US perspective (eg theft of bikes / crime is not AS serious a problem as Brazil, although it can be bad):
I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand, I fully empathize with the delivery drivers (particularly if the rules / policy of the app is NOT doorstep delivery) and where theft is a real issue.
However, as a (US) consumer, where the apps DO allow us to request doorstep delivery, I think there is no issue with consumers wanting to get the service they paid for. Uber Eats / Doordash charge a pretty hefty premium in terms of markup & delivery fees, and we're paying for the service of having food delivered to our door. You can call us lazy or whatever other names you want, but consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for. And it is not our responsibility to make sure the delivery services are paying the drivers properly.
I think this is exactly the problem. The expectations should be clear on both sides. If I am expecting delivery to my streetfront I will be happy to go down and get it. If I am expecting delivery to my apartment door I will be annoyed if they refuse to do that.
If people want different things there could be an option in the app to decide what you want (with an appropriate price difference).
> The expectations should be clear on both sides. If I am expecting delivery to my streetfront I will be happy to go down and get it.
That's great, and apparently you are not the kind of app user that the deliverers are up upset about.
> "According to Rappi and iFood, which control over 90% of Brazil’s app delivery market, drivers do not need to make doorstep deliveries. On paper, representatives from both companies told Rest of World, their rules already require delivery workers to only go as far as a street-level point of contact, from which customers are asked to collect their meals."
But they should make it clear on their interface. I'm sure it's on some terms of use somewhere, but this information is missing from the entire UI of the app.
(Not that this would impact most people. Closed spaces in Brazil usually disallow delivery people from entering too.)
Add the toggle. When a Rio de Janeiro customer clicks the toggle to request doorstep delivery, pop up an error dialog saying that doorstep delivery is not available in this area for driver safety.
With this setup:
The feature exists if the company wants to support it in certain areas.
It is not supported in RdJ and other dangerous areas.
Ehhh no ethical consumption and all that but I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with that last sentence. If I become aware of a business treating workers poorly I’m inclined to find an alternative.
> If I become aware of a business treating workers poorly I’m inclined to find an alternative.
I agree, provided there is actually clear evidence of it. A generic "Well we all know these services don't pay their workers enough" doesn't suffice.
And the solution is to find an alternative, and not "Let me pay this guy a nice tip because I know he is poorly treated, so that I can enable those who hire him to continue to pay poor wages."
Very fair point. I considered revising that as I wrote it. I think consumers can and should be able to "protest" (for some definition of protest) by either choosing an alternative or tipping more or whatever. But that should be a consumer decision, not necessarily an obligation.
Just because it's not our responsibility doesn't mean we can't vote with our wallets. I try not to give money to terrible companies but ya know what? I'd rather labor laws do that instead.
For example, I have type one diabetes. I'd love to not give Eli Lily another cent but I don't have that option. I know it's not the same as abusing workers, but abusing a captive market is also boycott worthy.
Better prepare yourself for the long list of things you depend on provided by companies that treat their employees like shit. Is your argument that we should try to remain ignorant of these things?
> Is your argument that we should try to remain ignorant of these things?
Is that really the most charitable way you could read parents comment? Obviously they're not arguing for that, but rather arguing for "voting with your money", so stop using services where abuse is evident/apparent.
And yes, it's a fairly large list, but it's not unmanageable. Me and my family try to do the same, it's not a huge hassle and it's not like you have to look up every single company before you buy anything, but if something comes up about a specific brand like "Nestle" or whatever, then we change to something else.
Lastly, the list is smaller than you think, I think. Most common consumer stuff you have at home is made by few huge corporations owning all the brands. "The Illusion of Choice in Consumer Brands" (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/illusion-of-choice-consumer...) is a famous view that shows you the situation.
The fact that everything americans buy is built off of oppression is not an acceptable argument that we should ignore such oppression.
It's just entitlement that you should be free to buy such products made with literal slave labor with no moral qualms. We should call it the Nestle argument, that caring about slave labor would be very inconvenient, so we shouldn't.
Instead, you should probably petition the FTC to not allow a company profiting from slave labor to buy up all it's competition.
Folks subvert _security measures_ due to perceived or real inconvenience also.
In this example one is getting paid to do a task, security controls make the task longer, less convenient, the human will find ways to subvert the inconvenience of the security controls.
Good point. Calls to mind the sharing of access control cards or the using of various means to prevent computers from locking in hospital settings, etc.
According to the article, the deliverers are expected by the terms of the app to bring the order only to the street level door. Some consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating to compel the deliverers to bring the order upstairs.
Never forget that some portion of human beings aren't even willing to return a cart to a certain point at grocery stores. A surprising number of people don't see other humans as equals, but rather as pawns to be abused.
If you don't build your system with them in mind, they will abuse anything and everything they can.
