When we were living in Nashville, Miranda and I tried using Walmart’s online grocery shopping and pick-up service. We thought it would make our lives easier; Just order your groceries online, then pull up to the store and have the groceries delivered to your car. Simple! However, while this whole process seemed easy in theory, it always ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Without fail, every single time we ordered groceries, they would leave out an item or two that we ordered, often the most expensive ones. After a few trips of paying for supersized boxes of laundry detergent pods, 10 cans of cat food, or any other number of things that they forgot to bring to our car, we got tired of donating our hard-earned cash to Walmart.
So, we stopped ordering groceries online. Instead, we went back to walking through the store the old fashion way and handpicking each item we needed. Since that time, we moved back to Louisville, changed jobs, and time passed, but we never gave online grocery shopping another try. Then I broke my foot. It was hard for me to hobble around with a broken foot in the grocery store, so we tried online grocery ordering again. We didn’t want to order from Walmart, because leaving off our cat’s food is still something little Leo has not forgiven. Instead, we used Kroger’s grocery pick up, and it worked great. We got everything we ordered, and I didn’t have to embarrassingly hobble around the store. It restored my faith in online grocery shopping. Then, the big test came. We ran out of Miranda’s favorite ramen noddle flavor, creamy chicken. The only store that sells it around here is Walmart. If we wanted creamy chicken flavor without having to showcase my boot through the store, we would have to order grocery pick-up at Walmart.
They failed us time after time in Nashville and now we were giving them another shot to let us down here in Louisville. I refused to do the online shopping. If Miranda wanted the noodles, she would have to fill the digital shopping cart in the dreaded online grocery department of Walmart.
The next day came and Miranda picked up the groceries and brought them home. I went through the items line by line, and to my surprise they were all there. In fact, many of our items were upgraded. We paid $10 for a pot roast, but they upgraded us to a huge prime choice pot roast worth $14. We ordered and paid for two onions, but they gave us three. Instead of one bag of small red potatoes, they gave us two bags of organic red potatoes. All these upgrades came without any additional charge. I had been worried that we wouldn’t get all the items we ordered, but instead, we got more than we asked for.
Just because you have tried something before and it didn’t work well for you doesn’t mean that will always be the case. Sometimes people or things that let you down in the past will surprise you in the future. As we head into this Thanksgiving season, maybe we should remember some of the things we are not too thankful for, the people or things that have let us down. Maybe enough time has passed to give them a second try. Who knows, maybe you will get a second bag of potatoes out of it?
Peace, Ben