Grocery Confusion

I have groceries delivered with Winder Farms.

It's been a good thing:

I get milk in glass bottles, and it is amazing.

I get fresh orange juice, and it tastes

 like

 someone went into the kitchen and squeezed oranges for me.  It's really good.

I usually get a loaf of Paradise bakery bread.

I sometimes get bagels, fresh fruit, or cheese.

And despite having no car, I carry nothing!

It's more expensive than the grocery store (unless I were buying deluxe brands of everything, which I don't), so I don't usually get eggs with them, or vegetables, or most other things.  But by getting the basic stuff through them, I go to the grocery store far less often, and make fewer impulse purchases.

So it works out great.

WELL.

I started getting Winder Farms delivered back in November.  And every Sunday night I put my silver cooler on my porch, and every Monday morning I would bring my cooler (full of food) back inside.  And then one fine January morning, my cooler cloned itself.  I went outside, and instead of my cooler sitting by itself, there was another identical cooler right next to it.  I quickly realized that one of my neighbors must have started getting Winder Farms.

I checked the contents of the coolers so that I took mine and left the other person's. I wondered if the cooler belonged to my next door neighbor, or just someone in our house.  (Our house is divided into four apartments, which are not connected.  If you open the front door, you are in an entryway, one door is on the left, and one door is on the right.  The other two apartments have separate entries on the side of the house (still facing the street) and in the back of the house.)  

I skipped deliveries for a couple weeks, I forget why.

And then last week, I put my cooler out on the porch again.  I was up writing a paper, so I heard when they came to deliver it at about 2am.  They opened the box and closed it.  A couple minutes later it shifted.  I was excited because last week I ordered bagels, and I thought a bagel would be nice for a break during my paper-writing.

I went outside about ten minutes later and my cooler was gone.  Huh?  I didn't think they usually took coolers with them.  

Next to the house, there were two keep-things-cold aluminum bags, which they provide if you forget to leave your cooler out.  The bags had a lot more stuff than I had ordered.  When I looked closer, I realized that there was an invoice with them.  Aha.  The Emily who lives next door to me was getting the other deliveries.  And this was her stuff.

I decided that I would check later in the morning, in case they had taken my cooler and were bringing it back.

Later, the other Emily's stuff was still there, and my cooler was still gone.

Disappointing!

I called Winder Farms to ask about my missing cooler and groceries.  I told them what had happened, and that I had gone out ten minutes after the delivery and it was gone.  

"We never take your cooler after it has been delivered," she said.  "It must have been stolen."

In ten minutes!  I explained that my neighbor and I both get deliveries, and told her I was a little concerned that there might be some confusion.  She checked and discovered that yes, my neighbor had recently started receiving deliveries.

She told me that they would re-deliver my order at no additional cost to me, and that they would pay half the cost of the replacement cooler and I would be responsible for the other half of that cost.  Sigh.  I didn't want to buy another cooler.  Oh well.  I know it wasn't their fault, so whatever.  It was nice of them to deliver again and not charge for the food, and pay half of the cooler.  I asked if I should write my name on my cooler so that the delivery person knows which cooler belongs to which Emily.  They said that would be a good idea.

They would deliver it that night, instead of making me wait for my delivery the next week

.  Great.  They asked if there was somewhere else they could put the delivery so that it would be less likely to be stolen.  I suggested they come inside the entryway.  This would be good for two reasons:

1. Passing my house, random people would not see groceries on my porch.

2. I can have my cooler in front of my door and the other Emily can have hers in front of her door, so there won't be confusion about what belongs to whom.

They redelivered.  (I put a label on my new cooler, which Paley quickly removed.  Hm.  I don't want to write with Sharpie, though...)

AND NOW! 

A week later!

I skipped my delivery.  (I don't always use that much milk or orange juice or bread.)

There is a delivery not in a cooler or aluminum bag, in the entryway, just in the middle of the entryway.  (But closer to my door than hers.)  It's got to be the other Emily's, because it's not stuff that I order.

There are two coolers outside.  The bottom cooler has a bunch of plastic milk containers (the Winder Farms kind; you're supposed to rinse them out and return them; I do the same thing with glass ones) and the top cooler has the cooler bags in them.  

I'm 99.99% positive that this is what happened:

My neighbor stole my groceries last week!

She is also up during the night (always coming and going), so she must have seen my delivery and known she was getting one too, and taken my cooler even though she did not put a cooler out last week.  This also explains why she left out the cooler bags, and eventually took them in.

I don't understand though, if she just doesn't realize we're both getting deliveries, or what.

Then this week, she took both coolers out and put them on the porch (hers that belongs to her, and mine).  But she took them out too late.  Her stuff had already been delivered.  But her stuff was delivered inside, because I had asked WF to deliver mine inside.  So she didn't know

 anything about that.  When she took the coolers out, she probably didn't realize that she saw her own delivery in the hallway.  

But I don't understand that.

Because every week you select what you want to have delivered.  So if the six or seven things sitting in your entryway are the precise six or seven things you selected online...either it's yours, or someone else is getting stuff delivered too.  And it's probably yours.  (Just like if you take a cooler when you didn't put yours out, and it has stuff that you did not order, it is probably not yours.)

And if you think those six or seven things are not yours, then that means someone else is having things delivered, in which case, wouldn't you think twice about taking stuff that doesn't look like stuff you ordered??

It's all very confusing.

So I moved her aluminum bags into the bottom cooler (I don't think they'll take them back anyway, but whatever) and took one of "her" coolers back into my house.  Because she never had two delivered to begin with (and I saw her invoice last week so I know).  She stole mine!  And I had to pay for the new one!

Really, we should just talk about this.  Wouldn't that make things so much easier?  But we don't talk.  I moved here in September, and I've only actually seen her once.  I do hear her come and go all the time, though, and she smokes on the porch in front of my apartment.  I knocked on her door one time (when our landlord called me and wanted me to see if I could get her phone number for him), and she didn't answer the door.  She was home.

Should I write her a note?  Maybe.  I wonder what she is going to think when she goes out later today and her groceries are still in our entryway (and I just realized, they're probably her standing order!  She may not even realize she ordered them this week...) and her cooler is still on the porch but one of them is gone, and her stuff is all in one cooler.  I hope she calls WF and says that one of her coolers is gone and they tell her she only had one to begin with.  Ha!

So.  That's my random morning.  

(Also, I'm not expecting that you will, but if anyone decides that they want Winder Farms in the future, tell me.  If you say I referred you, we both get free stuff better than what you would get if you just sign up on your own.  Despite the confusion with my neighbor, they really are a great company and their stuff is amazing.)