Confessions of a Five-Star Delivery Boy
Eh, it's a living. Well, maybe not...
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It does not escape me, the humor of starting to do DoorDash in 2023, years after the brief window during the pandemic where I might’ve earned some brownie points for PERFORMING ESSENTIAL SERVICES. Of course, the vast majority of the public has already returned to sneering at service workers and assuming that treating us like shit is simply the natural order of things. The new normal feels a lot like the old normal in that regard.
If I’m writing a lot about work lately, it’s because I mostly just work. Winter is the slow season at the junk removal company, and there were days in January and February where I would get up at the asscrack of dawn to get maybe four hours on the clock. Pretty infuriating stuff, and a quick way to lapse on your bills. I was starting to fall behind on a few, so I needed to supplement my income in a hurry. The Spectator reached out to me about doing occasional freelance writing, though they pay monthly and I can’t sit around that long waiting for money to come in, so I had to start dashing as well. Back to juggling three jobs at once, as I was in 2018.
Keeping my nose to the grindstone isn’t necessarily the worst thing in my situation. Stewing in anger has been an issue, one for which I don’t have an immediate solution. At least work keeps me distracted, though if I have an especially bad day, it’s not hard to lapse into thinking about what developments have led me down this path. Though there are further revelations to make about my story, I don’t see much use airing them at the present moment, or at least until there’s a bit of a cultural shift on a few matters.
I’m trying to move on as best I can. A few weeks ago, I went on my first date in a while, with an Egyptian/Muslim woman a couple years younger than me that I met on one of the apps. No, she doesn’t wear a head covering. She was cute and bubbly, and she was into me physically, but she complained that I seemed to clam up some, and she felt like I was holding back my thoughts. Truth be told, I was. It’s daunting knowing that I’ll have to disclose all my drama to a new person soon after meeting them, and that for a not-small share of women - at least liberal feminist ones - it will be an immediate deal-breaker regardless of the facts. So we ended up being one-and-done. Another woman I was hitting it off with ghosted me after she asked what I do for work and I was foolish enough to be honest with her. Whoopsidoodle.
As for DoorDash, it was a boon those first three months of the year, though I’ve scaled back since my tax return hit. This past Saturday was the first time I made deliveries in two weeks, and I did it partially because DoorDash offered a $75 bonus for completing 15 deliveries over the weekend. I presume they’re offering those incentives now likely because quite a few people who would otherwise be dependent on gig work also got their tax returns and don’t need to dash as urgently. Anyway, I knocked those 15 out in about five hours, earning an average of roughly $40 per hour over that span.
The earnings can fluctuate some. Generally, I end up making anywhere from $18-$25 an hour when I dash. I was worried I would end up burning through a ton of gas doing this, but between all the waiting at traffic lights and the waiting for orders to be ready, it hasn’t been as much as I feared. It should go without saying I’m not thrilled to be making DoorDash money and when I spot a customer’s receipt that shows they paid like 50 bucks for an order that I’m getting $3.50 for delivering, it’s a bit deadening.
PRESENTING SUNDRY TALES OF DASHING AND VARIOUS GRIPES
DoorDash had me deliver to a sex worker. Sometimes the app will send dashers to grocery stores where we basically do Instacart duty and shop for people. DoorDash even gives dashers a fake little red credit card to use at the register. One time, the app sends me to a Safeway with three items on my list: condoms, bottled water, and lighters. I had a good laugh with the cashier when he rang it up. The order went to a room at the Comfort Inn up the street. As with most deliveries, I didn’t interact with the customer, just left the stuff outside the door and took a photo for the app. You can’t convince me that wasn’t a sex worker, though.
Other than that my funniest delivery has been: two pregnancy tests.
