Pros
As a student this is a great job because it has a flexible schedule that changes on a weekly basis. Pay is decent and you get paid on a weekly basis which helps if you're working this job because you're on a tight budget.
Cons
The app itself for employees needs a lot of improvement. It's glitchy and the programming can allow for errors and unfair detrimental marks on performance metrics. The performance is based on speed ("x" seconds per item) which is easy to hit if you have a big order (30+ items) or standard (off the shelf) items. If you have a small order (often 1 item orders come in) it's impossible to find the item, check out, bag, print labels, and stage the item in under 60 seconds which gives you a bad mark. If you have a small order (under 10 items) and even 1 or 2 of those items are specialty (juice bar order, hot bar food, meat or deli counter, and bulk items) you run into the same problem. The app and the speed metrics don't account for store size (larger store, more running around and more speciality sections available) so employees at large stores tend to look bad compared to instacart teams at really small stores. As the in-store shopper, if there's an issue with the delivery (heavy traffic causing cold items to melt or warm items to cool, any possible damage in transit, or bags forgotten at the store or in the car etc.) the missing items and complaint goes to the shopper, even if it had to do with the delivery. As a tech company, Instacart has a lot of programming issues to resolve.