That doesn't mean make things suck for people with few resources though, as anti-social behavior is MORE common the higher up in the corporate chain you go, meaning they are usually not poor.
> consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating
I guess they don’t operate on tips in Brazil? In New York, a delivery driver demanding a customer come down to collect would be wagering their tip for time.
That’s a very abstract way of absolving yourself of blame. If the delivery driver isn’t tipped then they are underpaid. If you’re not willing to tip then don’t use the service.
If the tip is necessary part of the service then it should be displayed to me up front. I have zero issues paying for a service as long as there is no ambiguity about what it costs.
If you do not purchase your delivery in a tipping culture and deliverers earn a living wage, e.g. Northern Europe, then don't tip.
If you purchase in a place where tipping is the convention (e.g US,
Brazil), then do the simple algebra and figure out the real cost. If you do not have the money to tip according to your regional convention, then do not make the purchase. Full stop.
Sorry, but it is insane that people that live in areas with no parking can request doorstep delivery in the United States. People that live on the 10th story of a luxury high rise in the downtown of a major city with a 5 minute security process will request doorstep delivery, forcing drivers to occupy driving lanes for minutes with their hazards thrown as they navigate the byzantine favela that the villager has requested their $8 Mcdonalds order be brought to.
And it is your responsiblity, it is clownlike to fall on your back and flail your hands in the air and shout about how there is nothing you can do about this and your hands are tied etc. Put on your flip flops, and squeak your way down to meet the man downstairs who doesn't speak english and has your McCheesy with McCrusty sauce. Delivery apps prey and set at odds with one another customers who are gouged and drivers who are miserably underpaid all for the sake of... burning VC capital. Both parties, drivers and customers, as long as they continue to participate in the carnival act, should treat one another with good faith and respect as much as is possible, instead of retreating into their castles and pointing at Arial carved into glowing stones that indicate the beginning and end of what they owe one another
Look, the customer base for Uber eats is lazy. That’s why they are ordering McDonalds delivery in the first place. Guilting them for meeting at the door isn’t going to work.
In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.
Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.
If drivers don’t want to fully deliver then don’t do delivery.
Now I live in the burbs and ordered Uber eats for my family and the driver wouldn’t drop off food to my door and called to say come out to the driveway to pick up my food. It was kind of weird. They sat in the driveway and wouldn’t bring the food to the door.
This is very different from Brazilian inner city or even an urban setting but it was strange that the driver didn’t want to walk the 30 steps from my driveway to the door.
> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.
It seems everyone is dancing around the obvious central fact: the drivers get an embarrassingly small amount of that $14 fee. The customer pays a premium, the driver is paid a pittance, it’s hardly surprising there’s an expectations mismatch around customer service.
If the delivery apps charged a fee that accurately represented their role in the transaction (running automated software matching driver with customer) it might be a better experience for both customers and drivers. But the companies have sky high valuations they now need to deliver on, so they can’t.
> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.
Right. Pre delivery apps I’d order in NYC and have no problems with doorstep delivery. So apply simple logic: what’s changed? The customers haven’t. The drivers haven’t. But there’s a new middleman.
> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.
Most new-ish developments I've seen have a central lobby or mail room that handles all deliveries. All external doors are locked and require a keycard. No one is delivering to your front door.
Of course, whether they're staffed at 1am to handle your Doordash delivery is a separate issue.
> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.
Yep, I'd agree that paying that fee for a service which doesn't have to deliver to your door is silly, but some people still do it
> In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself.
As a fellow city dweller: yep, I'd agree there, too (that's why I don't order $8 mcwhatevers with $14 delivery) but to each their own
It seems unreasonable to expect every driver to know how to legally park around, efficiently gain access to, and navigate the twists and turns of every building, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect every building tenant/employee to do so for their own. If your building was a house, you wouldn't expect the driver to know how to gain entry and navigate to a specific room in it. That's what an apartment building is: a way bigger and more difficult to navigate house.
The only time I've requested delivery to my door was for a grocery delivery when I had a herniated disc and could barely walk. I am totally willing to leave a good tip for such service, but when I order it that way, it is REQUIRED.
I had the delivery driver do a half ass attempt at contact, he ignored my instructions and then he simply went home. No, that's not acceptable. I reported them to the company.
I sympathize with delivery folks, to the point where I almost never order delivery in the first place, but when I need it, I expect it to be full service.
Where does the mail truck park for deliveries. Other delivery persons can just do that. If the building has no lanes at all, then that's nobody's fault but the building owner. You can wait behind the delivery vehicle a couple minutes.
Mail trucks are a bit different though as they are federal vehicles. Private delivery services like FedEx get tickets all the time and pay them as the cost of doing business, but I doubt food delivery services do the same for their drivers.
