[skellera]

I’ve been thinking about prices that make this worth it. Amazon Fresh is free delivery over a certain amount with Prime. I’m sure I’m paying a bit more per item but it can’t be more than the time I’m saving by not browsing and avoiding impulse buys.

It seems like a win-win for me. Does anyone have a counter to that?

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

Some people enjoy grocery shopping. Some consider it low-key exercise (for office workers that do not engage in any actual sports, it's often the 2nd most strenuous regular activity, just after sex).

It's also furthering the trend towards isolation, the segregation into precarious low-wage service jobs vs a feudal class mostly busy with co-ordinating this personal army of theirs. The latter can afford this because they have institutionalised power structures that have kept lower incomes flat for half a century while the tax structure was turned on its head, with the highest incomes now paying lower rates than day labourers.

One would assume that high-paying jobs somehow correlate with value generation. But when shit hit the fan, they were the first to be sent home for half a year and economists are still trying to find anyone who actually noticed that regional key-account managers were mostly just busy with creating funny zoom backgrounds.

Online sales obviously kill brick-and-mortar retail, which leads to whatever the opposite of a liveable city is.

Large companies tend to run more efficiently. Or, more accurately, they are wasteful in ways that do not have the side benefits of, say, a single-proprietor sponsoring some small-town event because that's "how it's done", or continuing to employ someone even when it's a bad business decision, because they have worked with them for a decade and feel a sense of responsibility.

They also heavily favour concentration of market share with just one or very few companies, who are more powerful in relation to customers, employees, and the state. While gains in efficiencies have so far dominated, the beneficiaries of this shift in power will at some point try to cash it in.

Other than that, it's pretty cool.

[perl4ever]

>But when shit hit the fan, they were the first to be sent home for half a year and economists are still trying to find anyone who actually noticed that regional key-account managers were mostly just busy with creating funny zoom backgrounds.

I don't get it. You think people were useless because when they went home, it didn't affect the economy. But you're talking about people who were and are theoretically working from home. So you seem to be begging the question. Am I missing something?

[massysett]

Amazon Fresh staff don’t take care of the merchandise. They deliver it in taped-up paper bags or plastic sacks that were in a huge pile, and within the sack they might have apples sitting on a bag of chips or loaf of bread.

Also their produce choices were limited.

Instacart shoppers take much more care but they are very expensive and their lack of knowledge of in-store inventory means they make poor substitutions, requiring me to baby-sit the order while they pick it to veto substitutions.

I have returned to in-store shopping.