Brand new Instacart shopper. Maybe I don't understand the concept.
I live in a rural area, so this may be the issue. This morning I went to the nearest big town, Lexington KY. I'm sitting in front of the Aldi next to the mall, a prime area for another DDelivery app. 😃
So I'm sitting there around 1030 EST, and batches are popping up, but they are 12 to 20 dollars and they are 25 to 50 items. A 16 dollar 11 item order, nothing heavy, popped up. I took it. By my math, by the time I went in the Aldi, shopped the items, and took said items to the customer, it was less than minimum wage, plus gas, plus depreciation on my auto.
So I launch the other DDelivery app I use 😏Within about 30 seconds I get a chick FIL A order for 9 dollars that required me to run up the street, a quarter mile at most, pick up the order and quite literally drive across the street to best buy and deliver. As soon as I dropped that one, which took like 10 mins max, I got a Jersey Mike's that was 13 dollars and it took me about 20mins to complete. So in about 30 mins I've already made nearly twice the "batch" I took.
This part is pure luck and I know it, but it's worth mentioning. At 1430 EST I ironically end up back at the same Aldi I started at. I'm already up around 125… it's getting slow. I restarted the IC app, and the same three batches pop up. Lol. Around that time I got an alert from the other app for an outback run. 24.72. I mashed the accept button so hard my phone flew out of the mount. Two meals one appetizer, delivery to the 9th floor of an office tower downtown. Basically double pay of my "batch" for 1/2 the time.
Someone please explain to me why I would spend hours shopping for people for less money? Is it the fact that I have zero track record? Is it the market I'm in? Is it the Lent lull? Should I take a 💩 run or two? I was excited to shop for cash, but I made nearly 30/hr during the lunch rush and the same 3 shit "batches" were the only offers Instacart gave me the entire time I was actually making money. I was hoping to "fill in the gaps" but I'm not so sure anymore.
I'm not trying to dog one app and/or promote another. I'm only trying to understand. Maybe it was just a good day for one and not the other. Obviously Instacart is great side hustle, or people wouldn't do it, same for all the others, and I know people that use multiple apps, which is kinda why I wrote this book.
TLDR, I just need some pointers to make this service worth my while, or some encouragement to not just abandon this app altogether.
Edit. It was my intention to personal shop in between food rushes, then drive the drunks home. Name your own app. Around here I figure I could make way more money playing all 3 types of app🤠 than by working any 🐂💩 corporate job where the stock holders are more important than the people who work for you.

Hey everyone on here complaining, I am saying this coming from being in your position not too long ago. I remember the early days of small item orders with less then 2 MI drop offs worth $17-18. My wife and I went exploring one week after scouting out tbe demographics of the zone nearest to where she lived. I was aiming for an area heavily populated with upscale customers and preferably difficult for others to reach or discouraging in some way, or unthought of in some way. I found my answer playing around with the app one night as I was shopping for myself at the publix closest to my wife's house as I flipped the app on just to see. I had never tried this publix beforeb because my wife's neighborhood and surrounding area were not the best in town. I was amazed when I saw 5-6 orders with less then 10 (usually < 5) with drop off distsncences all so close to the exact same distance it couldnt be coincidencental. Upon further investigation of each drop off location, I happened across an island like strip right off a major highway near an international airport. On this island there were so many wealthy neighborhoods and upscale apartments all piled ontop of one another and absolutely no grocery stores or restaurants within reach without jumping onto that mess of a highway. The publix nearest to this area I knew very well and I'm sure many of you in the Tampa area know well also. The publix on Kennedy was unique in demographics as was in design. It was one of the smallest yet fastest publix I ever shopped at, however with great strengths come great weakness, this stores being constant shortages of inventory as the day went on. This proved to be a big enough issue in the fulfillment of orders and maximazion of potential profits that Instacart needed to take action. Their solution was simple, redirect to a larger, even higher demand store that was well adept at handling large surges of demand, coinciding with the surging demand of the previously mentioned islands inhabitants. (Late night snacks, wines, fruits, etc). On a map and on paper you wouldn't even think this publix would even be considered, but because of both locations proximity to the major highway, as well as the lack of traffic at that time of night and minimal lights maybe 2 or 3 between the two with a speed limit of 70 mph (if you go 70 in florida you literally will be run over so doing 80-90 mph is nothing to police or the grandma in the car behind you flipping you off because you are only going 82 miles per hour and "you" are the reason she is late to watch the same episode of jeopardy she watches every night. Oh and by the way there are Lanes on either side of me open...) the trip duration was less then 10 minutes and there back was less then 15 total. Seeing the potential my wife and I decided to take advantage of the situation and used our one car two person steategy to shuttle as many of these effortless and lucrative orders as we possibly could (5-10 items usued to take me maybe 5-10 minutes often less then 5 minutes to have shopped, checked out, baggeded and loaded worth $15-20 per batch. Let's do some math, it takes 5 - 10 min to shop and another 10 -15 to get there and back. At worst you are looking at $15.00 for 25 minutes or around 35 an hour and at best around $80.00 an hour (and these are hours of breezy work with high chances of 5 stars as well tip increases and cash tips.) Point being is start thinking outside of the box everyone. Go where others aren't, see what others haven't, learn your area and use every resource / strength you have to find a solution and reach your goals. If your goal is you want better or more batch opportunities then ask yourself what am I willing to do in order to reach thus goal. If your answer isn't anything then you may not want this to be your job as badly as you will need to In order to get to the levels you desire to attain. Know that Instacart needs the majority of its active shoppers during surge demand time periods. Know also that there simply are not enough orders during the non peak hours quite yet (although I have noticed a steady increase) to sustain all of the desires of the active shoppers during non peak hours. What's the solution? Test everyone, see who is who and what is what, see who takes and completes the not so great orders with integrity, and start to merit out batches to those who have proven themselves)