I don't see how it's the driver's problem that the orderer chose to live somewhere impossible for delivery drivers to park while taking food through whatever apartment maze they chose to live in, but there's always the option of meeting at the front door
if that's not possible, it's up to you to refuse ordering. If you place the order, you agreed for it to be delivered according to the terms and conditions.
consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for
So called "independent contractors" also have the right to decide which contracts they will and will not take. Do Uber Eats and Doordash allow them to deny these "doorstep delivery for apartments in theft-prone cities" jobs?
I often have to go and find delivery drivers because they find it hard to find the entrance of my apartment.
It's slightly annoying and I probably order less because of it, but it's not the end of the world.
If it's that much of an issue, then insurance/replacing the bikes needs pricing into the delivery. It's not like the delivery drivers are currently earning good money, as far as I know they usually struggle to make minimum wage in most countries.
>consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for. And it is not our responsibility to make sure the delivery services are paying the drivers properly.
This is absurd. Why doesn't an american have a responsibility to their fellow man to avoid companies that mistreat their workers? What kind of entitlement is that? Don't you have any solidarity for your fellow human workers?
Where I deliver with Uber Eats, the vast majority of deliveries are simple things where I basically drop it off curbside. Only occasionally must I climb five flights of stairs. Am I compensated extra for your stairs? No. Do I thumbs down those deliveries? Only if the apartments are poorly marked and I end up having to climb three separate flights of stairs looking for your apartment.
On the street (outside) versus to your door inside: What is the cost worth to you? Please provide a percentage of your order. For example, a 20 USD total order from fast food place, inside delivery fee might be 10%, or 2 USD. Will you pay it.
> US perspective (eg theft of bikes / crime is not AS serious a problem as Brazil, although it can be bad):
In the US we take the utilitarian perspective that the thief who took my bike has gained more happiness than I have lost without it, so maybe bike theft is a good thing[0].
In Brazil a bike is probably a fair bit more dear and may more likely be the user's only form of rapid personal transportation.
Or more likely, the thief just resold the stolen bike for $10, thus negatively impacting the economy (preventing legal resellers from operating fairly; forcing people to spend more money and effort on protection; minimizing the efficiency of the person having the bike stolen; raising insurance premiums) and the ecology (steering people towards cars, which are harder to steal, at least without insurance; forcing people to re-buy bikes and stolen goods). Proper wealth redistribution is not stealing, at least not this kind of "petty stealing".
> In the US we take the utilitarian perspective that the thief who took my bike has gained more happiness than I have lost without it, so maybe bike theft is a good thing
Haha not a snowflake's chance in hell. In much of the USA you can use deadly force to defend against property crime on private property. Conditions do apply, but that's beside the point (and are rarely enforced in self defense cases unless you went full retard on the crim).
Per TikTok/YouTube Brazil allows deadly force against thieves on bikes. Some videos out there of suv/truck drives swerving and plowing over gunmen jumping people on streets. Obviously it’s gruesome so you can look it up yourself if interested. Per the videos this was a recent(ish) law passed. Caveat, obviously I was educated on tiktok but the videos certainly don’t look fake.
It's what rich sheltered people think, which describes most of the online population.
And I'm not saying that as a bad thing, necessarily; if anything, it's probably worse to think in the neurotic PTSD terms of defending your bike to the death because you saved a long time for it and can't afford to replace it. Moreso when you can trivially afford to replace it and the person stealing it is probably in a much worse global situation than you.
I’ve seen family’s of 7 on a moped, surronded by multiple live chickens dangling and a 20gal propane tank on the back. Incredible skill. Sometimes they do blow up sadly if a suv runs into them.
For a lot of people, that moped is their life. Deadly force is appropriate. Horse thieves were hung right?
Zzz. Expecting the delivery workers to eat the difference between "5-second hand-off to somebody who's waiting at the street entrance"* and "gotta secure their vehicle & stuff and get through your building security and figure our where your apartment is and trek up there and..." is an age-old "treat your servants like shit because you can" move.
*The article is very clear that the delivery app's Terms of Service specify "street-level entrance only". [Added footnote. Credit: ballenf.]
Comparing it with a 5-second hand off is like one of those bar graphs that cuts off the origin to make the difference in the bars look bigger. It’s more a difference between a 15 and 18 minute delivery. Not nothing, but I don’t see a huge difference between that and someone who lives 18 minutes away.
I personally go down to meet them, but mostly because it’s faster for me to run down than wait for them to take my slow elevator.
15 minutes vs. 18 minutes - that's roughly a 17% pay cut for the driver, plus assumption of liability (for theft). I'll guess that ~100% of folks here on HN would feel themselves blatantly screwed over if they were on the receiving end of that deal.
