Perhaps, last weekend, you were thinking of making some cookies for your officemates. You were going to give them out this week, before everybody left for the holiday. So you woke up on Saturday morning and you logged on to FreshDirect to order the ingredients. Except, to your surprise, they were out of chocolate chips. And nearly out of flour. And running low on sugar. And then, when you tried to schedule a delivery time, you learned that the soonest they could get your modest ingredients to you was four days from then. You may have been irritated. You may have been outraged. You may have even gone to the grocery store. See, readers, this week there's something amiss with FreshDirect, and it's going to get in the way of your food planning. They're out of many of their staples, and they don't have any available delivery openings. It may be the holiday season, but it's practically unbearable. What could be worse?!

Turns out there is one thing that could be. As the Village Voice reported, FreshDirect told its employees this weekend that the Department of Homeland Security was going to review the documents of FD workers in an effort to weed out illegal immigrants. According to the Voice, "scores of employees who had worked at the company for years had sprinted out the door, many of them in tears." Which might explain the additional strain on restocking and delivering from the company's warehouses this week. We asked a company rep about the situation and received this robotic response. "FreshDirect delivery time slots are filling up quickly. We encourage customers to plan ahead and to double-check available times." Or, you know, you could walk to the grocery store down the street. Which maybe now doesn't seem like such a horrible prospect after all.

Panic at Fresh Direct [VV]
FreshDirect [Official site]