Yeah, this. The true cost of car ownership is the great American scam. Down payments, monthly payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, repairs, medical costs if you get in a crash, deductibles, citations, tag fees, depreciation–since these all come in spurts, irregularly and regularly over time, all with varying probabilities, people wildly underestimate the actual portion of their take home pay them spend on driving.
One time in the way way back I got in an Uber that was supposed to be a Mercedes A class but a CLS pulled up instead. I was like damn, nice car, and he said his was at the dealer for repairs and he was going to drive this one 16 hours a day until the repairs were done. Well done.
I’ve always looked at it as Uber drivers et al are basically borrowing against the value of their car - which might make sense in a pinch, but not as a lifestyle.
I did the delivery gig with my own car for two weeks. But I still managed to bend my door hinge when I parked downtown between two buildings, and a huge gust of wind took the door and yanked it open too far. I lost massive money on those two weeks.
I don’t need to do anything more than understand how the world works to know that people delivering groceries have crappy, low paying jobs that barely provide a subsistence living. And nobody working as an independent contractor should have their compensation calculated on an hourly rate solely for the time they are doing their most obvious work and without figuring expenses into the calculation.
I worked uber/lyft in college to make ends meet during months I was short. I estimated the cost of deprecation at the time was about $.15/mile. You can drive 100 miles in a “shift.” Which is huge for your bottom line. Gotta get your car serviced every single month. After gas and my inflated insurance costs, I calculated I was making less than min wage.
This was at a time when uber encouraged riders not to tip.
There are people on that Reddit doing $45 to $48 an hour. It looks like $20-25/hr is the low end. I assume this is off of batched orders (they can combine a few into one, and thus earn a few tips for one trip to the grocery store).
It also looks like it varies a ton by area. One person in a different thread is complaining that three customers combined into a batch order only totaled a $4 tip.
This. The Quick Delivery guys driving their own cars all thought they were making money too. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who ever got out a Kelley Blue Book to do the math.
It’s kind of obvious that the instacart model is extremely inefficient. Imagine if UPS/Fedex/Post Office were trying to operate with a wild assortment of Honda Civics and whatnot with overlapping routes that have to be chosen with extremely little notice. No company would imagine daring to try this without making the drivers a bunch of suckers.
I think much like the casual dining places by me - it’s also causing massive lines at my local Vons - which refuses to ever have more than 3 cashiers working at any given time. People must be doing more frequent, smaller orders through Instacart.
One time, a guy had me drive from irvine to Downtown LA to pick up his wife from whole foods (had to illegally park and then load her groceries). He was on his laptop the entire time and wouldnt let me play music so he could work.
Took 4 hours. I got paid $60 because it’s mostly calculated per mile, not by hour. No tip. After gas, I think I made about $45. Then, I had to drive 2 hours back home.
I stopped getting deliveries. It seems pretty damn safe to me to do my own shopping now that we know a lot more info about how this spreads. I go during quieter times and wear a good mask and stay away from people as much as I can and have absolutely zero concerns that this is in any way contributing to increased spread.
I only got deliveries a couple of times anyway, as I was never comfortable with paying somebody to take a risk for me.
Instacart is $7.99 for a one hour delivery and $5.99 for a two hour delivery. Seems like someone with a refrigerated bread truck/van could do like one route a day and deliver 200 orders or something and then maybe successfully operate a business at $5/order.
That’s just not how it works in this country unfortunately. I’ve been an independent contractor in public relations ($10/hr) and web design ($30-50/hr), and was always compared to what they’d pay someone hourly if they hired someone. I also got screwed out of half of my last two months pay after working for someone for a couple years. They went with someone cheaper and refused to pay me, knowing it would cost me more to sue them than to just take half of what they owed me. I know all about the pitfalls of independent contracting.
The way it’s viewed in this country is that the trade off is freedom to set your own schedule for having to take on more expenses. Is it right/fair? Nope, but add it to the list of things that are fucked up for workers in this country. The big issue is most people are not choosing it, they’re stuck in that model because of how our economy functions.
Anyway, shoppers taking my order and my order alone should almost all make at least $20/hr, workers able to batch my order with one or two others’ that are similarly compensating them will make $50-60/hr. Anyone arguing that’s shitty is just completely out of touch with reality and with this country, and/or should be focusing on the many far shittier things if you’re saying something like “Yeah sure, that’s better than like 40-50% of jobs but it’s still shitty.”
If your argument is that it’s my job to offset the people who don’t tip well, I disagree. Shoppers can choose which jobs to take and they can see the compensation up front.
I agree with the first part. I have shopped a lot because it’s some for us and I do all the shopping for my mom. It doesn’t seem that dangerous. Mask…distance…washing/sanitizing hands…reasonably good discipline about not touching face/mask…and I’ve got it down to where I’m in and out pretty quickly.
An older electrician I know has taught me this lesson. When he’s billing time and materials he’s up front about: I’m planning - that’s time, I’m shopping - that’s time, I’m on the phone with you - that’s time.
Maybe it is, but I’m extremely unlikely to spread it or catch it based on how I’m operating, which is all that really matters for my calculation.
And whenever they seen to do a contact trace back to a major issue it always seems to be related to dining indoors, gyms, family gatherings, etc. without masks for extended periods.
