Lugging groceries around this pedestrian city is a feature of New York living. When Fresh Direct and others began offering home delivery, residents embraced them with enthusiasm, even when frustrated by the extra cost and narrower selection.

But now, some new players want to get in on the action.

Amazon doesn't just want to sell New Yorkers all the gifts on their holiday lists. It also wants to sell the milk and cookies for Santa. Long the purveyor of practically everything, Amazon wants to widen its offerings to include fresh produce – milk, cheese and eggs – delivered right to your door. Or, for residents of Brooklyn (where the company is currently delivering) kale, quinoa and gluten-free bread.

But other companies are also gearing up to compete with Fresh Direct. Fairway has partnered with Instacart to offer grocery delivery. Boxed.com sells and delivers bulk dry goods. And Google, where consumers search for nutrition facts and recipes, is joining the fray with its new Google Express same day service.

Reporter Sally Herships experimented with a few of these services for WNYC's Money Talking. Amazon delivered her items as promised with only a few raspberries squished. When she tried to order from Google, it was a complete fail as the world's biggest search engine currently doesn't offer delivery to her Brooklyn neighborhood.

While this holiday season may be a food fight for online retailers in New York, hopefully for the rest of us, it will promise a few days away from the office.

Continuing a series with the Harvard Business Review looking at how to survive the workplace, Charlie Herman, host of Money Talking, talks with Peter Bregman, author of the Harvard Business Review article, "What to Do on Your First Day Back from Vacation." Bregman says, don't get distracted by the small, anxiety-inducing tasks like dealing with email buildup.

"Before you do anything, you should pause for a moment and think about what is it that is most important for the organization to accomplish," said Bregman. "You want to reconnect with the vision of the organization. You want to reconnect with the strategy."

Returning from vacation can be overwhelming and Bregman has worked out a radical strategy for maintaining those good vacation feelings.

"Take lunch or pause for an hour – a whole hour – and maybe have lunch with someone you like and have a conversation with them," he said. "That's one way of bringing that vacation feeling back. It slows you down enough to remind you that you're a human being."