Worst no-tip story: picked up multiple bags from Panera for what was clearly a big office lunch. I arrive at the building, and it’s one of those where you can’t use the elevator to get upstairs without a fob. So I call the customer, trying to hide my irritation because they didn’t tip. A woman answers and says she will be down in a sec. She takes her sweet-ass time, a sec turns into five minutes, and while I’m waiting I check the office registry in the lobby. Turns out the suite number on my delivery ticket matches the number for the office of The National Association of Chiefs of Police…
It’s hard out here for a dasher: for starters, there are constant reports about delivery people getting robbed. Thankfully that hasn’t happened to me, but I have been the target of two scams to steal my dashing money digitally. Each time, it has been an order from a McDonald’s, in one case someone ordering just an individual sauce packet to be delivered to a vacant address. Then I get a phone call from someone claiming to be from DoorDash saying the order has been cancelled, and they need my log-in information to fix an issue and get me set up for some promotion. The first time they almost got me because I was mid-delivery and not paying much attention. The second time I knew what was up, so as soon as the guy asked for my log-in info I asked what for. He got flustered and barked, “Forget you, faggot!” and hung up. Somehow I don’t think that guy works in corporate for DoorDash.
DoorDash likes to front like dashers have all this autonomy to decline orders that are too far away or don’t include tip, but the app punishes you for turning down orders, at least with any frequency. The app bombards me with messages that my 95 percent or higher acceptance rate means I get better and higher quality orders. So the message is, hey there little gig worker, don’t get any fanciful notions in your head that you’re calling the shots around here. We wouldn’t want you to miss out on good orders, now would we?
This may be not very worker friendly of me, but I swear some kitchen staffs deliberately half-ass it when they have DoorDash orders because they know the actual customer isn’t there to complain, and if the food is late, the customer will likely assume it’s the delivery person’s fault. The app gives you the option to report that orders are still being prepared while you are there, but that doesn’t change the time you are expected to retrieve it by. To some extent, I empathize, but when a Taco Bell staff has me waiting 25 minutes, costing me more deliveries I could be making, I’m heated all the same.
I was out delivering on Valentine’s Day and got two big flower orders. One went to a woman who works on the campus of Georgetown University, and the other went a gay couple in another ritzy part of Northwest DC. Just doing what I can to help these rich people fuck! The real pain that day was a pickup from one of those bougie, stupid cupcake places in Georgetown that I can’t believe are still a thing. This place had littered bags for delivery people to grab all over the store. There were literally hundreds just laying around with no organization whatsoever. The employees had no idea where specific ones were. So dashers had to waste tons of time sorting through them all to find the right one. Some of these businesses are content to offload as much work on gig people as they can, sleazy bastards.
Man oh man, so much Little Caesars. The chain tends to rely on DoorDash as its default delivery option so not that surprising that I get so many orders from them. Out of the 300 I’ve done so far I wouldn’t be surprised if 40 of them were Little Caesars, and maybe 10-20 from other pizza places. Apparently people enjoy paying fees out the wazoo for very low-quality food!
Offhand, I would say 75 percent of the deliveries I make are from chains, and the rest are small businesses. I’m sure experiences vary, yet that ratio certainly doesn’t gibe with the way these delivery apps try to make it seem like they help the little guy.
There’s an online training module you have to complete in order to do alcohol deliveries, which tend to be better paying, but I left it half-completed in February because I have so many bad associations with alcohol deliveries from UPS. DoorDash would function differently because with DoorDash the order is instantaneous and you know the person is home. But with UPS, it would always be a toss-up whether an adult would be home to sign for the alcohol. If they aren’t, you have to lug the heavy box back to your vehicle, return it to the center at the end of the day, then deliver it again the following day. Drivers would get fired for forging signatures because it was such a pain in the ass. I guess that’s a dumb hang-up and I’ll remind myself to finish it soon.
It makes me feel like a sucker, but I am protective of my perfect rating. LITTLE MIKEY LIKES HIS GOLD STAR! Eventually I’m sure some grubby little asshole will ruin it, so I’m glad I have been able to document this before that happens.
DoorDash has these inventory warehouses they call DashMarts even though they are explicitly not stores that people can shop in. So don’t call them marts! The workers in there always look like they’re having a grand old time, blasting their music and yucking it up. How does one graduate from app flunky and get the cushy, chill DashMart gig? Unfortunately, as with most things, the answer probably is “ya gotta know somebody.” Also I’m sure it pays shit.