Here's a scene that played out recently at a San Francisco Costco that should surprise absolutely no one: An Instacart driver was flagged by a checkout clerk for a bucket of strawberries containing a visibly moldy berry. The clerk pointed it out, warned that the customer wouldn't be happy, and gave the driver every opportunity to do the right thing.

The driver's solution? He plucked the single moldy strawberry out with his bare hands and kept it moving.

The checkout clerk — a man of admirable restraint — simply turned to the other customers in line and said: "Don't use Instacart."

Look, we get it. Grocery delivery is convenient. You're busy. Traffic on 19th Avenue is a nightmare. Costco parking lots were designed by someone who hates humanity. But here's the uncomfortable truth that the gig economy doesn't want you to think about too hard: the person shopping for your groceries has zero incentive to care about quality.

Instacart shoppers are racing the clock, juggling multiple orders, and getting paid per batch — not per act of diligence. They're not malicious; they're just operating rationally within a system that rewards speed over standards. The moldy strawberry isn't a moral failing. It's an incentive problem.

And this is the fundamental tension with outsourcing personal tasks to algorithmically managed gig workers. You're paying a premium for convenience, but the platform has already squeezed the margins so thin on the labor side that "carefully inspecting your produce" falls somewhere between "not my job" and "I literally cannot afford to."

As one local who witnessed the whole thing put it: "The best quality control for any sort of food delivery will be yourself."

That's not just good advice — it's a concise critique of an entire business model. You're not paying for someone to care. You're paying for someone to grab and go. If you want someone who'll squeeze the avocados and check the expiration dates, that person is you.

The market giveth convenience, and the market taketh away your right to complain about mushy strawberries. Choose accordingly.