I spent nearly 4 months of this year shopping for complete strangers, thousands of miles from my home and navigating completely different food and culture than I am used to, all while attempting to build a new life in the midst of a global pandemic—and I loved it. Only in 2020, right?
When I decided to relocate from my native country of Turkey to the United States, arriving in February 2020, little did I know I would spend a portion of the year serving as an Instacart shopper during a massive pandemic, purchasing and delivering groceries for others in my new home of Palm Beach County in South Florida. I learned so much about American food, prices and how American markets work. I had wonderful people helping me find items on the market shelves, adjust to different driving rules, figure out the many surrounding neighborhoods and towns, and the list goes on—everything was so different! I saw beautiful gated communities in Florida while making my delivery rounds. My brand-new car logged 6,000 extra miles, I made almost 500 shopping deliveries and, although the money was not mine, I spent around US$75,000 on groceries. Believe me, I took the job seriously, asking my customers if they wanted their bananas green or yellow, their avocados ripe or hard and informing them about in-store deals. Not to boast, but I consistently earned 5-star rankings. Another bright spot: the 13-hour workdays, 7 days a week, consisting of shopping and rushing to meet deadlines was the first job that improved my physical fitness. The work was not as complex as I am used to, but it was gratifying nonetheless.
In a way, this professional detour was surreal after spending more than 3 decades as an IT leader in Turkey, where I established the country’s first IT audit department, worked on the first COBIT® implementation at a large Turkish bank, was the first IT risk manager and was one of the country’s first professionals to attain the 4 core ISACA® certifications and become a project management professional (PMP). I have lectured on COBIT, information security, IT audit and IT governance in graduate programs at several universities, given speeches at international conferences and traveled around the world to deliver training. I certainly did not anticipate adding “Instacart Shopper” to my CV at this stage of my career, but then again, many of us have stumbled into a brave new world in 2020.
Little did I know the impact COVID-19 would have on my American journey, but I am hopeful now that I have returned to sturdier footing. In July, I was hired as a third-party risk assessment senior consultant at TD Ameritrade. Instead of learning about new products in the supermarket, I have been learning about products in the IT supermarket that provide services to TD Ameritrade. It is my first remote job, but like everything else this year, I am adapting.
It has been great to be back in the IT space. The business transformation I have witnessed and been part of throughout my life is hard to fathom, starting with closely observing my father, who worked for a large bank. I have been fascinated by technology transformation since the days of typewriters, facit calculators, carbon transfer papers and the first versions of monochrome monitors, when it took 3 days for an email to be transmitted from 1 PC to another in the same room. I have seen the IT evolution right from the beginning, especially working in the banking and finance industry, which has been a leader in automation and innovation.