I feel like the only times I visit this subreddit are to lurk and read, or to complain lol - so let me start this with some positivity in that, with the exception of one really, really inept guy a few months ago, the bulk of my Instacart deliveries have been accurate, mostly well-packaged, and prompt. Thank you, all you shoppers who do an excellent job, you are appreciated!
Today, though, I want to ask what the deal is with Instacart refunds. I organized an order on the website this past Tuesday ($400 worth - for reasons tldr involving my broken car and work, I'm going to be ordering a full month's worth of groceries all at once for the next little while), and when I hit the "Place Order" button, the website borked and went to an error page.
I backed out, tried again, and it went to the same error page.
Checked my bank account, and Instacart had debited the full amount plus the hold... but the order didn't go through. Five phone calls later (four to Instacart, who kept jostling me around the phone system, and one to my bank), and they assured me the funds would be refunded to my account "within 24 hours" so I could replace the order, and that they would make sure this "never happens again" (spoiler alert: this is actually the SECOND time this has happened, the first almost exact scenario happened a year and a half ago.)
Fast forward to now (Friday) - and I still have no funds. I can't afford to reorder because they're holding my entire grocery budget. Called Instacart again to explain this, to ask if they could please expedite it, and they blamed it on my bank; when I called the bank, they explained that Instacart have to be the ones to release the hold.
In the meantime, I'm eating ramen noodles and waiting for "3 to 10 business days" - because now Instacart changed the time from "within 24 hours" to "3 to 10 days" when I called back.
So here's the question: WHY? Places like Amazon, if there's a mishap, refund you almost immediately; I've had refunds from them for messed-up orders in as little as 20 minutes. What on earth, in our modern times etc., takes 3 to 10 days to reverse a charge, especially when it's the company's/website's fault in the first place, not the customer's? And why is Instacart SO STUBBORN about this?

Hello, I got laid off today from my full time job and filed my edd like an hour ago. I did side gigs until last week (Ubereats and instacart) but I didn’t include it on the claim as I don’t know how to include it and I’ve searched it on Google how to include side gigs but I can’t find a direct helpful answer. Im frustrated and anxious so I clicked submitted without including it. Am I committing fraud by not reporting side gigs? Will my claim get denied? Will I be able to edit the claim and add it in case I found someone who can help me how to add side gig on Edd? Sorry, I’m really anxious and panicking right now.

