The Algorithm Knows I'm a Casserole Household and Honestly, I Can't Argue

Somewhere in a server farm in Ohio, there is a file on me. It doesn't have my name on it — it has my phone number, which is somehow worse. And according to this file, I am something called a "Casserole Household."

I found this out the way we all find things out now: casually, at 11 p.m., scrolling through the "Recommended For You" tab of my grocery store's app. There it was. A little banner. "Great picks for Casserole Households like yours!" Like yours. Plural. As in, the algorithm has decided that everyone living in my apartment is, spiritually, a person who owns a 9x13 Pyrex dish and has opinions about French fried onions.

I live alone. I have never made a casserole. But you know what? The machine said it, so the machine must be obeyed.

Week One: The Compliance Phase

The rules I set for myself were simple. For 30 days, I would buy whatever the app recommended, redeem every coupon it offered, and follow every loyalty prompt like a devoted pilgrim. If the app said the Casserole Household needed cream of mushroom soup, then cream of mushroom soup there would be.

The first week's recommendations were aggressively Midwestern. Condensed soups in flavors I didn't know existed. A bag of tater tots so large it had its own gravitational pull. A rotisserie chicken, which, fine, the app and I agree on rotisserie chicken. That's not a recommendation, that's a universal truth.

But then the app got confident. It started suggesting items with the energy of a friend who's known you since middle school. A specific brand of seltzer. The off-brand cheese crackers I buy when I'm pretending I'm not sad. How did it know? Did I search for those? Or has it simply been watching, patiently, for years, building its little dossier while I swiped my loyalty card and said nothing?

I'd like to state for the record that I swiped that card voluntarily. That's the part that gets me. Nobody made me enroll. I walked into that data relationship with my eyes closed and my email address extended like a bouquet.

Week Two: The Points Economy Is a Scam I Love

Here's what nobody tells you about loyalty programs: the points are fake money that buys fake things, and I would die for them.

By day nine, I had accumulated enough points to redeem for "fuel savings," which meant I drove to a gas station I'd never visited before, in a part of town I have no other reason to visit, to save 40 cents a gallon. While there, I noticed the gas station sold sushi. Gas station sushi. The app, sensing my proximity, sent a notification awarding me double points on gas station sushi.

I want to be clear: I did not buy the gas station sushi. But I thoughht about it for a full 45 seconds, which is 44 seconds longer than I've thought about most life decisions, including my career. That's the insidious genius of the points economy. It doesn't sell you groceries. It sells you the feeling of winning, and the currency of that feeling is accepted nowhere.

Week Three: The Hot Sauce Incident

Day 17 is when things got personal. My birthday was that week, and the app knew. Of course it knew. And on the morning of my birthday, I received a notification: "Happy Birthday from [Hot Sauce Brand]! Claim your free bottle!"

A hot sauce brand I have purchased once, apparently in a blackout-state grocery run during 2022, had remembered my birthday. My own cousin sent a text at 9 p.m. with a thumbs-up emoji. The hot sauce company sent me a gift at 7 a.m. sharp.

I claimed the free bottle. I would like to say I did so ironically, as a writer, engaging in a bit. But I stood in that hot sauce aisle feeling genuinely seen, and I hated myself for it, and I put the bottle in my cart, and the algorithm purred.

This is the deal we've all made, right? We traded our birthdays, our purchase histories, our casserole identities, for a free bottle of sriracha and 40 cents off gas. And honestly? Some days it feels like a fair trade. That's the scary part.

Week Four: Meeting the Database Version of Me

By the final week, I stopped fighting it. I made the casserole. I'm not proud, but I'm also not lying to you: it was good. Tater tots on top, cream of mushroom in the middle, the whole Midwestern hymnal. The app had won, or I had come home, depending on how you look at it.

And that's when the existential part hit me, standing over a bubbling dish of compliance: there is a version of me that exists in a Kroger database, and that version is more consistent than I am. That version buys the same seltzer every week. That version has a predictable schedule, reliable preferences, a whole coherent identity. The real me can't commit to a favorite bagel. The database me has a brand profile.

We spend so much time worrying about our social media selves — the curated, filtered, brunch-photographed versions — that we forget the most accurate portrait of us isn't painted by us at all. It's painted by a recommendation engine that noticed we buy ice cream every Sunday and correctly diagnosed us as fine, mostly fine, doing our best.

The Verdict

After 30 days of total algorithmic obedience, here's my report: the app saved me $63.71, gifted me one bottle of hot sauce, and correctly predicted 90% of my purchases. It also knows things about me I haven't said out loud.

Am I a Casserole Household? On paper, no. In my heart, after this month — yeah, maybe. The machine doesn't dream of who you could be. It just watches who you are and hands you a coupon for it.

Anyway, my fuel points expire Friday, so if you need me, I'll be at the gas station. Not the sushi one. Probably.