Chicago actor Greg F. is one of the more friendly people you’ll ever meet. And he’s got the award to prove it. In 2012 he not only won Chicago’s Bellstaff of the Year award, handed out by the local hospitality industry to the most helpful and outgoing front lobby staffer at the area’s hotels, but went on to win Bellstaff of the Year for the entire state of Illinois.
“I was pretty grateful for that,” he says.
Hotel work paid Greg’s bills for a while, as he built his acting career. He’d fit rehearsals and auditions in between shifts scheduled by his bosses the best he could, attempting that rigorous balance between hospitality work and making a dream come true. “Everyone always hears you have to have that day job,” Greg says of being an actor. “It was sort of set in stone.” Most of his shifts ran from 7am to 3pm and often that meant missing or being late to something important like a rehearsal.
In the last few years Greg’s career has grown wings. He’s played parts in big productions like The Full Monty, Floyd Collins, Spamalot, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and Assassins. Not only that, but in 2013 he was nominated for his first Jeff Award, the Chicago equivalent of a Tony, as a supporting actor. He’s been nominated for two more since. His acting career was coming together but, in order to continue making progress, Greg found that he needed more autonomy and flexibility than his “day job” allowed.
So in July of 2014 Greg left the hospitality industry and started to work with Instacart as a Personal Shopper. Now he does not have to work consistent weekly shifts — and that’s been just perfect for Greg. Sometimes he works a lot; sometimes he works only a few hours. “My availability changes every week in terms of rehearsals and auditions,” he says. “And I can accommodate that.” Around the Chicago acting scene, the launching points for show biz greats like Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey, Greg says he’s not alone either. “A lot of my acting buddies are doing the same.”
Greg describes his approach to taking Instacart orders like a game. One of his favorite challenges: Sometimes a store won’t have the exact item a customer wants and there are a few alternatives with different pros and cons. Greg enjoys the exercise of figuring out how to describe the quandary. It develops his communication skills, he says, to express something very clearly. “It’s a matter of thinking on your feet,” he says.
Greg says he’s gotten to know a few customers, often chatting with them about his upcoming performance, and he has been flattered when they’ve personally requested he fill their next order. Customers live across Chicago and so Greg has also been learning the nooks and crannies of his very big city. “I definitely see areas of Chicago I’ve never seen before.”
Greg says that he enjoys being a Shopper. “It’s never boring,” he says.
Learn more about becoming a shopper at Instacart.
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