I had my first infusion yesterday. I've had a shit-ton of trauma in my life. In the last four years alone, my town and home burned down, we almost died trying to escape the fire, I was sexually assaulted, I lost my job and we lost our apartment because of the pandemic, and my two closest friends died. I stopped eating and lost 25 pounds. I'm a recovering addict, with 7 years clean, in grad school trying to make a new life. I just stopped functioning at all. I've been calling in sick every week, everywhere. Most days I don't get dressed or shower. I order Instacart and Doordash, because I can't even shop or cook. I am frozen. I do not feel alive.
The session yesterday...I could see all these traumas like coats laying on top of me. There was only the tiniest airhole left to breathe, so I understood that I had to be frozen to keep breathing. If I can understand that, then I can see how the coats no longer serve me and start healing. I could also see all the painful places in my body where the traumas are stored. I'm sure I'm not describing it well, but something in me has changed. It was intense and beautiful, and I feel like I am part of my body again. I didn't realize it would be so psychedelic. I'm sorry to overshare, but I don't think most people would understand how epic this was

Basically just what it says! I’m a student at Mizzou and I’m looking for a temporary job, ideally something I can do on my own schedule (or M-F). I had to quit my previous job due to time conflicts with other commitments and my internship doesn’t start until the end of May. I do have enough money saved to pay my bills, but I’d like to have some extra spending cash. Let me know of anything and TIA!
Side note: I’m not interested in doing DoorDash, but I’ve considered Instacart if anyone has opinions on that!

There’s one or two shop rite employees that are super rude every single time I come in and I’m super respectful and nice (I always get told I say thank you WAY to much) so I was always confused why she was like this.
Every time I’m checking out she’s always hovering and mentioning (LOUDLY) that bags at shop rite are going up to $2 per bag bc instacart shoppers steal them. One time another employee came up to her to refill the bag crate and said “we gotta replace them so there’s something to steal” I’m not stupid and it was clearly directed at me lol a few times I just laughed and let it go but tonight she did it again and this is how the convo went
Me - man you stay talking about those bags - must be a real issue for you
Her- shop rite lost 1 million dollars last year bc shoppers stole bags. Shop rite is going to stop using them.
**** and by “stop using them” she meant shop rite is going to stop using instacart. I should have written that better****
Me- ah how do you know it was someone from instacart?
Her ( and I shit you not) - instacart shoppers are all really dishonest people
Me - that’s a pretty broad statement to make
Her - I haven’t gotten a raise bc of this (meaning the stolen bags)
…Something tells me the bags arnt the reason you didn’t get a raise. There were a lot more comments made but As I’m walking out, my back to her, a male employee walks up to her and he starts making comments like “oh yeah people who work for instacart..I’m so sick of them bitching about how little they get paid. Get a real job” and so on. Like y’all work at a grocery store. I don’t get it.
And I promise you I’ve never stolen a 33 cent bag 😅

I made a post asking what I should apply to in order to make 60k a year. I would like to be able to get a job like that without having to go back to school or undergo a year or two of training. I graduated in 2019 with a BS in kinesiology. Since then I’ve worked as a physical therapy aide (12$/hour) for 2 years, worked doordash/Ubeinstacart (20-25$/hr pre tax) and currently I substitute teach (145$ per day pre tax). I applied to a lot of the jobs people recommended and I did not get anything. Part of that may be the fact I live in rural Northern California (Humboldt County specifically). At this point I am open to any advice, I will work construction if I have to (but that’s not the goal). I’m currently learning web development. I’ve gotten proficient in HTML and CSS and am just beginning my JavaScript journey. I need money and I’d rather earn more per hour so that I can work a standard 40 hour work week, earning less will mean 50-60 hours per week which I will do if necessary. Helpful advice will be very much appreciated as I’m at a loss.

Location: San Diego
Yes IC has been very slow past couple of days. I am a full time shopper and I spend most of the time waiting in parking lot outside of Costco. I probably got around 5 OKAY batches from the store in one week, while I watch a group of 3 guys busy coming in and out. Yes they are shoppers bc I saw them on their phone all the time in the store, and they've been here 5 days in a row. Not a single day I saw them not busy. One day I saw them just chilling next to their cars, I finally got enough courage to go say hi. They seemed nice but as soon as we start to talk about instacart, they started to avoid the topic. I told them my situation, and all of them got that funny look on their face and said they faced a similar situation. Obviously they were lying and they were not even good at hiding it.
I have no direct proof that they find ways to cheat the system, but from everything I saw, they must have figured out ways to see more batches than others shoppers do.
I heard back in 2020 there was a software on the market that could bring all those good batches to you and even steal other shoppers active batch. Obviously it no longer exists, but maybe those hacker found new ways to do it? Last time it was too blatant and almost the whole community knew the existence of it. But what if this time they just stay low key and only let few people using it? Anyway I feel doing IC is no longer a viable option as a full time job. We are besieged by hackers and an overly saturated market.

