10 ms·

Gig Workers Have Nowhere to Pee (2020)

67 points by type0 6y ago

gnarbarian 6y ago
Vice is garbage. This article is an excellent example. I put it slightly below Brietbart.
- aaron695 6y ago
  I actually came here to say Vice is mostly garbage but they can still do good articles like this that remind me of the days they did good work. (And I know this is a rehash of earlier stories, but that's good journalism, the issue still exists)
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Please don't post substance-free comments.
  - gnarbarian 6y ago
    Your comment contains less substance than mine. You should probably delete it .
    - vyhd 6y ago
      They're referencing the site guidelines, so this statement is demonstrably false.
      - gnarbarian 6y ago
        Please define substance-free so we can have an objective discussion on it.
        vyhd 6y ago
        There really isn't a discussion to be had, unless you seriously want to try the claim that "shallow" and "substance-free" don't have substantial overlap. Just accept that your comment did not live up to the guidelines set by this site, and try to learn from that.
- vyhd 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
bagacrap 6y ago
A lot of workers have nowhere to pee, for example bus drivers. Often they avoid drinking water for this reason, allowing themselves to be chronically dehydrated.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  At least for government employees, if not all non-office workers, government should simply mandate to that any building open to the public must allow use of its bathrooms.
  - martinald 6y ago
    This is actually a result of the opioid crisis more than anything. If you leave your bathrooms open then you'll get a lot of people using then to use drugs. And a lot of them will overdose in those bathrooms (which is a serious problem for staff).
    - mPReDiToR 6y ago
      This problem was so bad that a lot of places installed blue lighting to make it difficult to see veins to use for injections. So the story goes.
- grawprog 6y ago
  A few years ago I was doing granite work. On installs, if the customer's plumbing wasn't hooked up, we'd have to find a bush somewhere...or so I thought. One day, I was digging around in the back of the truck looking for some acetone and grabbed out a bottle of some yellowish brown liquid. Suddenly, head installer starts freaking out a bit going on 'no no don't touch that.' After a moment or two it dawned on all of us what it was... So after hastily tossing the bottle aside and a round of 'what the fucks!!?' from everybody, our coworker explained how he was worried about using the bushes in case some came up and filmed it and put it on youtube. Yeah...peeing locations can definitely be an issue at work in general.
  - 6y ago
simplestman 6y ago
Worked in gas station, tons of people stop just to use restrooms.
- joejerryronnie 6y ago
  When I used to commute a long distance to work, I had 3 strategic restroom locations along my route - a Target, a gas station, and a catholic church.
  - bradknowles 6y ago
    In all the long-distance traveling my wife and I have done over the past twenty years here in the US, we quickly got into the habit of locating every McDonalds and Starbucks anywhere close to the route we would be taking. They have traditionally had the best quality bathrooms, and we didn’t mind buying some food or drink while we were there. The problem came when Starbucks started opening “stores” inside of Target. Those were really hard to detect in the app, and Target bathrooms are not nearly so nice.
- whoknew1122 6y ago
  Worked at grocery stores and gas stations. A lot of people stopped just to use the restroom. We also had homeless people use restrooms to bathe, and drug addicts use the bathroom as a place to quickly take a hit. Also had people defecate on the floor, write messages on the wall with feces, etc. Because of this, multiple places I worked didn't provide restroom access to the public. It sucks for people who simply and respectfully use the restroom. But at the same time (in one specific location at least), it was a matter of having to clean up fecal matter or drug paraphernalia or not letting the public use the restroom. My sub-living-wage job simply didn't pay me enough to put up with that crap. That being said, if you let 'customers' use your restroom, you should let gig workers do the same. They aren't your direct customer, but show them a modicum of respect and dignity.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    The local Safeway near me has one of the most repulsive bathrooms for this reason. There's no reason that you can't respectfully clean up your mess if you've made one.
wiseleo 6y ago
To make things worse, gyms are shutdown. They were a reliable 24/7 location if the driver had membership. There needs to be infrastructure for true public restrooms in urban areas. Uber et al needs to make mandatory access to its drivers a condition of doing business with the food service.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  No joke, I kept a downtown SF gym membership mainly for the restroom access. There's also one restaurant I know of that still operates esssentially a public restroom in the core. Otherwise Starbucks has become the national public restroom, which their president commented on in print a while back: Starbucks: No Purchase Needed To Use The Restroom https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/11/610337214/starbucks-will-give-people-the-key-to-restroom-regardless-of-purchase-ceo-says https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/11/610337214... The most egregious example that doesn't have a restroom is the downtown Market St. McD. Tourists literally ask for one every 10 minutes there, get told no, then it quickly dawns on them they have a serious problem to deal with.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  The infrastructure can easily be created by not outlawing pay toilets. As a bonus, and unlike what you see with free toilets, those tend to be kept clean.
