I had been ordering my groceries online and having them dropped off on my front porch well before the virus hit.
The delivery service made grocery shopping safer and more convenient than the traditional method of driving out and back to the store every week.
What used to take me over an hour now only cost about five minutes and a $10 tip.
Aside from the occasional cracked egg or overripe avocado, they usually fulfilled my order accurately and met my expectations.
Back then food delivery was a valuable service offering I was happy to pay for. But after the virus erupted into a pandemic the authorities took over.
They nationalized the food industry for two reasons: 1) to better manage supply in light of a surge in demand, and 2) to reduce social interactions by eliminating customer trips to the grocery store.
Food delivery became a government mandate. Everyone had to order online, pay for delivery, and wait for their groceries to be dropped off at their doorstep.
The customer experience changed overnight; everyone complained.
Naturally, supply side constraints combined with irrational demand led to quantity restrictions and rationing. This didn’t affect me much because I avoided most of the rationed products in high demand anyways.
No pasta or bread (low-carb diet). No milk (lactose intolerant). No paper towels (I use leaves and old newspapers instead). No toilet paper (see previous).
On the other hand, I did notice a disappointing and palpable difference in food quality.
I could taste the bureaucracy in the bananas…
The taxes in the tomatoes…
The politics in the potato starch…
The stagnation in the sauerkraut…
The corruption in the coconut milk.
In addition to the slumping quality and limited supply, grocery distribution operations slid downhill too.
Late deliveries, mixed-up orders, disgruntled drivers, sadly all business as usual.
But this past Monday, one grocery order went weird, way beyond the new normal.
The delivery guys didn’t even bother to slow down — they just hurled my grocery bags out the window of the moving van toward my door. I found kale, mushrooms and bell peppers strewn across my front lawn, with the rest of the items cowering inside the overturned and ripped shopping bags.
Thankfully it appears they planned for this kind of treatment and packed my organic pasture-raised eggs carefully in a foam-insulated, cushioned container that protected them from the impact.
I set the container with the eggs safely to the side on the kitchen counter, and then hurried to bring all the scattered groceries inside.
After putting the groceries away, I turned to the insulated container with the egg carton and flipped the lid open to see how many had been cracked en route.
No eggs were cracked because no eggs were in the carton.
Instead, I found a mini elephant, all alone, sitting cross-legged, with his eyes closed, in a space toward the middle of the carton where an egg would normally be.
He must have been meditating because, even after I opened the lid, gasped, crapped my pants and dropped the carton back onto the counter, he didn’t move. He just sat there breathing, eyes closed, slow and calm.
After a few moments he slowly opened his eyes and addressed me.
“Mind if I take a look around?” he asked.
“What’re you a cop?” I replied.
“Yes.”
“Show me a warrant.”
“Check the receipt.”
I brought up the receipt from my recent groceries order on my phone and squinted my eyes. I couldn’t find anything other than line items for products, quantities and prices.
“It’s in the terms of service down at the bottom, or on the second page,” the elephant said helpfully, but without glancing up or smiling.
Sure enough, it was right there in black and white pixels:
By purchasing goods, products and services from The Amazon Foods Corporation you agree to our Terms of Service and Laws of the Jungle, which in a crisis, grant service animals — acting as community workers in accordance with federal health, safety and harmony guidelines — the unmitigated right to inspect your property for any violations of said guidelines that could lead to harm, injury, disease, discomfort or disruption to the general health and/or general harmony of the general public.
“Alright, let’s go, Dumbo,” I said, shaking my head, trying to hide my fear.
“What’d you call me?”
“You heard me.”
“My name is not, Dumbo. It’s Jerry.”
“Whatever, let’s go.”
I lowered my hand to the counter and let the little elephant cop climb out of the egg carton and onto my palm, which I then raised to my eye level, aligning our perspectives.
As we walked through the kitchen, dining room, living room and bathroom, Jerry stood on my fingers, at the edge of my flattened palm platform, and gazed out at the domestic landscape below like a general surveying a battlefield.
“Pretty self-explanatory,” I said, adding useless commentary to fill the silence as we walked through each room. “Couch, coffee table, bookshelf, basic bathroom…sorry about the mess…wasn’t expecting company.”
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Jerry said, at once gracious, sarcastic, bored and nonplussed.
I paused for further comments or questions. None arose. We kept the inspection moving.
“And this is my bedroom,” I said, opening the door, flipping on the light.
Skyscrapers of canned sardines filled half the room. They stacked up to the ceiling and covered up the window on the wall opposite the bedroom door.
On the floor, just in front of the sardine skyscrapers, at the foot of the bed — which lay in the middle of the room — hundreds of pounds of kettlebells peppered the floor like landmines.
On the wall above the kettlebells, facing the bed, hung mounted guitars, assault rifles, a bicycle, a plant and a mirror.
A weight bench occupied the corner of the room closest to the doorway, and the adjacent walk-in closet housed shelves of storage bins filled with ammo, knives, grenades, paper towels, archived periodicals, baseball caps, folded clothing, and more bins of canned sardines.
Jerry’s ears fluttered as we stood at the doorway. It had to have been the most contraband he’d ever encountered on a residential inspection.
The rogue non-certified, non-sanctioned fitness equipment. The incendiary musical instruments. The non-secured greenery. The non-licensed personal transportation vehicle. The arsenal of destruction. And of course, the hoard of sardines, which had been removed from the authority’s dietary suggestions and removed from grocery store offerings; thus sardines were only available at the illegal black markets.
All surely grounds for immediate and indefinite incarceration.
“I don’t believe it,” Jerry said, wiping a tear from his face. “Please, take me up to the towers.”
I walked across the room to the sardines and raised my hand up so Jerry could step off and stand on top of one of the stacks.
He kowtowed to the majestic mountains of canned fish. Then — beaming a smile — he stood up, raised his hands over his head, and let out a primal elephant roar from atop the sardine summit.
Then he motioned me to come over and bring him down.
I let him climb back onto the palm of my hand, and walked us over, slowly and calmly, to the weight bench on the other side of the room. I put my palm down to the bench and Jerry stepped off to have a seat next to me on the bench.
We both stared down at the ground, Jerry’s hind elephant legs dangling from the bench seat, his relatively big ears fluttering in silence.
“The myth is that we eat peanuts and fear mice,” Jerry said, candidly. “Truth is we love sardines and fear nothing.”
I nodded my head.
Then I walked back over to the other side of the room and brought over a couple cans to the weight bench, cracked them open and set one on the bench next to Jerry.
He grabbed a trunk full of sardines, stuffed it in his mouth and closed his eyes while he chewed. We ate from our respective tins in silence until they were emptied.
After that, I walked Jerry back to the kitchen, where he stepped off from my palm and back into the empty egg carton.
He fumbled around with a pen and notepad that he had in one of the other egg spaces. With the pen in his trunk he scribbled something, ripped off the piece of paper and tossed it onto the kitchen counter.
“The hanging plant in your bedroom is a safety hazard and you could hit your head on it,” he said authoritatively. “I’m gonna let you off with a warning, but you need to find a secured spot for it that won’t potentially cause harm”
“I understand.”
“Now, if you’ll be so kind as to close up my carton and set me out on your front doorstep, my department patrol will pick me up and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Jerry planted himself back in his egg spot, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes.
“Absolutely. Thank you for your service.” I said, and closed the lid.
I set the carton softly out on the front porch, went back inside and locked the door behind me.
Then I ordered another dozen organic pasture-raised eggs from the grocery store and hoped for the best.