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i’m looking into getting a second job, part time obviously bc i have a full time job… is instacart worth doing? pros… cons…? how does it work with doing taxes?

Just wanted to share my story. I started gambling on Bovada 5 years ago back when I lived in San Francisco. I was in SF working my first job out of college. The city was expensive, my job barely paid the bills and I didn’t have many options for a second income due to not having a car and working a physical labor job..I was toast by the end of day. I lost A LOT of money. I was opening cash advances to pay for my gambling addiction. To make things worse, I was hiding my addiction from my girlfriend who is now my fiancé. I would lose bets and completely shut her out of my life. I used to pretend sick so that I didn’t have to get out of bed. So many instances where I treated her like shit for literally no reason other than losing bets. I finally got the motivation to quit, but then I moved back to KC. When sports betting became legal, I gave in to the free bets. The addiction picked back up again and here I was asking my family and friends for money. Multiple cash advance loans, really bad days, and stuck in bed - just a sick way to live. The worst type of gambling is when you do it to pay rent. I used to love watching sports, but now I almost get sick to my stomach due to the guilt. The worst I got was that my bank account got to -2500$ on PAYDAY. I had advanced basically 2 paychecks. I have a decent paying job but I was paying so much back from my gambling addiction that it didn’t even matter. I am currently working Uber and Instacart as well as my 9-5 to get myself back on my feet. I permanently closed all my gambling accounts. My relationship with my fiancé is much better. Long story short, please don’t be like me. I went from $10 bets a day to 100-500 a day. Don’t put yourself in my shoes. If you need help, please DM me. If you have a friend or family member who needs help please show them this post. I will try my best to show you the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for listening KC.

Instead of giving higher pay and more hours to the skilled workers, it’s a company that keeps hiring too many new people so that they don’t need to give and pay for overtime and instead of giving 40 hr fulltime, everyone gets 20-30 hours part time. And always the bare minimum pay. And they are not gonna care if the veterans go away because it’s a job anyone can do, so easy to replace.
What instacart needs to know is, it’s not the lack of shoppers why those low pay batches are not taken, they are not taken simply because it’s money losing to do them while slowly destroying our cars. Make them worth doing by boosting the base pay? certainly it’s not the lack of the number of shoppers

Has there been any improvements over the past couple months? I’m just curious to see if Instacart has done anything to make that job more fair. I’m not interested in picking it up again but I’m genuinely wondering if there has been any change in how the platform was when I quit (no batches, unfair ratings, customer is always right, low tips, newbies get all the shit, etc.)

So I was offered a new job with the government back in January, after my last seasonal job ended late November. It’s in a new city about 10 hours away. They gave me an early March estimated start date, so I figured I would just go on unemployment for those 2 months and supplement with my savings until my background check clears and I officially have the job.
The problem is now my start date keeps getting pushed back further and further. They’re saying early May now. I’m kicking myself because if I had know that I could have gotten a temporary job this whole time. Now I’m stressing out because my savings are next to gone and I only get $250 a week in unemployment so I have just enough to cover my expenses and none left over to save. (Expenses are $450 for rent, $100 for car and renters insurance, $200 credit card payment, and the rest for groceries and miscellaneous expenses). I started to do Instacart but any money I make I have to declare and that amount gets taken out of my unemployment money, so what’s the point?
I need at least $1500 saved up when I move for a deposit and first months rent, and I have no idea when my start date is actually going to be. Any advice on either making some money quickly or how to move to a new city very cheaply is appreciated, thank you 🙏

Looking for opinions as to why a lot of shoppers are having negative experiences with being an instacart employee.
I have worked a full time job for 13 years and the amount of stress there compared to instacart is nothing. This has to be the easiest way to make money!
All comments welcome! ❤️

