Posted on 12/12/2019 12:28:33 PM PST by C19fan
Working for Instacart — buying and delivering groceries to strangers — at first felt like Michaellita Fortier's childhood dream of starring on the speed-shopping TV show Supermarket Sweep.
"It was fun in the beginning," Fortier says. She felt like she was helping people in need while making as much as $16 or $20 per delivery.
But then the app inundated her with orders worth half that, $7 or $9 per delivery. For that money, she was expected to go to the store, shop, fill a cart and deliver an order, sometimes driving 10 or 15 miles.
"I thought, 'Now listen, this is less than minimum wage you want me to drive [for],' " Fortier says. After seven months of working for Instacart in west Michigan, she quit the gig in October.
Millions of Americans like Fortier have counted on platforms like Instacart, DoorDash, Uber or Lyft not just as a service but as a job. Quickly, they find themselves at the mercy of an algorithm — ever-changing pay structures, no assurance of a minimum wage, the smallest tweak of the app capable of upending their livelihoods.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Instacart rips off the drivers and the customers.
It is free choice, you can always delete the app and stop doing this and go off and do something else. This isn’t a set of chains, it is up to you to decide to sell your services. If you let yourself go for cheap, it is on you.
bttt...
“Progressives” hate all innovation. This, Uber, AirB&B, GMOs, vaping, fracking, social media, and countless other miracles of the free market. They prefer planned NEW technology like windmills and trains.
That’s the way I’m seeing it, “gig” or no. Don’t like it cuz your employer screwed ya? Go find another employer; there are more of those delivery services out there.
Why don’t they set a minimum order amount?
I didn’t know they were forced to do the job.
Deliver locally for a pizzeria and make 15 to 20 an hour.
But I always do appreciate that you have the courage to take a stand that is likely the opposite of the majority of the board.
I have done it more than a few times and sometimes it stings.
It makes us better than DU and KOS and the group-think dems.
as long as we agree on our core principals, a little lively debate is a good thing.
Only if they let it.
If I am a driver on one of these services and I cannot decide completely on my own whether or not I want to accept an incoming request, then it’s not a “gig”. It’s a “job”. If these outfits want to force their drivers to take garbage no-profit jobs, then they should have to pay minimum wage, health care, socialist insecurity, mediscam, and other required burdens of actually hiring an employee. On the other hand, if I can just say “no” if a job won’t make me any $$$, without fear of being banned (i.e. “fired”) or being embargoed (same thing), then at that point, it’s a “gig” because I don’t have to take no-profit work. Customers can order enough to make it worthwhile to drivers, or they can do their own shopping.
No one, and I mean no one is entitled to the fruits of my labor but me.
As a customer, i have noticed the difference between what the store charges and what they charge me for an iten is getting a little bigger each month.
There are pluses and minuses. The app allows anyone to work constructively and earn money, without any need to go to an office and be barked at by a boss. But you can hardly earn enough money doing it. I’d say the pluses outweigh the minuses.
There are Freepers who drive for Uber. It’s a job. “Gig” is just another misnomer.
A thing is worth exactly what another is willing to pay for it.
If she’s willing to shop & drive 15 miles to deliver, that’s what $7 is worth.
If that job didn’t exist, she’d have to find something else.
If she doesn’t like that job, she can likewise find something else - just as if the disliked job didn’t exist.
Not only is it easy to get a gig job, it is easy to leave it too. Uber burns through temporary employees like they are going out of style. The big thing Uber and all of the others will face is that their labor pool is not infinite. Over the long term they have to pay drivers enough to want to drive for them.
Then we considered the morality of exploiting one of our fellow human beings for the reasons mentioned and took a pass.
We'll shop at Aldi's on a week night when the traffic isn't the lightest, but still not so heavy.
Such “gig apps” are a blessing.
ANYONE (practically) can download it, and be earning honest money in minutes - anywhere, anytime.
Never before has “get a job” been easier.
Only capital needed is a smartphone (can be had cheap) and a car (which can be rented). You can work whenever you want.
Hard work for low pay? yup - it’s commodity labor. But it’s PAID labor, tiding a person over until they can find a better paying job rewarding more specialized skills.
“Morality of exploiting”?
That person WANTS to work, is willing to do something honest to get paid a fair (albeit low) wage.
Your “took a pass” means they lost a customer, didn’t get paid, because you thought it demeaning for them to work that cheaply.
Which is more demeaning: working for low pay, or not working for any pay?
I may try Instacart just to make up for your inhumanity.
THey will, if they can't find or keep enough drivers.
However, economic adjustments take time.
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