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The Day I Drove for Amazon Flex
- duxup 8y agoThe Kobayashi Maru delivery situations where there are few parking options or the customer simply isn't there seem terribly unfair.
- tanagra 8y agoI’ve never before seen the term kobayashi maru used in the wild. Now that I have, I think, it should be more widely used.
- duxup 8y agoIt feels like a very literary type term... I get my monocle out each time i use it.... and my Star Trek badge.
- andyidsinga 8y agoit seems, in a large city, one ticket could blow a days wages..
- ars 8y agoSounds like non-drivable, only walkable, cities are a real problem for deliveries.
- duxup 8y agoIf you're driving a regular car it is. Many buildings have some plan for deliveries from traditional delivery companies.
- verbify 8y agoUnfortunately my block of flats was built in 1902 and is on a narrow street. Deliveries so often don't show up that I have given up - I now use collect+, amazon lockers or get items delivered to work.
- ehnto 8y agoSmall price to pay. Not a terribly difficult problem to solve either. Some cities have already with last mile bike cargo carriers.
- Djvacto 8y agoI don't think this is a huge problem though, as it forces the use/development of things like delivery lockers, last-mile bike/foot delivery, pickup stations, and just generally pushing back on the idea that a car should be able to go everywhere until a human is absolutely forced to get out of the car and walk. I think cities/bigger towns would eventually (in my idealistic world vision) have major highways/roads that go around them, and have primarily foot/bike/public transit traffic for everything internal.
- glenneroo 8y agoDomino's recently opened up some shops in Vienna, Austria and they gave a lot of their delivery people e-bikes. UPS also seems to have people delivering last-mile with e-bikes. Seems to work out great and they aren't clogging up the streets with delivery cars parked everywhere, blocking entrances, etc. like most other delivery services.
- sulam 8y agoIt's not so great on the other end, either. My house has a gate to get to the front door. The gate is very easy to operate and never locked. A driver (I have to assume Flex) instead _threw_ a 20lb box with an ice maker in it over the fence and into a rose bush that was clearly visible (the fence is just wrought iron). It crushed a lot of roses and thankfully didn't damage the ice maker. My wife was literally 20' away in her office when it happened and says the driver simply drove up, threw it over, and drove away.
- fapjacks 8y agoI know a person that uses a paintball gun to keep people out of his apartment building's dumpster (identity theft from documents stolen out of trash is a huge problem where he lives) and also to tag delivery trucks and (yikes) delivery drivers that do this kind of hit-and-run delivery. He'd had enough of things being broken in this way.
- lostctown 8y agoThat seems a little excessive? I hope he sees judicial consequences for his behavior.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoI'm not defending the GP's acquaintance but getting hit by a paintball is lower than the typical risks you accept when you dig around in a dumpster. Generally speaking dumpster diving isn't trespassing unless it's behind a gate or something. It really depends on the dumpster in question. If it's a good construction or scrap metal dumpster with a lot of nice material in it then defending it with a paintball gun is very much a dick move though. I don't see why he's getting down-voted. He just said he knew a guy who did a thing. He didn't even imply whether he approved of it or not.
- andrew_ 8y agoSame situation where I live. At least a dozen times I've contacted Amazon with a link to video of a delivery person lobbing a package over my 6' fence gate (which is so easy to operate, we have to chase young children out daily that enter to pet the outdoor cat that chills on our patio). Cameras help immensely with this kind of thing. The last time I had a problem was well over six months ago. And Amazon has extended my Prime membership for free my as many months as times I've had flying, over-fence deliveries.
- jjoske 8y agoWhen google initially invested in Boston Robots I thought was to try and solve this problem.
- Zigurd 8y agoI think you mean Boston Dynamics.
- moltar 8y agoWhy there were never these articles for pizza drivers and other deliveries before?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- plankers 8y agoBecause the companies they worked for didn't threaten to upend the retail market of an entire nation, I'm guessing.
- extralego 8y agoThat makes sense in some clearcut ways and a lot of generally concerning ways. I wonder if the sentiment from how it affects peoples’ lives is at play or if it’s just Amazon being so big. It seems similar to Wal-Mart rage, which was mostly the former.
- unclebucknasty 8y agoThere were complaints (and lawsuits) about Domino's drivers creating dangerous situations trying to beat their old "30-minutes or it's free" guarantee. Of course, the internet wasn't what it is today, so you wouldn't have seen it on HN. But, I'm not sure that the individual pizza deliverer sees quite the scale or encounters the scenarios of an independent contractor working for Amazon, including less predictable delivery times, variability of package types, etc.
- Zigurd 8y agoPizza drivers have been widely written about for being notoriously aggressive drivers and for side hustles like pot delivery.
- ableal 8y agoHey, there were whole books, like this one from 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash I think Neal Stephenson's opening was that the two big items in the economy were software and pizza delivery ...
