A woman vented her frustrations about male Instacart shoppers’ incompetence in a recent viral TikTok.
TikToker Mariam (@lowmariam) posted the clip shortly after her Instacart order was delivered. Receiving over 539,000 views as of publication, the video was flooded with stories from women who’ve experienced the same issue.
“If you get a male Instacart shopper just go ahead and cancel that order baby,” Mariam explains, “Like it’s not getting done. Cause one thing about a male Instacart shopper…he gonna bring you everything you did not ask for.”
“…I told this man to bring me kiwis,” Mariam continues. “He gonna substitute it for lemons…”
“What’s the correlation between a kiwi and a lemon?” she asks.
She finishes with a simple request: “Don’t piss me off please.”
Women identified strongly with her frustration, with many sharing their own experiences with male Instacart shoppers.
“A male shopper brought my mom one banana… literally pulled one banana off,” one shared.
“You gon ask them for peaches and they’ll bring you a family pack of gushers,” a second joked.
“I once ordered a mirror and mans brought me back 20lb bag of sugar,” a third added.
“True story: I ordered cherry tomatoes and he brought me tampons… Like what?! I was so confused. They weren’t even the good tampons!” a fourth exclaimed.
@lowmariam dont make me angry
♬ original sound – Mariam
Some have blamed male shoppers’ frequent mistakes on a new phenomena called weaponized incompetence. A term first coined on TikTok, it describes the act of feigning incompetence at a task. One TikToker claimed that both a male Instacart shopper and her fiancé feigned ignorance when she sent them searching for a bag of almond flour. Of course, when she went to the store she was able to locate her missing item immediately.
Women frequently take their experiences with male shoppers online to vent and share. Some stories involve bizarre shopping habits like randomly procured items, refusals to purchase menstrual products, or a marked inability to locate items directly in front of them. One male Instacart shopper may have even stolen a quarter of an entire ham when he was unable to locate a packet of sliced meat.
According to a recent study by Capital One, women spend a longer time shopping than men, with an average of 58 minutes for women and 45 minutes for men. Since 89% of women state that they are responsible for daily household shopping it could explain the time difference. Women often approach grocery shopping with a list, while men are more likely to stop shopping the moment they locate a workable product. Though men do make more frequent trips to the grocery store, studies show it is more a lack of long-term planning than a set shopping strategy.
The Daily Dot reached out to Instacart and Mariam via email for further information.