  - curryst 6y ago
    Pay toilets have to be the most capitalist dystopian thing I've ever heard of. I apologize for the strong response, and don't mean it to reflect on you as a person at all, but the idea of charging someone for something that is literally part of the biological definition of life is kind of shocking. They should treat it like the Supreme Court recently treated homeless people camping on the sidewalk. They have a biological need for somewhere to sleep; if the city cannot provide enough places for them to sleep, they must allow them to camp on the sidewalk. In this case, if there are not enough public restrooms, public businesses (i.e. open to the public, not publicly traded) must allow non-customers to use their restroom. It seems crazy to me that a) we know everyone needs to use the bathroom, b) there are no requirements for access to restrooms (beyond ADA stuff), c) urinating or defecating in public is illegal. I don't find it crazy that urinating or defecating in public is illegal; I find it crazy that we've put ourselves in a spot where it is possible to be put in a position where there is no legal means for you to carry out a biologically required task. These poor drivers are just getting caught in the crossfire of the class war between restaurant owners and delivery companies, and are being deprived of human dignity as a result. I think there's also an unintentional sexist effect here. The article keeps talking about people peeing in Gatorade bottles. I'm a male, so I could be wrong here, but that doesn't seem like a viable option for women. Women have another needs for the bathroom as well. I can't imagine putting in or changing a tampon in the car is an easy or pleasant experience. And lastly, do you really want your food delivery driver to be making a choice about whether they want to pay $1 to use the bathroom where they can wash their hands, or just peeing in a bottle and going around with dirty hands? I would strongly prefer that wasn't a choice they considered. I will happily pay another $0.25 or whatever that goes to the restaurant to cover paying for the water, toilet paper and soap they use to remain hygienic.
ohnoesoes 6y ago
Pee on your boss then. They deserve it anyway.
crmd 6y ago
> Uber and DoorDash said they do not have any specific rules about bathroom access. Grubhub, Seamless, and Instacart did not respond. Can anyone familiar with policy making in gig economy companies explain why the spokesperson wasn’t told to say, “We think it’s not okay. Going forward, the first offense for a restaurant that denies bathroom access to a driver will be a 24 hour ban from our platform.” Courage is contagious. Why not take a stand?
- bradknowles 6y ago
  GrubHub and DoorDash are adversarial extractive operations, and it is not in the best interest of any restaurant to deliver through them. They already squeeze all or most of the profit out of anything they pickup and deliver. Sadly, many restaurants don’t have a choice, in these days of COVID-19. They work with GrubHub and DoorDash at zero profit or even a loss, or they go completely out of business. Those are the only two options. So, it’s no wonder that the restaurants wouldn’t want to provide bathroom facilities for the drivers. Uber is just as bad (or worse), but they’re in a slightly different line of business, unless you’re talking about UberEats.
  - cma 6y ago
    > Sadly, many restaurants don’t have a choice, in these days of COVID-19. They work with GrubHub and DoorDash at zero profit or even a loss, or they go completely out of business. Those are the only two options. Is that true? Are restaurants charged separately from grubhub's breakdowns of the fees? They also say the restarant can charge more than their normal menu price if they choose.
    - malyk 6y ago
      Grain of salt and all, but a year or so ago a local deli owner said caviar charged 17% of the bill as a fee.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 6y ago
villgax 6y ago
Damn I never gave this a thought, maybe partner restaurants or pickup spots can accommodate them?
ruined 6y ago
a friend of mine recently moved. there’s a shed in the backyard that’s not included in the rental. inside the shed is a bucket with a toilet seat on it. apparently their landlord is somehow connected to a local produce delivery business, and provides the location for drivers to relieve themselves. i’m not sure why they didn’t just build a composting toilet, or rent a portapotty. this doesn’t seem like a great solution, and i wonder if it’s legal. despite how gross and disgusting it is, consider that even this shows way more empathy and concern for the basic human needs of workers than the large gig apps have been able to express.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Doxin 6y ago
One partial solution to the problem would be introducing the style of public toilet you see in Amsterdam.[1] They amount to little more than a sewer grate with a privacy shield. There's no real need for cleaning these other than how you'd clean the street already, and it's a better alternative than pissing in a bush. Of course it leaves the problem unresolved for women, and I'm unsure how you'd go about tackling that. [1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNPlqgm_lXc/UZ7-2rB3arI/AAAAAAAANYc/wh9gleO_lUY/s1600/Resize+of+DSC07487.JPG http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNPlqgm_lXc/UZ7-2rB3arI/AAAAAAAANY...
- Clampower 6y ago
  Unfortunately these are all being removed and I find it super sad :(
pontifier 6y ago
I want to live in a society with plentiful, clean, public restrooms and comfortable bus stops. How can this happen? By giving the most desperate people in our society some dignity, and better places to hang out than in bus stops and public restrooms.

