6 ms·

Taking my e-bike as an undercover food delivery rider

36 points by GoRudy 3y ago

oh_sigh 3y ago
If tips don't put you above minimum wage, does Doordash need to top you up? Or is that part of the appeal of being a contractor - that you can get paid below minimum wage legally?
- thecyborganizer 3y ago
  Paying a fee per job done, rather than a wage per hour of labor, is literally the entire point of the gig economy. Uber/DoorDash/etc. claim this is a perk, since you can set your own hours. However, food delivery gig workers in New York City and a few other places have recently successfully won the right to earn a fixed minimum wage: https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/09/28/minimum-hourly-pay-court-uber-grubhub-doordash-deliveristas/ https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/09/28/minimum-hourly-pay-court-...
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  the second one. There was a big fight in washington/seattle https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-city-council-app-workers-minimum-wage/281-39aa4343-b0da-465c-82c1-3e125c8f13d0 https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-cit... Lot's of misinfo/disinfo being disseminated from doordash/instacart etc about how unfair it is and how it will kill it's business. If your business can't survive your workers being paid minimum wage, maybe you shouldn't be in business.
  - laweijfmvo 3y ago
    the entire US economy it seems is contingent on not doing anything properly, including paying reasonable wages
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      all 'great' civilizations are built on a slave or near slave class
brnt 3y ago
If you like this, Jeroen van Bergeijk has been writing about his doing such jobs undercover for a decade. I don't know that he was translated, but a documentary I think was.
edward 3y ago
I'd like a way to tell the delivery app that I'd prefer delivery by bike as opposed to car. Maybe I'm willing to pay a premium for bike delivery.
Someone1234 3y ago
Interesting video, but the amount of money he made from food delivery is horrifyingly low. Maybe under minimum age. Least of all if you stay until near the end when he says that almost all of that was from tips. People will hand-wave this away as "this isn't meant to be a full time job, just beer money on the side" but for a lot of adults it is in fact their primary source of income.
- jszymborski 3y ago
  The article points out that it is indeed about $2 lower than the min wage for the state he was in (FL)
  - strangattractor 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - Animats 3y ago
    Not only that, he's counting revenue as income. He has operating costs. Less than a car, but real.
- alephxyz 3y ago
  a lot of people with student visas in Canada choose to do it since they're limited to 20hr/week of work. You make a bit more money doing ~30 hours of Uber eats with 20 hours spent actually delivering food than working 20 hours at minimum wage.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    Surely if you're working for 30 hours then the comparison ought to be with 30 hours at minimum wage, no?
urbandw311er 3y ago
The argument around tipping grates for me. The author is saying that the companies don’t pay him enough so I should tip to compensate. This will actually make things worse, as I will then be artificially propping up a broken market. A better solution would be for nobody to tip. At this point, all the drivers would quit because the pay is too low, so the companies would be forced to raise it to a level where they can attract drivers.
- jackvalentine 3y ago
  Yeah - I don’t use food delivery apps because of the wage/tipping issue. My wife HATES that I go and collect food myself but I just feel too anxious navigating the exploitation in the sector.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    Why on earth would this bother her??? It also saves tons of money. I downloaded a delivery app, saw how much more it would cost, and have never used one again.
    - jackvalentine 3y ago
      Sometimes people just prefer you to do the easier thing rather than take off for 30 minutes in a busy household with kids.
  - rpigab 3y ago
    Same, never used a food delivery service, nor an Uber. I'm in France and they're obviously trying to cirmcumvent labor law, they're not independent workers, they're often dependent on a single service that watches every single movement they do, punishes them for not following instructions, so they should have a salary, regular employment by the platform, not contracts. I'll wait, in the meantime, I can go myself to fetch my food, or cook at home! Or purchase from takehome-first restaurants with employed drivers.
- makeworld 3y ago
  "If everyone would just"
laweijfmvo 3y ago
every time my food delivery driver is on a moped, I get my food 3x faster than by car, and often half of the estimated delivery time. haven't seen an e-bike driver yet.
Scoundreller 3y ago
> So please tip your delivery rider. I always did before, but now I tip even better. Better yet, tip partly/fully in cash so the app doesn’t know the true value of their earnings (especially with inevitable lawsuits and settlements that may deduct tips when doing minimum wage calculations). Personally, I don’t like tipping in advance of receiving a service. I’m in Canada, so it’s a good way to get rid of my $1 and $2 coins (and some minority of quarters).
- chankstein38 3y ago
  Your experience may vary but for me this sounds like a great way to never have anything actually get delivered. I have to tip $10+ for every order just to get my order picked up and brought to my house. If I don't declare that's the tip amount in the doordaash app, no driver picks it up. Once I had a $5 smoothie order and tried to only tip $5 so I wasn't paying $15 for a smoothie and the order ended up sitting at the restaurant and got cancelled. My brother was a DoorDash driver and a lot of his friends were and they all said that they regularly skipped orders with $0 tips because it meant they made nothing on them. DoorDash, at one point, even tried to implement something to address this by changing the way the income for the order was displayed but it's still quite prevalent. So, yeah, tipping cash is a great idea except these companies have built their whole model in a way that makes that look like you're going to tip $0. So unless someone doesn't care and picks it up, in my area at least, it sounds like you're just not going to get stuff delivered.
  - mikestew 3y ago
    My brother was a DoorDash driver and a lot of his friends were and they all said that they regularly skipped orders with $0 tips because it meant they made nothing on them. This sounds like the whole idea is just broken. No one is making any money, including DoorDash (I at least assume they're not profitable), and the only money to be made in any of this is the idea of a "tip" which effectively holds your order hostage unless you pay up some unspecified amount. All so you can have a lukewarm burger delivered to your door. Oh, and if you get ghosted, you could have already eaten your hot food by the time you get it sorted, had you just gone and picked it up yourself. I dunno, does this sound like something a rational person would participate in? ("...he asked rhetorically.")
notipping 3y ago
> So please tip your delivery rider. I always did before, but now I tip even better. No. Jesus. Stop tipping everywhere, entirely. It’s a broken system that should have been abolished ages ago. Pay employees a living wage or the business should go bust.
- DANmode 3y ago
  Does anyone in this thread feel any progress has been made in this direction since the 90s (when Steve Buscemi brought it up in Reservoir Dogs)?
  - DANmode 3y ago
    Let's call it an open question, forever...just in case someone shows up.
1905 3y ago
> limiting my income was that the app just didn’t seem to give me many offers to deliver food. I assume he was using a new account for deliveries and this was day 1 for him. Wouldn't the app put a new user in a test phase for the firs number of days and give priority to other established accounts with good ratings
rahimnathwani 3y ago
Proposition 22 in California means that app-based limo drivers and delivery workers receive guaranteed minimum earnings for the time and distance they're on a job: - 120% of minimum wage, plus - 30 cents per mile This doesn't cover the time between jobs, which makes some sense because a worker can be available for multiple services at once. Importantly, tips don't count towards the minimum earnings guarantee.