If I was a disabled person who would have immense difficulty getting to the street and back again, I sure would hope I could pay an extra 3% or have that cost built in, because going to the street would defeat the purpose of getting delivery.
Right, but given population statistics it's a pretty safe bet that the majority of individuals involved here are not disabled in any meaningful way and are making life difficult for their delivery drivers for their own personal convenience. It's interesting to me how quick folks in the comment section are to try to take cover behind some dude in a wheelchair.
1. It doesn't matter what are the terms and conditions for this particular application, it's a topic that touches every delivery app and most give you the option to request delivery at your door and have drivers not respect it.
2. If they don't like the game they should stop playing it. If it's not worth it for them to do deliveries where they actually have to deliver, then they can look for a job that is more worth their time.
Of course it is relevant, it is what this thread is discussing.
You could say the same about anyone being underpaid or treated poorly; this is what regulation is for. These people are trying to make a living and not everyone has good job opportunities available to them.
Cite? The article seems to clearly state otherwise:
> ...representatives from both companies told Rest of World, their rules already require delivery workers to only go as far as a street-level point of contact, from which customers are asked to collect their meals.
Where I live it's definitely NOT the difference between 15 and 18 mins. I'm on the 69th floor on a tower with fairly strict security and nowhere to really park outside, so it's really more of a 10 minute (minimum) process to find parking, go through security, find the right lift (there are 10 lifts going to different floor subsets), waiting for the lift (sometimes can be several minutes if they are in use).
So basically it's a big pain in the ass for delivery people who are already not being paid a livable wage.
There’s no problem unless a service specifies entrance-only delivery. All parties agree to the same contract. But if you still prefer to eat that cost, the company they contract with will pocket it through market means. Not them. Same for tips, they pay those who are underpaid. Delivery drivers are unprotected, period. It’s an unregulated low-skill high-competition job, these suck systemically. You can’t unsuck it by personal means.
Not quite. The Brazilian elite (that’s middle class and above, considering 30-40 million Brazilians live with hunger or near hunger) live in a dystopia of their own making where both parties are at risk of violence here.
Virtually all middle class and above housing is a tall tower with gates and security around it. Often double gate or triple gate. Just the time to get across that can be 5-10 min. If it’s your first time due to the need for ID.
The driver who leaves his bike outside risks losing it, but the person who comes down to get their food risks the driver being armed and robbing them or kidnapping them. Thus you have a sort of a Prisoner’s Dillema where nobody wins and everyone loses (except the app).
For the customer the safest thing is to get the driver through the triple lock, then have him drop off the food at your door inside the building and leave it there.
For the driver the safest and most efficient is to drop it off at the security at the door, but these days the security sometimes is virtual only anyway, there is no one to drop it off to, just cameras and fingerprint sensors.
So there is no way out of the game, except like many have said the apps should just charge for doorstep delivery. But this makes their lives more complicated, so they’d really like not to even if it results in death and robbery for both parties.
Can't those towers implement goods hand-off points in the longer term? I.e. bulletproof glass with a tray through which you can pass goods back and forth?
I believe some do. I was there for two months this year but can’t say I ordered delivery food.
Some cities will have different systems and every tower is a bit different. I imagine it’s the same thing as any other solution - it will cost money and any opening in the tower security will be gamed and exploited by criminals. That’s likely why it’s not common.
The level of criminality and insecurity in Brazil is unusual even for global standards I think. The level of gaming and exploration of any security system by criminals is surprising for people from the outside, and there’s a lot of externalities. Some stories I’ve heard (and was not surprised about):
- during the pandemic criminal groups in Recife pretended to be City workers dealing with COVID to get inside the towers and assault apartment buildings
- a person in Fortaleza (one of the least safe places) went to the bank to make a large withdrawal to help her father buy a 2nd hand car (I think). As soon as she drove away an armed possy stopped her car and told her to give them the money (which they knew she had). Someone at the bank tipped them off
(After that she decided to move)
Brazilians are a wildly creative culture. You see this in song and music and whenever you see a Brazilian running a business
Food delivery most places mean to the door of the apartment, not the apartment complex entrance.
This is terrible for food delivery agents, since it slashes the efficiency of most deliveries.
I always run downstairs, since I am humbled that anyone would cook and bring me food. But as long as this is not the norm, food delivery agents are at the bottom of the food chain. In the past, this was a job for unions.
Postal workers of Denmark had passed by law that mailboxes must be at street level. So all apartment complexes nationwide had to install extra mailboxes at the ground floor if they hadn't already. It can be quite bad for your knees to walk thousands of stairs every day.
I live with chronic sciatica. Some days, I'm feeling well enough for a walk in the park. Other days, I can barely limp to my kitchen or bathroom. Modern food delivery has been amazing for those kinds of days.
Whenever drivers don't actually dash to my door as requested, it turns a simple meal into an agonizing journey.
