Thank You For Choosing Grocery Pickup

With the advent of technology these days, some people don't really understand how time-consuming grocery shopping can actually be. Especially now, since due to the global pandemic known as COVID, we're constantly reminded to be safe and practice social distancing, wear masks, the works. Does this always work? Well, no... but I digress, I've gotten off-topic, and I'm sorry.

Due to the pandemic though, more people tend to shop online for things than ever before. This means being an online personal shopper at possibly the busiest Kroger in the Atlanta area is definitely going to be a secure job. Yes, it is constantly busy, but we're carrying the community on our backs.

My job is a multi-part affair. I like to consider myself an "all-around" member of the staff. I'm usually either doing one of three things: picking people's grocery orders, working in our backroom, or helping close up the depart on certain days. For the sake of curiosity, I'll try to sum up each part as we go.

The most often part of my workday is picking people's groceries. It's pretty much as it sounds. I am given a comically large trolley that usually consists of nine totes and a set of labels that will attach to these totes with barcodes representing people's orders. Now, each of these totes is only one part of a person's entire order. This is because we tend to divide trolleys by temperature unless they are "oversized items" that we'll cover later. I'm also given a handheld device that will tell me what items we need to find for each tote and a radio with an earpiece in case I need help. I'm asked to go through the store, find each item on the peoples' grocery list, place them in our bags in the totes, and scan the tote to confirm it's theirs and they'll be charged for it. I do this until we finish off all of the totes, by which they are either very full or close enough, and then return to our department to stage them for customers. We then rinse and repeat until all of the orders are picked or our shift finishes up, preferably the former by management. This has resulted in me often ending up with overtime on the weekend. This isn't even talking about oversized orders.

For oversized orders, as well as freezer orders, things are somewhat different. Freezer trolleys aren't just regular plastic totes, but actually eighteen paper bags (that may not stay this way, sooner or later). Meanwhile, oversized trolleys consist of up to thirty-two items, each item is worth one tote of a person's order. You might believe these are even longer than the regular nine-tote "ambient" trolleys (regular room-temperature groceries) and refrigerator trolleys, especially the latter since the oversized items can be any temperature they want, as long as they're considered too big for a regular grocery bag. Well, no, they're not, but I can see how you'd think that. Not a lot of items can go into one paper bag, and our store only has three aisles and an area of meat and seafood for freezer items. Furthermore, it has been updated that gallons of water and the occasional hot temperature deli item each count as "one oversized item", so we can be simple with that. That said, some of the oversized items can get pretty heavy and dense, such as cases of bottled water. The silver lining is that you're going to work your upper and lower body strength.

This isn't to say there aren't complications while we pick. Sometimes, we can't find everything because we're out of stock of a certain item. This is because it's either in high demand, there have been complications getting the item, or our delivery trucks go to the wrong place (one time going to Dublin instead of Canton). So we're often asked to try to find a suitable substitution, which may be easier said than done for certain people's tastes and needs. It's the customer's choice whether or not they want these subs, though. We also have a time limit attached to these as well. We need to have all of a person's order staged prior to their scheduled pickup time, which is usually the top of a certain hour. So on weekends where customers' schedules are suddenly free, we're usually rushing with only one hour between their arrival and when I arrive for work. Thankfully, it lets up after a while, but you can see how it gets complicated to the point that I have the staging location barcodes for every temperature but the rare hot food saved as pictures on my cell phone.

Adding to this is the occasional in-store customer asking for help finding "insert-item-here". Lucky for me, I've been doing this for two years and nine months, so I'm used to my store. This happens so often, I've started to preemptively check in on people as I pass by them in the store. It's a good way to get to know people in my community since a very large number of people in my area treat the grocery store as some kind of hangout and stay there for hours. It's actually amusing how many people don't just find what they're looking for and head straight for check out without the excuse of trying to corral their families or not knowing what it is they want.

Next, comes working in the back. While I'm preferred as a picker, I get a lot of opportunities to work behind the scenes as well. This does involve a bit of paperwork for the customers, especially on days that I'm a member of the closing staff for the day. When a customer's physical order is completely picked, they will, depending on the time, get an opportunity to answer a text message about any and all substitutions, and will have until approximately ten minutes prior to their scheduled pickup hour to respond by either accepting or denying the substitution. If they don't respond, they'll have an opportunity to sort that out when they come to pick up their groceries.

When an order is "ready for pickup", a paper with the customer's name will print out, listing any out-of-stock items and substitutions that happened while picking their order. That way, the customer isn't surprised when they look through their groceries once they get home I may even get a chance to martial these papers, making sure the customers get the lowest price they can for certain items. We're trying to go green by offering online receipts and using a handheld tablet to pay out their groceries, but sometimes people want physical copies of their receipts.

When the customer arrives, we take orders out through the slow warmth of spring, the intense heat of the Georgia summer, the flash rains of storm season, the comfort of autumn, or even the cold of the winter. Our part of the parking lot only has eight spaces, and we only have two working tablets and six carts that we can use to bring groceries out with, so we can't serve every customer at once in the event of a rush either when people just start getting off work at five in the afternoon or on a weekend. However, we like to try to be quick in our store and serve as many people as we can as efficiently as possible, being sure to organize their groceries so nothing breaks. Our customers don't seem to mind the wait too often.

One thing we started during the back half of my first year was actually selling alcohol through pickup. While we do not sell tobacco through our department, we do have to occasionally check customers' IDs when they arrive. If they can't prove they are at least 21, we have to take the alcohol off their order and apologize. We're also not allowed, thanks to state law, to sell alcohol prior to 12:30 p.m. on a Sunday, so if you're going to order beer for Sunday night sports, please schedule your pickup for 1 p.m. or later, because we WILL out of stock it with extreme prejudice if you try for an earlier pick-up time.

While we're usually capable of paying a customer out at the car, there are cases when a customer doesn't have a payment card set up with their online account. This is why last year we started to accept EBT payments. We haven't figured out how to use the tables for those, so we have to take their physical EBT, debit, or credit card and use our computer point of sales to pay their orders out via the pin number they give us.

Finally, one of my main duties is working a closing shift. It's exactly as it sounds: I'm the one who shuts down the department for the day. I tend to be the lead closer during the middle of the week. This means I usually come in around one in the afternoon on Wednesdays and Thursdays, take over for our leads, and I'm expected to make sure everyone who places an order picks up. If they, for some reason, do not show up at their pickup time, I'll give them a phone call since customers are required to give us a phone number. If they cannot pick up their groceries or do not answer the phone, they'll be given the next day to pick up their order before we cancel it since certain food items only stay fresh for a few days if not preserved in some way.

During these closing shifts, I'm also required to make sure to set up for the next day. If there are rejected items, they need to be taken back to their respective areas in the store. If the carts aren't filled with totes, that needs to be resolved so the opening pickers can just get started. If there aren't any hot food items, our hot food storage unit needs to be turned off. If there's any cleaning to be done, it happens and we take the trash out. If there are any paperwork issues left, I will handle them, and get the closing checklist and our daily payment review signed by management before I lock up and go home for the night.

Once it's all over, I ask myself, "Is this worth it during a pandemic?" And when I get home, I'm greeted with four sets of wagging tails and excited jumps of joy from dogs, a hi from my family, and a chance to get some writing in before I go to bed. Yeah... yeah, it's worth it for them.

So thank you all for choosing Kroger Grocery Pickup.