On February 9th there was a paper released talking about how incredible it would be if AI could use tools. 42 days later we had Chatgpt plugins. The speed with which we are advancing is truly unbelievable, incredibly exciting and also somewhat terrifying.
Here's some of the things that happened in the past week
(I'm not associated with any person, company or tool. This was entirely by me, no AI involved)
I write about the implications of all the crazy new advancements happening in AI for people who don't have the time to do their own research. If you'd like to stay in the know you can sub here :)
​

• Some pretty famous people (Musk, Wozniak + others) have signed a letter (?) to pause the work done on AI systems more powerful than gpt4. Very curious to hear what people think about this. On one hand I can understand the sentiment, but hypothetically even if this did happen, will this actually accomplish anything? I somehow doubt it tbh [Link]
• Here is a concept of Google Brain from back in 2006 (!). You talk with Google and it lets you search for things and even pay for them. Can you imagine if Google worked on something like this back then? Absolutely crazy to see [Link]
• OpenAI has invested into ‘NEO’, a humanoid robot by 1X. They believe it will have a big impact on the future of work. ChatGPT + robots might be coming sooner than expected [Link]. They want to create human-level dexterous robots [Link]
• There’s a ‘code interpreter’ for ChatGPT and its so good, legit could do entire uni assignments in less than an hour. I would’ve loved this in uni. It can even scan dB’s and analyse the data, create visualisations. Basically play with data using english. Also handles uploads and downloads [Link]
• AI is coming to Webflow. Build components instantly using AI. Particularly excited for this since I build websites for people using Webflow. If you need a website built I might be able to help 👀 [Link]
• ChatGPT Plugin will let you find a restaurant, recommend a recipe and build an ingredient list and let you purchase them using Instacart [Link]
• Expedia showcased their plugin and honestly already better than any wbesite to book flights. It finds flights, resorts and things to do. I even built a little demo for this before plugins were released 😭 [Link]. The plugin just uses straight up english. We’re getting to a point where if you can write, you can create [Link]
• The Retrieval plugin gives ChatGPT memory. Tell it anything and it’ll remember. So if you wear a mic all day, transcribe the audio and give it to ChatGPT, it’ll remember pretty much anything and everything you say. Remember anything instantly. Crazy use cases for something like this [Link]
• ChadCode plugin lets you do search across your files and create issues into github instantly. The potential for something like this is crazy. Changes coding forever imo [Link]
• The first GPT-4 built iOS game and its actually on the app store. Mate had no experience with Swift, all code generated by AI. Soon the app store will be flooded with AI built games, only a matter of time [Link]
• Real time detection of feelings with AI. Honestly not sure what the use cases are but I can imagine people are going to do crazy things with stuff like this [Link]
• Voice chat with LLama on you Macbook Pro. I wrote about this in my newsletter, we won’t be typing for much longer imo, we’ll just talk to the AI like Jarvis [Link]
• Nerfs for cities, looks cool [Link]
• People in the Midjourney subreddit have been making images of an earthquake that never happened and honestly the images look so real its crazy [Link]
• This is an interesting comment by Mark Cuban. He suggests maybe people with liberal arts majors or other degrees could be prompt engineers to train models for specific use cases and task. Could make a lot of money if this turns out to be a use case. Keen to hear peoples thoughts on this one [Link]
• Emad Mostaque, Ceo of Stability AI estimates building a GPT-4 competitor would be roughly 200-300 million if the right people are there [Link]. He also says it would take at least 12 months to build an open source GPT-4 and it would take crazy focus and work [Link]
• • A 3D artist talks about how their job has changed since Midjourney came out. He can now create a character in 2-3 days compared to weeks before. They hate it but even admit it does a better job than them. It's honestly sad to read because I imagine how fun it is for them to create art. This is going to affect a lot of people in a lot of creative fields [Link]
• This lad built an entire iOS app including payments in a few hours. Relatively simple app but sooo many use cases to even get proof of concepts out in a single day. Crazy times ahead [Link]
• Someone is learning how to make 3D animations using AI. This will get streamlined and make some folks a lot of money I imagine [Link]