Since around 15, my chronic sciatica has affected me deeply and caused lots of issues throughout school, the workplace, and every day life. Quite simply, I suffered and meditated on the fact that it could still be much worse, at least I have good days where I can walk.
This is tough, but there is an easy solution: delivery apps provide a way to communicate with the delivery worker, explain your situation, potentially offer a better tip for the service. They will come to your door.
Sure, easy solution! Door dash provides such a mechanism wherein I can let the driver know how I would like to receive my order.
In fact, for several years now I have used this feature, signaling that I would like the order to be delivered to my door.
Fingers crossed for when the majority of delivery drivers actually start reading it!
> explain your situation, potentially offer a better tip for the service
At some point, it's my business and I would rather not have to explain my disability to strangers every single time I want a meal.
You have to understand something here, before moving to shift responsibility off of the delivery workers: There are kind and unkind people. The kind people are no problem. They deliver the order according to instructions, and get a tip. The unkind people, who are more likely to not follow door dash protocol to begin with, are also more likely not to read my driver notes, are more likely to be rude even when I am forced to explain my disability. In some cases, these people will even harass you before and after delivering your order.
I once had a small animal seizing in my lap who needed emergency items, but I was unable to leave my home and the closest exotic vet was hours away and didn't open till the next morning. An Instacart delivery driver accepted the order, which included a tip of $50, harassed me for 4 hours and literally just lied about ever visiting the store, because they had a bad day. They sat in their car as this animal continued to seize, with zero feeling. They sent me photos, cursed at me, taunted me, all sorts of things.
After speaking with support, they agreed the behavior was unacceptable and allowed me to reorder... I got the same driver again. After wasting 4 hours with this person, support finally figured out how to assign a different driver. This driver immediately went to the store, called me to discuss which items were best to get, and delivered my order with zero fuss. They were happy to receive a large tip, and they assured me I wasn't in the wrong.
The animal ultimately died, that 4 hours was crucial. Should I rely on Instacart for emergency services? Of course not, but that is the nature of an emergency. I would have gladly paid that $50 toward an app specifically geared for that kind of thing.
Sorry to hear that story. My partner gets frustrated by Instacart mistakes and I try to remind her that many of the people doing that job probably have low comprehension and planning skills or they would be doing something else. (Certainly not all though, we've had amazing drivers too). They also probably grew up with different food habits and don't see why a certain substitution doesn't make sense. Sometimes the results is humorous, but it is still annoying when you _already spoke on the phone about it_ or asked to refund instead of replace. Or as it relates to the article, when they knock at the door and wait instead of just dropping it on the stoop as requested.
The problem is that one often relies on Instacart when sick or disabled and the tolerance for mistakes and bad interactions is lowest. Perhaps there is an opportunity for something like vocational nursing companies to offer more skilled shoppers at a premium price...
This man sent curse-laden messages in addition to calling me to taunt me further, complained that the trip was several miles (under 10, and they can see the charge and route before accepting the order), mocked my dying animal, mocked me. He straight-up told me that his plan was to stay on my order so that I couldn't get a different driver, while he simultaneously used a competitor app (Uber Eats) to deliver other orders. Instacart support was not happy about this part, in addition to the negative behavior, this is expressly against the rules to double-dip simultaneously.
He lied about ever going to the store, then after one and a half hours (already wasting two) just cancelled the order, saying nothing was in stock. The next driver went to the same store and got my requested items.
I haven't used Instacart since and never plan to; That was the worst customer experience of my life. The fact that I was promised by support that I would receive a different driver, then was immediately reassigned the same exact driver, was indescribably frustrating to me as a business owner and application developer myself.
> Perhaps there is an opportunity for something like vocational nursing companies to offer more skilled shoppers at a premium price...
That would be amazing. I imagine the only way it would economically work is if it were government owned/subsidized, since the kind of people who need this most (at least in the US) are already spending an exorbitant amount on health care and often don't have that kind of extra money lying around.
I've never had an experience anywhere near that bad, but InstaCart is the slider set all the way to the "this is a random person, we vaguely know what's in the store, and you work out what you're actually getting with the random person as they're shopping" end of the spectrum. The good thing about it is that its store flexibility is extremely high.
Prime Now is the slider set to the other extreme: inventory is accurate, your "shopper" might as well be a robotic arm, and your driver is a separate, nameless delivery system. The downside is the store flexibility is limited to Whole Foods.
I agree that these gig-businesses cannot be relied on for emergencies, but within the 4 hours did you consider simultaneously using another delivery service? I would imagine that if you had access to Instacart, you would have access to other services like Uber delivery, Postmates, etc. Not to necessarily lay the blame on you because I probably don't fully comprehend the details of the situation, but I feel like if I relied on third parties so heavily to augment my own disability and had the price elasticity to pay an extra $50 tip, I would have many other contingency plans for events like these. If I can't get any help within 4 hours for a pet, how could I be expected to get help for myself or someone else close to me?