36 points by GoRudy 3y ago

If tips don't put you above minimum wage, does Doordash need to top you up? Or is that part of the appeal of being a contractor - that you can get paid below minimum wage legally?

thecyborganizer 3y ago
Paying a fee per job done, rather than a wage per hour of labor, is literally the entire point of the gig economy. Uber/DoorDash/etc. claim this is a perk, since you can set your own hours. However, food delivery gig workers in New York City and a few other places have recently successfully won the right to earn a fixed minimum wage: https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/09/28/minimum-hourly-pay-court-uber-grubhub-doordash-deliveristas/ https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/09/28/minimum-hourly-pay-court-...
sleepybrett 3y ago
the second one. There was a big fight in washington/seattle https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-city-council-app-workers-minimum-wage/281-39aa4343-b0da-465c-82c1-3e125c8f13d0 https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-cit... Lot's of misinfo/disinfo being disseminated from doordash/instacart etc about how unfair it is and how it will kill it's business. If your business can't survive your workers being paid minimum wage, maybe you shouldn't be in business.
- laweijfmvo 3y ago
  the entire US economy it seems is contingent on not doing anything properly, including paying reasonable wages
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    all 'great' civilizations are built on a slave or near slave class

brnt 3y ago

If you like this, Jeroen van Bergeijk has been writing about his doing such jobs undercover for a decade. I don't know that he was translated, but a documentary I think was.

edward 3y ago

I'd like a way to tell the delivery app that I'd prefer delivery by bike as opposed to car. Maybe I'm willing to pay a premium for bike delivery.

Someone1234 3y ago

Interesting video, but the amount of money he made from food delivery is horrifyingly low. Maybe under minimum age. Least of all if you stay until near the end when he says that almost all of that was from tips. People will hand-wave this away as "this isn't meant to be a full time job, just beer money on the side" but for a lot of adults it is in fact their primary source of income.

jszymborski 3y ago
The article points out that it is indeed about $2 lower than the min wage for the state he was in (FL)
- strangattractor 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Animats 3y ago
  Not only that, he's counting revenue as income. He has operating costs. Less than a car, but real.
alephxyz 3y ago
a lot of people with student visas in Canada choose to do it since they're limited to 20hr/week of work. You make a bit more money doing ~30 hours of Uber eats with 20 hours spent actually delivering food than working 20 hours at minimum wage.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  Surely if you're working for 30 hours then the comparison ought to be with 30 hours at minimum wage, no?

