet, and I continue with the order. She is not amused at all. She is still pretty pissy. We’re towards the end of shopping her order and they don’t have the piece of meat she wanted. I asked the butcher twice if he had this and he was like, ‘No, we have none.’ So I nicely tell her this and she again goes, ‘I’m calling the store I don’t believe you.'”
“So, she calls the store and the girl up front for some reason tells her they have this meat that they do not have. We go back and forth, and I eventually have to tell her that I’m talking to the butcher and he doesn’t have it… Well, eventually I have to send her a video of the freaking butcher telling her they didn’t have it.”
The first video ends on this cliff hanger. Many users asked her for the second part as they were fully invested in how she dealt with the rude customer.
Wilkins begins where she left off, “We get that behind us. I guess she believed the butcher that’s in her video. I get the orders done, I go to checkout, I get everything loaded. I go, I drop off Customer A. No problem, perfect delivery. I go to drop off Customer B. First off, she had given me the wrong address. This is not uncommon for the area I was in because of new construction. It was only two-to-three miles but it was annoying still. Anyways, I get there and I’m unloading her stuff. I’m super nice, I’m smiling, and I’m apologizing. I’m telling her you know that she had picked that replacement, whatever all that good stuff. So, I’m unloading it for her and she’s going individually item by item and she is telling me that like, ‘Hey I have your tip, so you can’t leave until I check every single item.'”
Commenters were livid while they discussed the poor behavior of Customer B:
“Just walk away from those bitter people. They will never reward U for UR time. They are power tripping.”
“People like that shouldn’t be on the app.”
“Sounded like a b**** to me lol.”
Wilkins’ story gets worse as Customer B continued her tirade.
“Again, been doing this long enough should’ve just left. But, I didn’t I wanted to make her happy, and I was like OK I got her everything she wanted. So what could she complain about?”
Wilkins paused for a moment. “She found something to complain about. She was nitpicking everything like the whole time I was standing there. This was dead of summer on the coast. It was like 115 degrees, but like she got to the strawberries and she was pissed because they were organic strawberries. I was like girl, you ordered organic strawberries, I can’t put anything in my cart without scanning it into my app so I know you ordered organic strawberries. So she’s pissed, she’s mad, and she’s like screaming at me, ‘I’m calling the [expletive] store right now, this is BS, and I’m making sure I didn’t get charged for organic strawberries.’ This whole thing continues for five minutes. She makes me stand there while she calls Costco. Costco is just like you paid for whatever got checked out. But, now she’s really really mad. She’s taking it out on me. I’m the whole time apologizing. I’m sorry, must’ve been a mixup, I’ll even have Instacart refund it. I’ll have them refund every item you’ve nitpicked.”
Wilkins continues, picking up tempo as she nears the end of her story: “But no, no, nothing was good enough. She was just hell bent on like standing there yelling at me. This just proceeded for way too long. I was probably there for 25 minutes just as she’s going through her items and yelling at me. Eventually, I’d had enough. I was like girl I got to go I have other orders to do… Anyway she’s like ‘Here’s your tip.'”
Wilkins stands up, finished refilling her spices, and begins waving her hand in front of her as she speaks, “Gave me $5. She was like, ‘I was going to give you 10 but you really don’t deserve it.’”
Tiktokers who’d followed Wilkins’ story shared similar stories and their outrage over Customer B’s outrageous behavior. Some even suggested that they’d have left the tip.
“I have a lady do this type of thing during the peak of Covid, didn’t pick replacements and didn’t answer messages and tried throwing the soup she didn’t want at me so I can take it back. I told her it was a one way delivery and to take it up with Instacart and they backed me on it too,” one user shared.
“I understand instant cart is convenient. But sounds like she should have went to Costco herself! Sorry you had to deal with such a bad situation.”
“People like that shouldn’t be on the app,” another responded.
Wilkins’ voice rises as she gives a comparison of the two customers: “Customer A had tipped me $42 on 7 items and she was going to give me a $10 tip on 25 items.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Victoriawilkins53 via TikTok comments.