> within the 4 hours did you consider simultaneously using another delivery service?
Why yes, I did!
> Not to necessarily lay the blame on you because I probably don't fully comprehend the details of the situation
Yes, you are, and no, you don't.
> I would have many other contingency plans for events like these
This was a medical emergency, it was 2am and the only delivery app which featured a store that had the items I need was on Instacart. I checked all of them.
> how could I be expected to get help for myself or someone else close to me
Call an ambulance? An ambulance isn't going to help me take care of a seizing animal, and an Uber driver wouldn't either because it makes them potentially liable. I was also very low on cash. The $50 was quite a lot for me, but it was the life of another animal at stake, and I value the time of a person who has agreed to complete a critical, time-dependent task for me.
Before you berate me further for having an animal without being rich, this was a friend's animal who was out of state and left the animal in my care. The animal was developing diabetes and the timing was completely unfortunate.
These are the kinds of armchair moralizing stories about the service industry that the consumer class actually believes about themselves. 99.9% of the time when people would say "If they would've done it, they would have gotten a tip for it..." it's just not true. Drivers are not getting tipped for spending 45 minutes walking around apartment buildings trying to find elevators and struggling to read the font-of-the-month printed on doors and they have to do this dozens of times every day in order to get $2.50, the base pay for a doordash order, and to make an annual salary that is a rounding error of the salaries of the people that they are delivering to. I get it, life is unfair, and not everyone can make the same amount of money. But don't act like we live in a paradise that doesn't have extreme inequality and class tension when you use an app that summons a member of the underclass to do your bidding for $18k per annum and they are rude or have a fucking attitude with you.
> when people would say "If they would've done it, they would have gotten a tip for it..." it's just not true
Except the next guy completed the service as requested, and I handed him a $50 cash tip?
> But don't act like we live in a paradise that doesn't have extreme inequality and class tension when you use an app that summons a member of the underclass to do your bidding for $18k per annum and they are rude or have a fucking attitude with you.
Maybe you're projecting your own ignorance. The majority of my life has been spent in great poverty. I am part of this "underclass". My sister does Door Dash, and it doesn't pay her bills, and I have to compensate for the difference. I'm extremely aware of the exact economics behind Door Dash.
I've usually been at the bottom end of this "extreme inequality and class tension". For you, this might be a realization, for me, it's a reality I've long known. Did it even occur to you that in this situation I obviously didn't have a car myself? This person was already one step above the economic ladder than myself, as they owned a vehicle.
> and they are rude or have a fucking attitude with you.
I spent my youth deeply broke, working as as server for the upper class of my state in a rural area with little economic opportunity. My mom can't hold a job, my dad is not in my life, and I was homeless at 15. All I knew was poverty and sickness for a long time.
If I can not catch a fucking attitude while shaking my governor's hand and getting paid $12 an hour, then some guy who is getting $50 tip + fees for a 3-item order can shut the fuck up and do the job they literally accepted to do, instead of cursing at me and mocking me and intentionally sabotaging my order. I wish I got paid that kind of money back then.
If they have a problem with their socioeconomic position, I'm not the guy to take it out on.
Here in France it seems like the apps say the delivery should be upstairs if the customer asked for that, but drivers have the same issue with going upstairs as in Brazil.
And I can see why if they get paid the same.
My guess is, the apps know the issue, but explicit "street-level" deliveries don't sell as well.
It also depends on locality - around where I live, the delivery guys will go right up to your door, because there are so few apartments that it's not a major issue to ride 'vator for the few deliveries there (which are often seniors, anyway).
But in New York? You might spend most your life in elevators.
Where I live I saw a big shift in delivery people in the late aughts. I live in a city in the northeast (not NYC). These days even most of the apps like DoorDash are still using a restaurant's own delivery drivers.
I lived in a high-rise with elevators. From about 2000 until the late aughts it was like clockwork. They'd ring my buzzer, I'd buzz them in, and they'd stop at my door. In the late aughts it started to shift. More and more drivers would call me from downstairs and tell me I could pick up my food.
I can only imagine what it's like these days in a building like that. I live in a single family house now and 9 times out of 10 they won't even walk the 5 feet to my door from their car.
Is it the proliferation of giant condo buildings? Cities like Toronto went from having cloisters of 10-15 story concrete appartement blocks to having tons of much taller condo buildings all over in the last 20ish years. More than a few have questionable elevator situations too. There's even viral tiktok videos about residents waiting 20-30 minutes for elevators. Would you want to deliver to the door in a building like that?
This is the real solution, but nobody wants to admit the costs associated with this.