• These guys are building an ear piece that will give you topics and questions to talk about when talking to someone. Imagine taking this into a job interview or date 💀 [Link]
• What if you could describe the website you want and AI just makes it. This demo looks so cool dude website building is gona be so easy its crazy [Link]
• Wear glasses that will tell you what to say by listening in to your conversations. When this tech gets better you won’t even be able to tell if someone is being AI assisted or not [Link]
• The Pope is dripped tf out. I’ve been laughing at this image for days coz I actually thought it was real the first time I saw it 🤣 [Link]
• Levi’s wants to increase their diversity by showcasing more diverse models, except they want to use AI to create the images instead of actually hiring diverse models. I think we’re gona see much more of this tbh and it’s gona get a lot worse, especially for models because AI image generators are getting crazy good [Link]. Someone even created an entire AI modelling agency [Link]
• ChatGPT built a tailwind landing page and it looks really neat [Link]
• This investor talks about how he spoke to a founder who literally took all his advice and fed it to gpt-4. They even made ai generated answers using eleven labs. Hilarious shit tbh [Link]
• Someone hooked up GPT-4 to Blender and it looks crazy [Link]
• This guy recorded a verse and made Kanye rap it [Link]
• gpt4 saved this dogs life. Doctors couldn’t find what was wrong with the dog and gpt4 suggested possible issues and turned out to be right. Crazy stuff [Link]
• A research paper suggests you can improve gpt4 performance by 30% by simply having it consider “why were you wrong”. It then keeps generating new prompts for itself taking this reflection into account. The pace of learning is really something else [Link]
• You can literally asking gpt4 for a plugin idea, have it code it, then have it put it up on replit. It’s going to be so unbelievably easy to create a new type of single use app soon, especially if you have a niche use case. And you could do this with practically zero coding knowledge. The technological barrier to solving problems using code is disappearing before our eyes [Link]
• A soon to be open source AI form builder. Pretty neat [Link]
• Create entire videos of talking AI people. When this gets better we wont be able to distinguish between real and AI [Link]
• Someone made a cityscape with AI then asked Chatgpt to write the code to port it into VR. From words to worlds [Link]
• Someone got gpt4 to write an entire book. It’s not amazing but its still a whole book. I imagine this will become much easier with plugins and so much better with gpt5 & gpt6 [Link]
• Make me an app - Literally ask for an app and have it built. Unbelievable software by Replit. When AI gets better this will be building whole, functioning apps with a single prompt. World changing stuff [Link]
• Langchain is building open source AI plugins, they’re doing great work in the open source space. Can’t wait to see where this goes [Link]. Another example of how powerful and easy it is to build on Langchain [Link]
• Tesla removed sensors and are just using cameras + AI [Link]
• Edit 3d scenes with text in real time [Link]
• GPT4 is so good at understanding different human emotions and emotional states it can even effectively manage a fight between a couple. We’ve already seen many people talk about how much its helped them for therapy. Whether its good, ethical or whatever the fact is this has the potential to help many people without being crazy expensive. Someone will eventually create a proper company out of this and make a gazillion bucks [Link]
• You can use plugins to process video clips, so many websites instantly becoming obsolete [Link] [Link]
• The way you actually write plugins is describing an api in plain english. Chatgpt figures out the rest [Link]. Don’t believe me? Read the docs yourself [Link]
• This lad created an iOS shortcut that replaces Siri with Chatgpt [Link]
• Zapier supports 5000+ apps. Chatgpt + Zapier = infinite use cases [Link]
• I’m sure we’ve all already seen the paper saying how gpt4 shows sparks of AGI but I’ll link it anyway. “we believe that it could reasonably be viewed as an early (yet still incomplete) version of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system.” [Link]
• This lad created an AI agent that, given a task, creates sub tasks for itself and comes up with solutions for them. It’s actually crazy to see this in action, I highly recommend watching this clip [Link]. Here’s the link to the “paper” and his summary of how it works [Link]
• Someone created a tool that listens to your job interview and tells you what to say. Rip remote interviews [Link]
• Perplexity just released their app, a Chatgpt alternative on your phone. Instant answers + cited sources [Link]

