Why the Shipt Cult won’t die soon.

Shipt shopper holding a lemon in her right hand as she smiles and inspects the quality, while holding her phone in her left hand

In this day in age, you would think that cults don’t exist simply because you don’t see them, right? Unfortunately, Shipt is a megatron cult-eating unstable alien. Okay, well maybe not that exaggerated, but you get the jizz.

Shipt is a grocery delivery service (so they say, but in reality they’re a tech company). You download their app or go on their website, add groceries to your cart, and you can get them delivered in as soon as one hour. We must take into account that convenience is pretty smart. After all, who doesn’t want their groceries delivered after spending the whole weekend out camping with their buddies drinking beer, right? RIGHT.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Shipt has seen a tremendous rise in workers. From the west to the east coast, not only have they hired over 200k+ shoppers, they also broke a record profit, booming Shipt’s business with more money in their pockets. With the rise of COVID cases and uncertainty around the virus, they decided it was best to invest in their workers by offering some shitty PPE (at least it’s better than nothing) late in the game. For those of you not in the know, Shipt was acquired by Target Corporation in December of 2017. (This is the doom or in other words, downfall of Shipt).

Not only did Shipt decide [at the start of the pandemic] that they would send their corporate workers to work from home (for their own safety, right, what about ours?), but they left us with crumbs. As a result of Shipt’s staff working from home, their call center jumped from probably 5% busy to 1000x%. You tried reaching Shipt HQ and you’d get over two hours wait time just to “speak to an agent,” which is total b.s.

We’ve heard from customers alike. Some could not cancel their orders due to the huge call volume - amidst the middle of a pandemic.

I’m sure they laid off some staff to offset the costs of the pandemic, while they broke profit, and still remained subtle. They implemented a texting number in which you - the Shopper - could text an order number and they’d either drop the order from your queue or cancel it altogether - what purpose does this serve? Well let’s just say you can’t shop for toilet paper or disinfecting wipes when they’re out of stock.

In addition, they allowed early deliveries (friggin’ finally) and late forgiveness for those Shops where you just can’t find that damn can of corn the member wanted. After their massive hiring spree of Shoppers, they took that back because the members were paying the price of their cost (shitty service). There is no formal training for this gig, you kind of just do it as you go.

Shipt’s cult will not die down. In fact, they will continue to keep breaking record profits and continue to keep expanding because that’s what capitalism does. They will not cease to hire, ever, and they will continue to provide convenience to the too-lazy-to-shop customers. (this excuses the legitimate customers who are ill, sick, caring/caregiving, etc).

The Shipt Shopper Lounge - their secret cult group on Facebook is filled with many happy stories and upbeat positivity that we can almost guarantee everyone on there is manic. From what we have gathered, it appears that many people who join Shipt and start shopping get a rise in their dopamine levels. They get a sense of ‘high’ and happiness due to the money they are making (which is not a lot, but when you add up the orders, $5 is $5). A simple task like grocery shopping is not a nuisance for many, thus resorting to this kind of job is like shopping yourself - the only caveat here is that you are shopping for someone else AND getting paid, a win-win for many.

The high will keep on going, new shoppers will take shit paying orders just to feel that high, and as of now we don’t even know if Shipt is subsidizing members’ tips with our pay like Instacart has done in the past, now that they’ve enabled tips at the placement of order.

All I can say is… Fuck Shipt.