Heckers, the companies could use "machine learning" (read: simple SQL scripts) to determine how much time going up to your apartment "costs" and charge you based on such. Then buildings with faster elevators would be more valuable!
There's a class of what could be broadly described as personal services, including near real-time home delivery, that a lot of people who aren't uber-wealthy want but will only pay for grudgingly and will try to squeeze as much as possible. In turn, companies that employ the low-skill workers providing those services squeeze their workers as much as possible.
ADDED: I suspect that the fact that a lot of delivery is "free" these days makes at least some people resentful when it's not.
Considering same person probably orders multiple times. You could just tell drivers to mark at their phone when they have for example parked. And then from there calculate average time it takes for them to be back at their cars. Intrusive to them, but could be fair metric.
One of my principles is that you shouldn't screw with the people who deliver your packages. And this goes double if they're delivering food.
If the man calls and says come down to get your food, your options at that point are a) come down to get your food, or b) refuse delivery.
Anything else is out of scope here, _including_ the notion that the delivery person was supposed to deliver upstairs and is refusing. While it might be an inconvenience, it's really not your problem as a customer. What are you going to do about it anyway? Argue? That'll just get you posted on tiktok.
It's the company's problem, and it's a self-correcting evolution - given enough instances, presumably that person won't be allowed to handle deliveries anymore, OR you wouldn't patronize that service any longer.
Now, you may have already switched delivery services when the recalcitrant delivery person is replaced with someone more amenable to delivering upstairs. But either way, the problem is solved.
So how are people with mobility issues or medical quarantine situations supposed to get their food if there isn’t a way to reliably arrange for delivery people to bring it to (at least outside) their door? And yes, both of these circumstances have happened to me at times within the last few years, though fortunately not so far in a permanent way. Other people do have such limitations permanently.
The idea that it is poor worker's duty to give up income or safety in case one out of 100 customers have poor mobility is extremely entitled. Slowing down to help out someone like a good Samaritan explicitly harms the deliveryperson's performance in these apps.
Be mad at the companies for not accommodating you like they should legally be required, not the individual employees. The companies have worked very hard to push these "gig workers" to be as "efficient" (read overworked) as possible because that directly increases profit.
The company could add functionality to their app: "Click here for specialty service at an additional cost" but they don't want to do that because that's another nail in their claim that they are just facilitating contracting, so instead their system just pretends every order is the happy path trivial order, and punishes you if you take an order with a giant tip for extra or special instructions.
The company building the app is choosing to fuck you over so they can also continue to fuck over the people stuck working for them. That's who you should get angry at.
I’m not mad at either the companies or the workers for failing to accommodate - they have reliably allowed me to request delivery to the door at no extra charge, unlike the Brazilian service discussed in the linked article, and almost always the delivery people have been willing to come to the door. Of course, I tip them for their effort, but they don’t usually know that before they come to the door.
I am just responding to and disagreeing with your argument that street delivery is generally enough, although I admit that Brazil might be a special case due to the level of theft risk that drivers in Brazil would have to deal with in order to deliver to the door.
Forcing disabled or quarantined people to pay extra is discriminatory, and forcing them to out their medical condition to a delivery service in order to avoid a surcharge is rather extreme. Delivery to the door was standard before the pandemic, and the deterioration of service is something we should reverse without undue harm to the workers rather than defend.
But I do sympathize with the delivery workers as well. They need stronger rights and I don’t want them to be overworked. But I would prefer that to be handled differently, like legislatively allowing them to sue the companies for 1 year’s full-time salary plus legal fees for every day they are given a (properly defined) abusively unreasonable set of expectations or abusively low pay per day. That way obligations to deliver to the door would not overwork or undercompensate them, and more workers would be hired to satisfy the part of the demand that currently leads to overwork. If they still don’t make enough income to find it a viable job, then as per supply and demand the apps will have to raise their compensation in order to attract enough workers when the number of deliveries or hours per day is legislatively capped.
And yet, every delivery app I’ve used has let me deliver to the door at no extra charge, and that’s usually been honored. We’re disagreeing about the reasonableness of the Brazilian service discussed in the article where street-level delivery is the standard service, at least ignoring the unusually high theft risk in Brazil that may make that restriction more defensible there. In the US and Canada and Germany, delivery to the door has been routine in most of my experience.
>So how are people with mobility issues or medical quarantine situations supposed to get their food if there isn’t a way to reliably arrange for delivery people to bring it to (at least outside) their door?
What did these people do before doordash? Can they not just call the restaurant and explain that going downstairs is a burden?
