Long gravel driveway, no porch light, 9:40 on a Tuesday. A dog I could hear but couldn't see. And a guy who came out of the house and was standing at my back bumper before I'd finished putting the car in park.
Nothing happened. I handed him four bags, said have a good one, and drove off with my hands shaking a little.
The reason that one stuck with me is that I already knew I didn't want to do it. Read the address, thought "hm," and did it anyway because dropping it felt like a bigger deal than being uncomfortable for ninety seconds. That's the trade most of us make, over and over, and it works until it doesn't.
The ADT thing is already in your app
Go find it now, while you're sitting somewhere with a cup of coffee, not later when you need it.
Shipt's shopper safety page lays out two options built into the shopper app. You can request a call from ADT, which puts an ADT Security agent on the phone with you and keeps them on the line until you feel safe. Or you can request 911 assistance, which trips a silent alarm telling ADT to dispatch emergency services to where you actually are, in real time.
The silent part is the useful part. You aren't announcing to the person twenty feet away that you just called the cops.
I'd guess most shoppers have never opened that screen. Open it. Not to press anything, just so your thumb knows where it lives when you're breathing fast and the interior of your car is dark.
Don't self-drop, have support do it
This is the part that keeps people delivering orders they shouldn't.
Shipt's own deactivation guidelines list "dropping an order or route within one hour of the delivery window or scheduled pick-up time" as a distressed drop, filed under behavioral standards. The page doesn't publish a safety exception. So a shopper sitting outside a house they don't like, twenty minutes before the window closes, does the math and delivers.
The way around that is on Shipt's safety page: the 24/7 support team is there by phone, live chat, and email if you need to drop an order for any reason. Phone number is 205-502-2500.
Let them take it off you. It takes a few minutes and it puts a record of why on the order, instead of leaving a drop sitting on your account with no context attached to it.
Do this in the driveway. Not after you've knocked.
Alcohol is the one refusal that's written down for you
Most judgment calls in this job are yours alone and nobody has your back in writing. Alcohol is different.
Shipt's terms of service say alcohol won't be delivered to an intoxicated person, and that if the shopper or driver perceives the recipient to be intoxicated at the time of delivery, in the shopper's sole discretion, the alcohol order gets canceled. Sole discretion. Those words are doing a lot of work and they're doing it for you.
The ID rules are equally firm. The recipient has to produce a driver's license for age verification, and depending on state law you either scan it or check it visually. No license, no delivery, unless your state allows a specific alternative.
If somebody's swaying on the porch at 11pm and gets loud about it, you are not improvising a policy. You're following one.
What the community guidelines say members can't do to you
Worth actually reading once, because a lot of shoppers assume none of it applies to the member side.
Shipt's community guidelines prohibit taking photos or video of another person or their property without consent. They prohibit making off-platform contact without explicit consent, which covers the member who finds your personal number or looks you up. Failing or refusing to secure pets. Unlawful possession or brandishing of a firearm or weapon while on the platform or at a retailer or a customer's property. Threatening or committing assault against a person, animal, or property.
Violations can lead to suspension, removal, or restriction of access to the platform. That applies to members, not only to us.
Report it even when nothing happened
The dog that wasn't secured. The guy who followed you back down the driveway. The address where the porch light has never once been on.
None of that produces a police report and all of it is worth reporting. Shipt's safety page says contact the 24/7 support team and they escalate it to the Trust and Safety team. One report of a loose dog is a shrug. Four reports from four different shoppers about the same address is a pattern, and patterns are the only thing that moves.
You will feel dramatic doing this the first time. Do it anyway.
Weather gets handled late
Shipt says it sends in-app notifications during severe weather and will pause orders in impacted areas until conditions are considered safe.
That's a reasonable policy and it arrives after somebody has already made a call about the roads. Usually that somebody is you, on an on-ramp, in sleet.
Nothing in the pay structure covers a body shop deductible. Ice is the one where I stopped negotiating with myself years ago.
The habits that aren't in any policy
Park facing out. Every time, even in daylight, because it costs nothing and it means you're never doing a three point turn while somebody walks toward the car.
Text when you're a few minutes out. A member expecting you at the door is a member who opens it, instead of a stranger appearing on a dark porch and both of you startling each other.
Leave the engine running for a hand-to-me at night. Your phone number is masked both ways, so nothing you do at the door gives out your real contact info. Shipt's safety page also lists two-factor authentication as required on accounts, plus optional Allstate Identity Protection plans for earners on the platform. The optional one is worth taking.
And use the porch. If the order can be left at the door and your gut says leave it at the door, leave it at the door.
Keep your own list of the ones you won't go back to
Reporting is what Shipt handles. Remembering is what it doesn't.
Six weeks from now that address comes up on the offer screen as a street name and a dollar amount, with nothing on it about the driveway or the dog or the guy at your bumper. You'll have forgotten. I always forget.
The shoppers who stay comfortable in this job are the ones who wrote it down the same night, while it still felt like something.
Auto Tip Map is an Android app that saves every order, tip, and address automatically, and lets you put your own note on an address. Which means the driveway you swore you'd never do again is labeled the next time it shows up, instead of relying on you to remember a Tuesday from two months ago.