So I got Diamond Cart status last night or early this morning for the first time and it said priority access to batches. So first order this morning is a 60 dollar, under an hour easy batch. I do Instacart before and after my regular job. So after work I couldn’t do any batches because I had to pick up my son at school. But I had the app on for the 45 minute drive and during that time at least 5 great orders popped up. So was this just a coincidence or does the Diamond really help? If anyone has seen the same thing (or not), let me know. Thanks

I do everything. I have no help from moonpies family, I make all of his appointments, get him to said appointments, fill out all of his disability,SSA, medical, TBI paperwork and then follow up on things. I keep track of all documentation, finances, medication refills and when he gets a home health aid/caregiver; I'll be scheduling and maintaining that also. I have reached out to a few community support agencies but things like the TBI waiver and adult daycare and home health aid stuff all take time to get established.
I tried going back to work recently (just a little part time job to help with bills and get me out of the house) but I was let go after 3 days because according to the owner, they said I have too much on my plate and they don't feel that I can give 100% of myself to the job when I'm worried about moonpie and answering phone calls and scheduling things for him while I'm at work. So that was kind of a blow to my self-esteem that I can't work even a part-time job while I'm taking care of him full time.
Also while I'm doing all of his stuff I also have my own medical and other responsibilities such as household and animals, dealing with his family keeping them up to date and I'm literally living off my ADHD meds and diet Coke.
We have no car (It got repo'd due to the fact that I couldn't afford the payments or the insurance with him being out of work and me taking FMLA to take care of him), we have little to no income, and I am making due the best I can on 620.00 a month, walking 7 miles each way to the pharmacy for his meds, carrying laundry on my back 6.5 miles each way a couple times a week so I can do small loads of wash as needed and thankfully I can have groceries instacarted to the house.
People tell me all the time that we should move into the city but rent in the city where we live is anywhere from 1500 to 1700 a month with nothing included and the apartment were in right now is 535 a month with everything included. So even though it would seem nice and logical to move closer to the city we can't afford it anytime soon So I'm making do with what I have to get us through.
I know that people are going to say why don't you take an Uber to these places, well in all honesty and Uber each way would be $18 there and $18 home not to mention where we live it's really difficult to get an Uber to go anywhere and it's money we just don't have right now to spend.
Thankfully I have friends that take me out once a week or once every couple weeks to get me out of the house but I feel bad because those people because they're are paying my way and paying for things for me because I can't afford anything right now.
I'm hoping he gets his SSDI or something so we can breath again....
I really need a hug.

Long story short, I had a job lined up for mid January. Pretty sweet gig too. Then I broke my ankle January 2nd (wow what a fantastic start to the new year!) and lost my job because it required me (you guessed it!) to be on my feet. That's definitely one of those 'rock bottom' moments in my life. Anyway, I applied to remote jobs at first while I was healing but no luck. I applied to hybrid and in-office once I started walking. Had a few interviews too but got rejected in the end. The worst one was a corporate company here in Mississauga called NTN that specializes in bearings, worldwide in multiple industries. They were looking for a social media specialist and videographer.
Everything lined up perfectly. It was located here, the job description was relative to my industry (film, media) and they said they liked me the most out of the final group of people for the last interview. They were even ok with me being in a medical boot until I'd recover. I thought for sure it's in the bag! Nope, got ghosted. Even sent a follow-up email and still got ghosted. Super unprofessional, for a corporate company no less! At least have the decency to tell me I didn't get the part. Another blow to my life. There's only so many punches I can roll with.
So I've been applying non-stop everywhere, even outside my industry for full time work, now that I can fully walk again, but I'm running out of savings. April will be my last month where I can cover my bills. After that. I am screwed. I even applied for EI for disability back when I had my injury but even that got rejected, despite the agent saying I meet all the qualifications, over a phone call. I have the skills and experience but I guess that's not enough for my industry. Almost 10 years of it. I'm in my 30s. It's a shame and disheartening and extremely frustrating, but I also suspect it has to do with lots of politics in my industry, which is a whole can of worms I won't go into. I even signed up to multiple staffing agencies. They're about as useful as a wet toilet paper. I'm kind of out of options now.
Which is why I'm here. Because this is a Mississauga-specific question. I'm thinking of doing UberEats, InstaCart or DoorDash. I have a 2022 car so that safety pass won't be a problem! Which one of these apps has the best payout potential as a full time hustle until I find something more meaningful? I won't do Uber or Lyft because I don't have the patience for customer service and some of the horror stories are not worth it. But with food delivery, you're only interacting with a customer for like 30-60 seconds max since everything is automated. Anyway, yea wanted to vent and ask for some help here first to get an idea. I'll delete the thread in 48-72 hours. Thanks.