
Instacart Mistake Leaves Driver Stuck With 60 Lbs. Of Cream Cheese and Brownie Mix in Viral TikTok

Aug. 30 2022, Published 11:34 a.m. ET
According to CNBC, 44% of all US Citizens work second jobs to pay the bills. For many, these side-hustles aren't just to ensure that they're able to accumulate hefty savings, but just to live paycheck to paycheck, as 61% of Americans say they do.
There are a few reasons for this that legislators had a difficult time curbing to protect the financial interests of their citizens and the country's workforce.
Gas prices hit an all-time high in the Spring/Summer of 2022, with prices slowly falling towards the tail end of August. A bigger financial issue that is projected to persist and only get worse is the country's housing crisis. Again, this is an issue compounded by several factors, chief among them astronomical increases in property values, which makes owning a piece of land a pipe-dream for many Americans, resulting in a deficit of affordable homes for people to buy.
Inflation doesn't help matters much either, which, in 2022, hit a 40-year-high. This perfect storm of financial inequity only further widened the wage gap between the uber-rich and everyone else, increasing folks' reliance on side hustles more than ever before.
We now live in a day and age where getting access to these gigs requires a smartphone and some mode of reliable transportation for applications like DoorDash, Lyft, Uber, and Instacart.
But sometimes, these jobs don't always go smoothly, as TikToker Desiree relayed in a now-viral clip.
The Instacart Driver, who posts under the handle @sidehustlebankmoney says in her clip that she ended up with 30lbs of brownie mix and 30lbs of cream cheese because a customer wouldn't confirm the correct address to the items needed to be delivered to.
"I just ended up with 30 pounds of brownie mix and 30 pounds of cream cheese because the person would not give me the current address. I tried contacting them like four or five times they would not answer. I was at the correct address and I'm like I don't see your address what is the name of the place?"

Desiree said that the customer responded, saying, "I'm standing outside," but Desiree couldn't see her and once again asked her to confirm the address, but the Instacart customer said that it was the address that they put into the application, indicating a specific suite number.
However, Desiree said that there was no such suite at the address the customer gave her. "There's not a suite named that [or] that number. It doesn't go that high there's only like ten suites."
The customer kept averring that the address was correctly put into the Instacart application, but Desiree asked her to verbally confirm the address so she could make sure the customer received their order.

She says that she read the address that was on her application aloud to the customer who confirmed that it was indeed correct, however, Desiree added that it didn't seem like the customer was listening as there "was a lot going on in the background."
"She just would not give me the address," Desiree said. Instead of continuing the back-and-forth, the Instacart driver decided to contact the app directly to explain the situation.

The Instacart service rep initially told Desiree that they were in the correct location and said that since she was, they were going to remove the batch from the application.
But right after the batch was canceled, the Instacart driver received a message from the customer stating that the address she put into the app was incorrect.

"That's the wrong address, that's our business address." Since Instacart took the batch away from her, she no longer had access to the order so she couldn't complete the delivery.

In the event of a customer not picking up their order, oftentimes Instacart drivers/shoppers will be "stuck" with the food that they can then keep, although they're urged to donate these items to local food banks/shelters, which is what Desiree said she was going to do with the overabundance of brownie mix and cream cheese.

Well, she did keep a block of cream cheese and a box of brownie mix for herself, and fair recompense for having to deal with a frustrating customer who could've gotten her ginormous order delivered if she had just taken the time to confirm an address.