Just about every driver that’s delivered food or groceries for Doordash or Uber Eats feels at one time or another, that they’ve been royally screwed over by people at the top that are buying yachts from their misery.
Not that everything is bad. but for those that feel absolutely stomped on at times, here’s a bit of empathy. The top 10 ways gig apps abuse their workers.
1/ Making you fucking deal with a useless AI agent when you contact support.
If you are going to use AI, then at least get someone with more than a grade 3 education.Te invitations to “tell me more”< and then “I don’t understand, can you tell me more?” are more than frustrating. They are soul killing
2/ Pretending to connect you with a human agent, but actually just moving you to another AI that pretends tobe more human. Arrrg
3/ Making you wait through an excruciating speech by the AI about how you can do this, and ask for this, and it won’t let you tell it to shut up
4/ When you finally connect with a human agent, finding out how much the support system handcuffs them. “No, I’m sorry, the system won’t let me access the conversation you had with the previous agent”> “No, it won’t show me the delivery fare for those orders”. And on and on.
5/ Having support say to you “I’m so sorry that happened to you. We than you so much for driving for us“.Tne words from the script training are propaganda, made to try to help us feel valued, while we are actually being treated like shit. There is no “I can see this caused you an extra 10 minutes of time, we will add a $4 credit to this delivery so that your effort to solve this is compensated in a meaningful way”
6/ With Doordash, having absolutely NO way to go back to previous support calls to review the conversation or histories. They are forever hidden to you. and In chats with support, agents have told me they can’t access earlier conversations either. I mean, come on DD, WTF?
7/ If you use text chat, forget about doing anything productive as you wait for replies. If you use text chat while you are parked, you never know when a response is coming. and if you happen to get an order offer while you are waiting, well, that just totally messes things up. you can’t drive to an order while monitoring the chat there’s no separation in the app. there’s no way to pop the chat out to a different separate window or application
8/ If you are doing hands free phone support, and hit a dead cell zone, support won’t wait. they’ll end the chat, and then you gotta start a whole mew one. omg
9/ They have so fucked up the way the apps handles delivery when there is no cell reception Instead of letting you scan bar codes, complete delivery steps without an internet connection, they make you try to figure out how to close the order. sometimes th revolving red circle that indicates it is processing just goes round and round forever.
10/ Uber Eats is especially bad for this. They give you s Walmart order with a payout that barely makes economic sense with the estimated distance, bu then after you accept it, you discover it’s 7 different stops. each time you have to take a photo, then confirm delivery, get in and out of the car. oh, it gets even better, You have to scan the bar code of the package you are delivering, besides taking the confirmation photo. sigh:( A 4 mile trip, 10 minutes. $3 delivery payout for that segment. you get where I’m going