67 points by type0 6y ago

gnarbarian 6y ago

Vice is garbage. This article is an excellent example. I put it slightly below Brietbart.

aaron695 6y ago
I actually came here to say Vice is mostly garbage but they can still do good articles like this that remind me of the days they did good work. (And I know this is a rehash of earlier stories, but that's good journalism, the issue still exists)
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Please don't post substance-free comments.
- gnarbarian 6y ago
  Your comment contains less substance than mine. You should probably delete it .
  - vyhd 6y ago
    They're referencing the site guidelines, so this statement is demonstrably false.
    - gnarbarian 6y ago
      Please define substance-free so we can have an objective discussion on it.
      - vyhd 6y ago
        There really isn't a discussion to be had, unless you seriously want to try the claim that "shallow" and "substance-free" don't have substantial overlap. Just accept that your comment did not live up to the guidelines set by this site, and try to learn from that.
vyhd 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

bagacrap 6y ago

A lot of workers have nowhere to pee, for example bus drivers. Often they avoid drinking water for this reason, allowing themselves to be chronically dehydrated.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
At least for government employees, if not all non-office workers, government should simply mandate to that any building open to the public must allow use of its bathrooms.
- martinald 6y ago
  This is actually a result of the opioid crisis more than anything. If you leave your bathrooms open then you'll get a lot of people using then to use drugs. And a lot of them will overdose in those bathrooms (which is a serious problem for staff).
  - mPReDiToR 6y ago
    This problem was so bad that a lot of places installed blue lighting to make it difficult to see veins to use for injections. So the story goes.
grawprog 6y ago
A few years ago I was doing granite work. On installs, if the customer's plumbing wasn't hooked up, we'd have to find a bush somewhere...or so I thought. One day, I was digging around in the back of the truck looking for some acetone and grabbed out a bottle of some yellowish brown liquid. Suddenly, head installer starts freaking out a bit going on 'no no don't touch that.' After a moment or two it dawned on all of us what it was... So after hastily tossing the bottle aside and a round of 'what the fucks!!?' from everybody, our coworker explained how he was worried about using the bushes in case some came up and filmed it and put it on youtube. Yeah...peeing locations can definitely be an issue at work in general.
- 6y ago

simplestman 6y ago

Worked in gas station, tons of people stop just to use restrooms.

joejerryronnie 6y ago
When I used to commute a long distance to work, I had 3 strategic restroom locations along my route - a Target, a gas station, and a catholic church.
- bradknowles 6y ago
  In all the long-distance traveling my wife and I have done over the past twenty years here in the US, we quickly got into the habit of locating every McDonalds and Starbucks anywhere close to the route we would be taking. They have traditionally had the best quality bathrooms, and we didn’t mind buying some food or drink while we were there. The problem came when Starbucks started opening “stores” inside of Target. Those were really hard to detect in the app, and Target bathrooms are not nearly so nice.
whoknew1122 6y ago
Worked at grocery stores and gas stations. A lot of people stopped just to use the restroom. We also had homeless people use restrooms to bathe, and drug addicts use the bathroom as a place to quickly take a hit. Also had people defecate on the floor, write messages on the wall with feces, etc. Because of this, multiple places I worked didn't provide restroom access to the public. It sucks for people who simply and respectfully use the restroom. But at the same time (in one specific location at least), it was a matter of having to clean up fecal matter or drug paraphernalia or not letting the public use the restroom. My sub-living-wage job simply didn't pay me enough to put up with that crap. That being said, if you let 'customers' use your restroom, you should let gig workers do the same. They aren't your direct customer, but show them a modicum of respect and dignity.
- brailsafe 6y ago
  The local Safeway near me has one of the most repulsive bathrooms for this reason. There's no reason that you can't respectfully clean up your mess if you've made one.

wiseleo 6y ago

To make things worse, gyms are shutdown. They were a reliable 24/7 location if the driver had membership. There needs to be infrastructure for true public restrooms in urban areas. Uber et al needs to make mandatory access to its drivers a condition of doing business with the food service.

