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Last week—in need of a cumbersome and voluminous grocery-store haul that certainly required a car and time I didn’t have—I shopped online.

Because I can’t bear to spend any more money with Jeff Bezos than I already do, and because I believe brick-and-mortar stores actually do something for our communities beyond selling goods, I tend to use Instacart, the service that allows you to send one of their shoppers to your store of choice (mine is the ethnic shoppers’ paradise Food Bazaar). As I perused the many brand and size options available to me for garlic marinades, adobo seasonings, and peach nectars, my excitement for the feast I would soon be preparing began to mount.

Three hours and about 20 semi-frantic texts with my personal shopper later, I was throwing on my coat and hoofing it to scour the local mini-marts for the numerous items that had not arrived… and once again wondering if the promise of technological convenience had outweighed the reality of what it could actually deliver.

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