How quickly we accepted that it’s normal to pay someone to go get our groceries for us. To drive us around when public transportation is available. To run errands for us. To bring us fast food.
Covid capitalized on it.
People don’t want to give up that luxury now that they’ve had it. Even if it makes things cost 2x-3x as much.
Even when we all know its exploitive labor.
It’s true delivery and driver services have been around for hundreds of years but now instead of companies with full time employees (with benefits) , the gig employee gets paid less while taking on risk that aren’t compensated by the employer (car accidents, gas, car repairs, injury or attacks).
Gig work is a much worse thing than maybe a lot of people realize. And it’s also making more people servants to others.
It’s moving full time employees with benefits and using company property to no benefits and using their own property that they have to pay for.
Yeah I wasn’t sure if you meant for the workers, the platforms or the consumers, haha. But, yeah, tips are the only thing that makes it viable for drivers, I think any delivery without a tip is at best break-even, but they need to accept any delivery they’re offered to keep their ratings up high and so on. Cyclists can probably make more too, at the cost of higher risks of getting hit by a car…
There’s a reason why these jobs are so popular with people who might not be able to find other jobs for various reasons.
Just to tag onto this, you should use the option to add the tip after the delivery. If you don’t then the app will just subsidize themselves with your tip.
For example each delivery is an offer to the delivery driver so a delivery will be 10 dollars. Well if you tipped 8 dollars on that order then the service will pay you 2 dollars and the 8 dollar tip will be the rest. But if you start by tipping zero then the service will pay ten dollars for the delivery and then if you add the tip the gig worker will get 18 dollars for the order.
problem with cycling is now you have what is made goes over a longer period lowering any rate manageable. I think it wins if the density is high enough where you can be as fast or faster than the cars.