A popular stereotype has been created among folks who get their groceries delivered to them, and it’s that male Instacart shoppers are clueless. Whether they simply don’t try to find items or make bizarre substitutions, there’s no shortage of folks who pay others to go on supermarket runs for them who happily air their frustrations online to anyone and everyone who will listen.
Comedian Matt Bellassai (@mattbellassai) has aired his own gripes with male Instacart shoppers in a viral TikTok he posted that’s accrued over 614,000 views as of Wednesday morning. In the clip, he divulges how one Instacart delivery person had the gall to tell him that the store he was sent to didn’t have any calamine lotion, snapping a photo to prove that it wasn’t there.
However, the delivery driver ended up taking a picture of the very item he said was non-existent, which was an ironically dumbfounding turn of events Bellassai expounded upon in his video.
“OK, so you know how people are like if you get a male shopper on Instacart you’re pretty much f*cked because men don’t know how to shop?” Bellassai prefaces.” But then man defenders are like, ‘No, actually it’s super hard to shop.’ You’re being a b*tch. Listen to what happened to me, OK? Few weeks ago I went to a wedding. It was outside, I got a lot of mosquito bites because I have delicious succulent skin and they love to suck me.”
Bellassai went on to detail that due to his mosquito bites, he sought the soothing embrace of calamine lotion.
“Few days after that, I was suffering. I had mosquito bites all over the place,” he describes. “My legs look like Braille, Helen Keller’s notebooks.”
So he decided to place a Walgreens order on Instacart.
“I get on Instacart. It’s 11pm. I don’t know what’s open. Walgreens in open, it turns out they got calamine spray,” he says. “I add it to my cart along with an anti-itch gel, beautiful. It cost like $700, that’s the price of not suffering anymore.”
After swallowing the bitter pill that was the exorbitant price for anti-itch gel and calamine lotion and locating a shopper, Bellassai says that he immediately had issues with the man who took his order. “The second this man walks into the store I get a notification that says, ‘Uh oh, they don’t have it,’” he claims.
At this point in the video, the TikToker shows a screenshot of the text the man sent him. It reads: “The store does not have the requested product, Walgreens Calamine Plus Itch Relief Spray. Would you like a replacement?”
However, Bellassai adds that the Instacart shopper ended up sending him a photo which proved that the store did, in fact, carry the item. “And then this man sends me a picture of the shelf with the item I requested on the shelf,” he says. “I said, ‘Sir, it’s right there, sir.’”
He then shows the messages he sent to the man. “hi the calamine spray is on the second shelf on the right pink bottle,” he wrote.
Bellassai continues his diatribe against the man. “The pink bottle that says the name of what I requested on it, sir,” he explains. “Then this man replies with a different bottle.”
A picture that comes into Bellassai’s app from his personal shopper (Anthony) only helps to reinforce another stereotype about men: and it’s that they’re terrible at differentiating between colors. Anthony snapped a photo of an anti-itch spray in a red bottle, which is clearly not the product Bellassai was referring to in his initial messaging with the shopper.
“A red bottle, not a pink bottle. Listen, I know that color blindness is an epidemic in the people with XY chromosomes, OK? But that is not what I asked for. It’s got [a] different name on it actually. That does not say what I requested,” he says. “Finally, we get to the right bottle. I said, ‘Thank you so much.’”
But that was only one of two items that Bellassai requested and he was about to go through another peripatetic act of guide-the-Instacart-shopper. “Now we move onto the anti-itch gel—same situation,” he says
Anthony sends the TikToker a picture of a shelf with the anti-itch gel that he requested, and the TikToker tells him the brand name and product along with the row it’s on. “Sends me a picture of the shelf, says, ‘They don’t have it. Would you like something else?’ I said, ‘Sir, they do have it. I see it right there with mine own two eyes. If you would be so kind as to pick it up using what brain cells you have left.’”
While the shopper finally picked up the correct product and delivered it to him, Bellassai ends the video with one final rant. “Listen, I know it is privileged for me to have sat on my itchy a** and told this man to pick up anti-itch lotion for me,” he concludes. “I know it is privileged, but understand the frustration of being me and being itchy and having a man send me a picture of something that I requested and saying they don’t have it.”
He adds in a caption for the video, “The emotional cost of instacart… far too much. and yes i am embarrassed this was all for itch lotion.”
@mattbellassai the emotional cost of instacart… far too much. and yes i am embarrassed this was all for itch lotion
♬ Quirky Suspenseful Indie-Comedy(1115050) – Kenji Ueda
One commenter on Bellassai’s video said that she encountered what many seem to think is a rare occurrence: a male Instacart shopper who was asking a store associate for help in locating items. “I witnessed a male instacart shopper shopping in store once and was floored at how well he was doing. He stopped me to ask for help ( I worked there,” she wrote.
But there were several others who said that they sympathized with Bellassai’s experience when it came to male Instacart shoppers.
“Meanwhile my women shoppers are like “I picked a variety of ripenesses so you have pears to eat all week!” like God bless you,” one user said.
Someone else wrote, “I had a male instacart shopper realize he was at the wrong store after shopping the entire order.”
“I ASKED FOR TAMPONS. HE REPLACED THEM WITH Q TIPS!! COTTON. SWABS,” one TikToker penned, highlighting yet another instance of a substitution that just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Another said that it’s not just male Instacart shoppers who are bad at finding items in grocery stores, but men in general. “My mom has to FaceTime my dad at Costco and he just shows her shelves and she says if it’s there and controls him like a claw machine,” they wrote.
One TikTok user even decided to conduct a little experiment to see the accuracy with which male personal shoppers attain versus female ones. “I used Instacart. Got a man. He found 1 of 15 items. Immediately made exact same order on DoorDash. Got a woman. She found 14 of 15 items,” they said of their results.
According to a post on holiday shopping published by ABC News, women are biologically hardwired to be better shoppers due to our species’ early hunter-gatherer days: “Women, by contrast, were the primary gatherers in early hunter-gatherer cultures, so they feel a need to check every berry on the bush to make sure they’re getting the best deal. That’s why, during this holiday season, you’re likely to see a lot of men cooling their heels, and a lot of women shopping until they drop.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Instacart and Bellassai via email for further comment.