redis_mlc 6y ago
No joke, I kept a downtown SF gym membership mainly for the restroom access. There's also one restaurant I know of that still operates esssentially a public restroom in the core. Otherwise Starbucks has become the national public restroom, which their president commented on in print a while back: Starbucks: No Purchase Needed To Use The Restroom https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/11/610337214/starbucks-will-give-people-the-key-to-restroom-regardless-of-purchase-ceo-says https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/11/610337214... The most egregious example that doesn't have a restroom is the downtown Market St. McD. Tourists literally ask for one every 10 minutes there, get told no, then it quickly dawns on them they have a serious problem to deal with.
tomjen3 6y ago
The infrastructure can easily be created by not outlawing pay toilets. As a bonus, and unlike what you see with free toilets, those tend to be kept clean.
- curryst 6y ago
  Pay toilets have to be the most capitalist dystopian thing I've ever heard of. I apologize for the strong response, and don't mean it to reflect on you as a person at all, but the idea of charging someone for something that is literally part of the biological definition of life is kind of shocking. They should treat it like the Supreme Court recently treated homeless people camping on the sidewalk. They have a biological need for somewhere to sleep; if the city cannot provide enough places for them to sleep, they must allow them to camp on the sidewalk. In this case, if there are not enough public restrooms, public businesses (i.e. open to the public, not publicly traded) must allow non-customers to use their restroom. It seems crazy to me that a) we know everyone needs to use the bathroom, b) there are no requirements for access to restrooms (beyond ADA stuff), c) urinating or defecating in public is illegal. I don't find it crazy that urinating or defecating in public is illegal; I find it crazy that we've put ourselves in a spot where it is possible to be put in a position where there is no legal means for you to carry out a biologically required task. These poor drivers are just getting caught in the crossfire of the class war between restaurant owners and delivery companies, and are being deprived of human dignity as a result. I think there's also an unintentional sexist effect here. The article keeps talking about people peeing in Gatorade bottles. I'm a male, so I could be wrong here, but that doesn't seem like a viable option for women. Women have another needs for the bathroom as well. I can't imagine putting in or changing a tampon in the car is an easy or pleasant experience. And lastly, do you really want your food delivery driver to be making a choice about whether they want to pay $1 to use the bathroom where they can wash their hands, or just peeing in a bottle and going around with dirty hands? I would strongly prefer that wasn't a choice they considered. I will happily pay another $0.25 or whatever that goes to the restaurant to cover paying for the water, toilet paper and soap they use to remain hygienic.

ohnoesoes 6y ago

Pee on your boss then. They deserve it anyway.

crmd 6y ago

> Uber and DoorDash said they do not have any specific rules about bathroom access. Grubhub, Seamless, and Instacart did not respond. Can anyone familiar with policy making in gig economy companies explain why the spokesperson wasn’t told to say, “We think it’s not okay. Going forward, the first offense for a restaurant that denies bathroom access to a driver will be a 24 hour ban from our platform.” Courage is contagious. Why not take a stand?

bradknowles 6y ago
GrubHub and DoorDash are adversarial extractive operations, and it is not in the best interest of any restaurant to deliver through them. They already squeeze all or most of the profit out of anything they pickup and deliver. Sadly, many restaurants don’t have a choice, in these days of COVID-19. They work with GrubHub and DoorDash at zero profit or even a loss, or they go completely out of business. Those are the only two options. So, it’s no wonder that the restaurants wouldn’t want to provide bathroom facilities for the drivers. Uber is just as bad (or worse), but they’re in a slightly different line of business, unless you’re talking about UberEats.
- cma 6y ago
  > Sadly, many restaurants don’t have a choice, in these days of COVID-19. They work with GrubHub and DoorDash at zero profit or even a loss, or they go completely out of business. Those are the only two options. Is that true? Are restaurants charged separately from grubhub's breakdowns of the fees? They also say the restarant can charge more than their normal menu price if they choose.
  - malyk 6y ago
    Grain of salt and all, but a year or so ago a local deli owner said caviar charged 17% of the bill as a fee.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
6y ago

villgax 6y ago

Damn I never gave this a thought, maybe partner restaurants or pickup spots can accommodate them?

ruined 6y ago

a friend of mine recently moved. there’s a shed in the backyard that’s not included in the rental. inside the shed is a bucket with a toilet seat on it. apparently their landlord is somehow connected to a local produce delivery business, and provides the location for drivers to relieve themselves. i’m not sure why they didn’t just build a composting toilet, or rent a portapotty. this doesn’t seem like a great solution, and i wonder if it’s legal. despite how gross and disgusting it is, consider that even this shows way more empathy and concern for the basic human needs of workers than the large gig apps have been able to express.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Doxin 6y ago

One partial solution to the problem would be introducing the style of public toilet you see in Amsterdam.[1] They amount to little more than a sewer grate with a privacy shield. There's no real need for cleaning these other than how you'd clean the street already, and it's a better alternative than pissing in a bush. Of course it leaves the problem unresolved for women, and I'm unsure how you'd go about tackling that. [1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNPlqgm_lXc/UZ7-2rB3arI/AAAAAAAANYc/wh9gleO_lUY/s1600/Resize+of+DSC07487.JPG http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNPlqgm_lXc/UZ7-2rB3arI/AAAAAAAANY...

Clampower 6y ago
Unfortunately these are all being removed and I find it super sad :(

pontifier 6y ago

I want to live in a society with plentiful, clean, public restrooms and comfortable bus stops. How can this happen? By giving the most desperate people in our society some dignity, and better places to hang out than in bus stops and public restrooms.