- Johnny555 8y agoThe security guard at the front door of the office building chastised me for carrying the box, and told me that I should be using a dolly to transport it. (None of the 19 videos I had to watch to be a Flex driver recommended bringing a delivery cart or a dolly.) How could you not know this? Have you never seen another delivery driver? Do you really need a training video to tell you that when you need to carry a lot of heavy packages, you should use a dolly?
- geezerjay 8y ago> Do you really need a training video to tell you that when you need to carry a lot of heavy packages, you should use a dolly? Yes, you need. Case in point, in the last half a dozen orders I've made that involved a somewhat heavy and/or large package, not a single delivery service used a dolly or delivery cart, even on orders from a certain multibational furniture store. You expect your employees to do their job safely? Then you explicitly cover the safety procedure during training, and you directly and intentionally state that it's in their best interests to do so. Otherwisr you can't possibly assume they will comply with an implicit rule.
- michaelt 8y agoin the last half a dozen orders I've made that involved a somewhat heavy and/or large package, not a single delivery service used a dolly or delivery cart I work for a company called Ocado that does grocery delivery right to people's kitchens (unlike Amazon Flex, our drivers are employees, paid by the hour, and drive company-owned vans). I've been out with drivers several times. Drivers are issued with dollies and trained in their use. Dollies are inherently a mixed blessing. You can pile more stuff on them - but if you've got to get up a kerb, you've still got to be able to lift that weight, and the dolly as well, and keep everything from sliding off at the same time. And it's not just kerbs. They've got steps up to their front door? Can't use the dolly. Old flat/apartment without a lift? Can't use the dolly. Lift needs a key you don't have? Can't use the dolly. They've got a gravel path? Can't use the dolly. They've got a thick-bottomed UPVC door frame? Can't get the dolly through it. On a steep hill? Dolly will make things harder... And it turns out, in a city like London, there are a great many buildings with one or more of these defects - and the worse the parking situation, the further away you park the van, the more kerbs and things you're likely to need to cross. Hence, even though drivers are issued with dollies and trained in their use, many deliveries are made without the dollies because they don't make things all that much easier.
- hotdog97 8y agoI brought 16 packages for 13 people to one office; one was so light I was sure it was a pack of gum, another felt like a bug-spray container. Or, while we're speculating, maybe instead of a pack of gum it was a 512 GB SDXC card weighing like less than 20 grams including the cardboard packaging. How dare these coddled tech people order small packages online! and also battling a growing rage as I lugged parcels to offices of tech companies that offered free food and impressive salaries to their employees, who seemed to spend their days ordering stuff online
- spyckie2 8y agoThe 'gig' economy reminds me very much of the state of factory workers in the early 1900s. For businesses, it was very clear that forcing workers to work in a very unfriendly way (doing a repetitive task as part of an assembly line) was a multiplier for scale and productivity. However, associated with that was the "price" unfair wages, long hours, stress, strain, and injury. It took 30-60 years of unions and labor rights before the problem was 'solved' - the non-monetary economics of that kind of production sucked (worker's comp + regulations for human rights) and those factories shipped overseas to where those things didn't exist. The modern gig economy is really just scaling up distribution instead of mass production. On paper, it is cheap and scalable. But add in all the socio-economic components and you'll realize that it's not really that cheap, and not an economic engine that can survive long term past the initial stages, reason being that demand exists only because the price is subsidized. Currently, shipping is extremely cheap, subsidized by Amazon, the government, and more recently, the individuals who due to lack of opportunities live with subsistence wages. If shipping was actual market price (where gig workers earned a fair wage), the cost would be much higher, which would shrink demand. (shipping was available as a function since forever, and wasn't ever a popular shopping option until today). If we wanted free shipping as a standard of living, we would need to subsidize shipping on a governmental level, similar to how we subsidize food (especially meat). Americans don't realize it but meat is cheap in the US, much cheaper than the rest of the world. This is purely because of subsidies, which is a perk to allow the american standard of living: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-meat-and-animal-by-products-so-cheap-in-the-U-S-despite-of-the-fact-that-it-takes-a-lot-of-natural-resources-to-produce-them https://www.quora.com/Why-are-meat-and-animal-by-products-so.... If you want to make the american standard of living free package delivery, subsidize the wages from the US government, and force the tech companies to pay real corporate tax.
- extralego 8y ago>Because of the way Flex works, drivers rarely know when blocks of time will become available, and don’t know when they’ll be working or how much they’ll be making on any given day.” >”Kelly Cheeseman, an Amazon spokeswoman, told me that Flex is a great opportunity for people to be their own boss and set their own schedule.”
- Tsiklon 8y agoThe Doublethink is real here isn't it? I note a similar thing here in the UK - most of the folks working 'gig economy' or more accurately 'single person zero guaranteed hour contractor' jobs are doing this stuff full time and are pushed hard to make a workable living out of it.
- duxup 8y agoMost "be your own boss" jobs work that way and your only your own boss...... assuming you aren't dependent on pay from that job to get by. And yet the people who take those jobs are usually the folks who financially in not so great shape.
- tardo99 8y agoI mean, the truth is these jobs will go away relatively soon because of drones and robotics.