urbandw311er 3y ago

The argument around tipping grates for me. The author is saying that the companies don’t pay him enough so I should tip to compensate. This will actually make things worse, as I will then be artificially propping up a broken market. A better solution would be for nobody to tip. At this point, all the drivers would quit because the pay is too low, so the companies would be forced to raise it to a level where they can attract drivers.

jackvalentine 3y ago
Yeah - I don’t use food delivery apps because of the wage/tipping issue. My wife HATES that I go and collect food myself but I just feel too anxious navigating the exploitation in the sector.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  Why on earth would this bother her??? It also saves tons of money. I downloaded a delivery app, saw how much more it would cost, and have never used one again.
  - jackvalentine 3y ago
    Sometimes people just prefer you to do the easier thing rather than take off for 30 minutes in a busy household with kids.
- rpigab 3y ago
  Same, never used a food delivery service, nor an Uber. I'm in France and they're obviously trying to cirmcumvent labor law, they're not independent workers, they're often dependent on a single service that watches every single movement they do, punishes them for not following instructions, so they should have a salary, regular employment by the platform, not contracts. I'll wait, in the meantime, I can go myself to fetch my food, or cook at home! Or purchase from takehome-first restaurants with employed drivers.
makeworld 3y ago
"If everyone would just"

laweijfmvo 3y ago

every time my food delivery driver is on a moped, I get my food 3x faster than by car, and often half of the estimated delivery time. haven't seen an e-bike driver yet.

Scoundreller 3y ago

> So please tip your delivery rider. I always did before, but now I tip even better. Better yet, tip partly/fully in cash so the app doesn’t know the true value of their earnings (especially with inevitable lawsuits and settlements that may deduct tips when doing minimum wage calculations). Personally, I don’t like tipping in advance of receiving a service. I’m in Canada, so it’s a good way to get rid of my $1 and $2 coins (and some minority of quarters).

chankstein38 3y ago
Your experience may vary but for me this sounds like a great way to never have anything actually get delivered. I have to tip $10+ for every order just to get my order picked up and brought to my house. If I don't declare that's the tip amount in the doordaash app, no driver picks it up. Once I had a $5 smoothie order and tried to only tip $5 so I wasn't paying $15 for a smoothie and the order ended up sitting at the restaurant and got cancelled. My brother was a DoorDash driver and a lot of his friends were and they all said that they regularly skipped orders with $0 tips because it meant they made nothing on them. DoorDash, at one point, even tried to implement something to address this by changing the way the income for the order was displayed but it's still quite prevalent. So, yeah, tipping cash is a great idea except these companies have built their whole model in a way that makes that look like you're going to tip $0. So unless someone doesn't care and picks it up, in my area at least, it sounds like you're just not going to get stuff delivered.
- mikestew 3y ago
  My brother was a DoorDash driver and a lot of his friends were and they all said that they regularly skipped orders with $0 tips because it meant they made nothing on them. This sounds like the whole idea is just broken. No one is making any money, including DoorDash (I at least assume they're not profitable), and the only money to be made in any of this is the idea of a "tip" which effectively holds your order hostage unless you pay up some unspecified amount. All so you can have a lukewarm burger delivered to your door. Oh, and if you get ghosted, you could have already eaten your hot food by the time you get it sorted, had you just gone and picked it up yourself. I dunno, does this sound like something a rational person would participate in? ("...he asked rhetorically.")

notipping 3y ago

> So please tip your delivery rider. I always did before, but now I tip even better. No. Jesus. Stop tipping everywhere, entirely. It’s a broken system that should have been abolished ages ago. Pay employees a living wage or the business should go bust.

DANmode 3y ago
Does anyone in this thread feel any progress has been made in this direction since the 90s (when Steve Buscemi brought it up in Reservoir Dogs)?
- DANmode 3y ago
  Let's call it an open question, forever...just in case someone shows up.

1905 3y ago

> limiting my income was that the app just didn’t seem to give me many offers to deliver food. I assume he was using a new account for deliveries and this was day 1 for him. Wouldn't the app put a new user in a test phase for the firs number of days and give priority to other established accounts with good ratings

rahimnathwani 3y ago

Proposition 22 in California means that app-based limo drivers and delivery workers receive guaranteed minimum earnings for the time and distance they're on a job: - 120% of minimum wage, plus - 30 cents per mile This doesn't cover the time between jobs, which makes some sense because a worker can be available for multiple services at once. Importantly, tips don't count towards the minimum earnings guarantee.