It's My Job: Shopping à la cart

Karen Vaala decided to do something completely different after retiring from working for the U.S. Social Security Administration for 28 years.

She's an online grocery shopper at Cash Wise Foods in Fargo, 1401 33rd St. S.

When customers submit online grocery delivery lists, Vaala steers her cart up and down store aisles, filling their order.

"I hate to shop. I absolutely hate to shop for anything other than food," she said.

Q: What inspired you to do this job?

A: This one always kind of caught my eye. I had been in here and saw the people shopping and thought that may be interesting - I'm going to try it.

I filled out an application and brought it in one year in January. They said, "How soon can you start?"

That was three years ago, and I am still shopping.

How many days a week do you work?

I work usually five days a week, six hours a day, and the shifts vary. They are either an early shift (8 a.m. to 2 p.m.) or a late shift (2 to 8 p.m.), and I do either one. So I have a lot of variety in my work schedule.

There's probably 20 of us that do this, so there's a lot of flexibility for when you want time off.

How many orders a day do you fill?

It varies a lot. Today I did an order that was a total of $70. The next order I did was $500.

Today I've probably shopped nine orders total. Some days it's six; some days it's 12. It just depends on how big they are.

I've had orders that have had one item, like a carton of cigarettes.

We've got another customer that orders about $1,000 (worth of groceries). So you just never know.

Are all of your customers home-based shoppers?

No. We have a lot of business orders.

We deliver to high schools that have home ec classes, a lot of day care centers, some retirement homes, some businesses that order things for their break room like bottled water, soda, coffee and snacks, and some hotels that do continental breakfast.

Which hours or days are busiest?

The early part of the day is busy during the week because we do all of the business orders then.

The later shifts, we're usually delivering to homes.

Monday is usually our busiest day.

Friday evenings sometimes are busy because a lot of people want to have their groceries delivered for the weekend.

We do a service where you can pick your groceries up. Sometimes, on their way to the lake, we will shop their order for them. They will just pick it up on their way to the lake on Friday afternoon.

What backgrounds do your co-workers have?

A lot of us are retired, and this is just their kind of fun job. We have a lot of students that do it because they have the flexible schedule. We have some people that work full time and still want to pick up a shift on the weekend or whatever.

It's a mixture of different ages and backgrounds that we have as shoppers.

What is different about this job experience?

I used to sit in an office behind a desk all day with a computer in a cubicle.

Now I get to walk around, get lots of exercise and still get to talk to lots of people.

It's physically probably the hardest job I've ever done. The business orders that we do are cases and cases of bottled water, gallons and gallons of milk.

I'm doing a lot of lifting in addition to all the walking.

It's a workout. At the end of six hours, I'm ready to be done.

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Readers can reach Forum Business Editor Craig McEwen at (701) 241-5502