From the strange but true files. Retailers are in a battle to bring consumers the most convenient and interesting variety of delivery options possible in a race for your spending dollars. Drones will drop off packages on your porch and robots will soon be trundling along the sidewalks of cities. But hey… you’re a busy man or woman who has to work, commute and still have a social life. You can’t be bothered to go outside and unclip your new Playstation game from the drone or swipe your credit card in slot on the robot’s head. What to do?

Easy peasy. You don’t even need to be home. You can order all your groceries from Walmart from your phone, click one button and a complete stranger will show up at your empty house or apartment, let themselves in, stock the fridge and make sure that all your refrigerated goods are ready when you get home. Seriously folks… how did nobody think of this before? (Daily Caller)

Walmart announced Friday that it will begin testing a new service that allows employees to enter a customer’s home and stock their fridge, to alleviate the stress of shopping.

The retail corporation is targeting busy families looking for a more convenient option for food delivery, the Associated Press reported.

The retail giant is currently testing the service only in Silicon Valley. For customers with internet-connected locks, a delivery person is given a one-time code that grants access. Customers receive a notification on their smartphones when a delivery person enters their home.

I’ve been trying to do better lately after my wife reminded me that I tend to be a bit too much of a stodgy old codger who’s resistant to change. Maybe my natural instinct to station a live leopard in the kitchen before leaving home just in case someone orders this service for my house is way off base. Could this really be the next big thing?

In a perfect world where we don’t yet have C3PO style robots who can let themselves into the house and refill your milk and egg supplies, I suppose this sounds okay in theory. The delivery person has a “one time only” access code to get into your house… which I assume means you need one of those smart houses or at least a burglar alarm with code entry access. So it would at least be harder from them to case the joint and come back to rob it later. You’re notified when they arrive, so I suppose if you have nanny cams all over the house you can watch them from your phone while they bring in the groceries. But at this point you’re putting in enough time and worry to make this work that you might as well just meet them at the house and bring in the goods yourself. Or, for that matter, you may as well wait until you’re done with your travels and pick up the food yourself on the way home.

In order to build consumer confidence in this system I suppose we’d need to know how carefully Walmart plans to vet these delivery people. Clearly they’d need to be bonded the same way reputable cleaning agencies are. And that means you’ll probably have to pay them a fair bit. How much will this cost compared to doing your own shopping? If you’re well off enough to afford the service plus the security system and all the other high-tech goodies, I suppose you’re not as worried about the price of your groceries.

But when you stop to think about it from that perspective, does that sound like the profile of your typical Walmart shopper? If you’re that flush with cash, aren’t you more likely to be shopping at Whole Foods or at least Wegmans? All I know is I’m putting in a fresh Google News Alert for, Walmart delivery person house robbery.