"With Costco orders on Instacart, there’s a huge risk of injuring yourself."
My name is Theresa Thornton, and I’ve been a shopper on Instacart for over a year now. I started this job when I moved from New York to Houston to be with my daughter after her husband was deployed. I thought long and hard about how to move — I had the savings, but I needed a job lined up. My daughter told me she was making $100 a day with Instacart, and I decided it could work for me too.
For a few weeks, I did make $500 or so a week, and thought it might work. But shortly after I started with Instacart, the company issued a huge pay cut. Suddenly, I was barely making my bills. I started thinking I needed to get out of it, but when you have a bill coming up, you have to use your time to make money, not spend time getting yourself into a healthier financial situation.
But working on Instacart hasn’t just put me in financial danger — I’ve risked my health too.
In June, I was shopping a large Costco order with a bunch of cases of soda and water. I was in the store picking up a case of water when my foot got caught underneath my dolly, and I fell backwards onto the hard cement floor, the case of water falling on top of me.
I never reported it to Instacart, because I had to hurry up and deliver the order.
Over the next few weeks, my knee started causing me more and more pain. By the end of June, I could no longer go running. By August, it was really bad and had started swelling. I went to the doctor and found out I’d developed tendinitis.
I’m still dealing with the effects of my injury. My numbers on Instacart have taken a dive in the last few months because I can’t run as fast, because I’ll start feeling it in my knee.
With Costco orders on Instacart, there’s a huge risk of injuring yourself. A lot of Costco orders tend to be very heavy — I once had to call a friend to help me deliver a huge order to the seventh floor of an office building. And with Costco orders, you’re adding a bunch of time walking through the warehouse and going through almost every aisle to find what you’re looking for. That time isn’t really reflected in your pay, so you’re running like a rat in a cage trying to hurry up and get through the store.
Instacart shoppers are providing our personal services for our customers — who are Costco’s customers as well.
We’re providing a valuable service. We allow them the luxury and convenience of not having to go to Costco stores and trudge through their high-traffic, sometimes overwhelmingly congested, aisles. We put our bodies at risk and put wear and tear on our personal vehicles.
For all that, we should be compensated and tipped appropriately.
That’s why we’re calling on Costco — a company known for its reasonable pay & benefits for employees — to stand with us as we demand better from Instacart.
Thousands of us went on strike last week asking for a simple change: an increase in the default tip from 5% to 10%. It wouldn’t have cost Instacart anything to do, and would have increased the money we take home to make up for Instacart’s abysmally low pay.
Instead of listening to us, they issued yet another pay cut two days after our strike.
Companies like Costco can make sure Instacart does better. We should get fair pay for what we do, not retaliation in the form of more pay cuts. We’re asking Costco to stand with ALL the workers who help their company run, and that means Instacart shoppers too.