Arnold Zwicky's Blog

I had a plan for the day; its centerpiece was to be taking a shower, an elaborate, difficult, and often painful operation that takes about an hour from preparation to putting things away afterwards. But I wanted to get clean for two medical appointments on Wednesday. But I was about to run out of a large number of staples and so needed to refresh the supply, plus a sandwich for lunch today. So the plan was to put in a grocery order early in the day, take delivery around 8 or so, and then have time to take a shower before lunch. I had two postings already set up to be polished in the afternoon. A good day lay ahead.

But, oh my friends, it was not to be.

It began well. Up at 4:15, worked on the postings in the hour before I could have breakfast (that’s a thyroid medication thing), got a satisfying breakfast (but all parts of it were about to run out), then went to Instacart to put it in huge order from Safeway, paying extra for fast delivery, so it would arrive around 8. Went back to getting material for postings, keeping an eye on the Instacart tracking of the shopper. Who took an extraordinarily long time on the shopping: an hour. Well, sometimes shoppers have several orders going at once, so it takes them a while to get a cart together; that happens.

Eventually all 10 items were assembled, and with taxes, tips, and fees, the bill came to around $150. (Food isn’t getting cheaper.) Instacart told me that delivery would be by 8:19. I went to the door so I could get the heaviest items put on the tray on my walker (picking things up from the ground is hard for me). No one came, and when I went back to my computer I saw that delivery was delayed by about 10 minutes. Well, sometimes couriers have several orders going at once, so there were delays. Again, I went to the door. Again, no one came, and when I went back to my computer I saw that delivery was delayed by about 10 minutes. Ten minutes later, I went to the door again. And again, no one came, and when I went back to my computer I saw that delivery was delayed by about 10 minutes.

I abandoned going to the door, and just watched the tracking on my computer. Which settled into predicting delivery at time t, and when time time arrived, changing the predicted delivery to time t + 3 minutes. 9:01, 9:04, 9:07, 9:10, and so on, so that eventually I e-mailed to the (automated) help desk to complain. I was told that the courier was running late and I should be patient.

Hours went by. There was no longer enough time for a shower, and lunch time was approaching. I grew desperate, and went to the kitchen to improvise a replacement for the sandwich. This involved opening a can of garbanzos.

Can openers are difficult for me to operate. But I wrestled with it, and had gotten the can half open when the opener sprung apart, spraying gears and handles and other parts all over the kitchen counter. I then discovered that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again; the can opener had turned into a useless pile of metal and plastic trash. And I had no backup. (How many people, I wonder, have backup can openers in case the main one explodes into pieces?)

I did not cry, or smash anything. Very very carefully — since the already processed can top had a long nasty edge of wicked jagged metal on it — I used an ice pick (in  my house, an absolutely crucial kitchen tool) to slowly push the open part of the top up, so that I could empty the contents of the can into a bowl, to contribute to an impromptu soup for lunch. I then throughly rinsed the can out and removed the label, so I could put the empty can in the recycling bin. (I am an earnestly good citizen.)

While the soup was heating up in the microwave, I went back to the computer to move up to the actual complaints people at Instacart, who told me, eventually, that the courier had long before gone home for the day (so some sort of background program just went on ticking up the delivery time every 3 minutes, waiting for a message from the courier that would never come). My first instinct was to demand that the courier be guillotined and have their head displayed on a pike outside the Menlo Park Safeway, but I realized that though that might have been emotionally satisfying, it wouldn’t get me my groceries.

Instead, I whimpered to the complaints folks about my being aged, disabled, and housebound, and they fell all over themselves in empathetic expressions of care and vows to fix it all (if these people were bots, their programming is spectacularly good, right down to characteristic errors suggesting that one of them is not a native speaker of English, and all three of them making occasional typos of very common types). We settled on having the shopping and delivering all re-done from scratch for delivery after 8 tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty dirty and pretty pungent, but not at levels that bother me, and of course I’ve had no face-to-face contact, however brief, with anyone today, so that I haven’t offended anyone. I have alternative dinners to the one I’d planned, and there’s just enough stuff to get me through breakfast tomorrow. So this all could work.

Oh yes, I’ve ordered a can opener meant for the elderly, and it’ll be delivered tomorrow.

This entry was posted on March 10, 2025 at 3:30 pm and is filed under AI, Furnishings and tools, Language and food, My life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.