In my experience both before Doordash and now, deliveries usually happen to the door, and indeed Doordash allows requesting that - it’s usually been honored when I’ve done it, except in rare cases like building policies disallowing delivery people in the elevators (and even then they sometimes came up). In the linked article we are discussing a different case in Brazil where street-level delivery was the contract with the drivers, and the person I was replying to was defending that. I think there’s a potentially viable safety argument for that policy in the unusually theft-prone context of Brazil, but not one that would outweigh the downsides in most broadly safe developed countries.
But as to your suggested solution, I think it’s not appropriate to require a disabled person to explain their burden to every restaurant on every order, or similar. That’s too emotionally harsh. And as I said, delivery to the door is usually not a problem in my experience, but we are discussing a context quite different from my experience.
Let's revisit this excerpt from the article, which would mitigate many of these comments about how "workers should take pride in their work" and "do their job" and similar. They are doing their jobs.
> "According to Rappi and iFood, which control over 90% of Brazil’s app delivery market, drivers do not need to make doorstep deliveries. On paper, representatives from both companies told Rest of World, their rules already require delivery workers to only go as far as a street-level point of contact, from which customers are asked to collect their meals."
> "A common worry among drivers is that their cycles, motorbikes, or bags might be stolen if left unattended. Most buildings don’t allow them to park inside, workers told Rest of World, forcing them to leave their vehicles and delivery bags on the street. The bags frequently contain two or three orders as the apps assign them multiple deliveries along the same route. To avoid having the other orders stolen, the bags must also go up with the drivers."
Just goes to show how absolutely entitled people here are that doing something explicitly against the rules of the system you have WILLINGLY PARTICIPATED IN is considered "expected" from the lowest paid workers.
When they started including maps with GPS tracking in delivery apps I was so happy because I could actually run down and meet them. I totally understand that some people are just lazy and disrespectful but to me it's a given that you at least go down to your gate. Not only because there is no way for the delivery people to get in, but also because it saves time and I'm not disabled.
I've lived in several cities in the US over the past decade and noticed that delivery drivers in different regions have distinctly different norms regarding this.
I lived on the 36th floor of a building in Chicago with a doorman, and I would consistently get the driver coming to up to my door. I don't think I ever once had to meet them in the lobby.
When I lived in Seattle very very few drivers would come in from the sidewalk even when I lived in a first floor unit maybe 50' from the street. I'd buzz them in and they'd wait in the threshold with the door open. Beyond that, maybe 20% of drivers would only call me, never buzz, and expect me to come out to their car to grab my food.
I lived in Chicago again more recently in a 4th floor walk up, and I'd usually try to go down and meet them (habit from Seattle, and also it was a lot of stairs and I felt bad), but they'd consistently come hustling up the stairs before I got the chance to come down and meet them.
Other places I lived fell somewhere between Seattle and Chicago on this spectrum.
Know who doesn't have these kinds of issues in the US for the most part? The employee delivery drivers at national pizza chains. These chains also charge a fraction of the fees that the big players do for delivery.
I think what is needed is different service tiers. The basic delivery is only to nearby or outer door and leaves food there. Next up they wait you to come and pick it up. And pay couple euros more still and it is to the door.
Could be only way to make it sustainable in long run.
I've been ordering food less, cause I'm trying to get in shape. But here in Brazil we have the delivers that work for the app (ifood) and the delivers that work for the restaurant. The ones who works for the restaurant always are more pleasant and never complained about going up two flights of stairs to deliver my food. I think they get a bigger cut (if not all of it) of the delivery cost.
Or they are paid hourly or are regular employees, and taking longer won't affect their income at all. Maybe boss will yell a bit if they take too long.
Sounds like the basic issue is that they're paid by the delivery, rather than being on salary, so anything that makes deliveries take longer than the minimum is costing them money.
Or quick groceries for the elderly? There are a lot of people using these apps beyond fast food for lazy people. For example I used to order a lot from a meal prep place that did chicken, rice, and broccoli when I was working in another state and didn't have access to a kitchen. If someone asks for lunch to be delivered because they're stuck in a meeting it doesn't help if they have to go somewhere to pick it up. Etc...
The default should be delivery to the door unless mitigating circumstances. And if you can help them out by going to meet them downstairs then great.
I love how when the consumer class talks about the service class, they always allude to the needs of the elderly and disabled population, and the immediately go into a story about their needs that are supposed to sound elderly or disabled-adjacent, but its a scenario that is certainly not the tear jerker you were expecting like someone stuck in a meeting that doesn't have access to a kitchen and wants chicken rice and broccoli. What you have deliberately neglected to mention is that there is a desk at the first floor of the building where the food can be left for you to come downstairs and get after your meeting. It is a luxury service that you desire, not an essential service that satisfies the needs of the disabled and the senior, you are just piggybacking on their tears to make yourself feel better.
> What you have deliberately neglected to mention is that there is a desk at the first floor of the building where the food can be left for you to come downstairs and get after your meeting
If your apartment block has a front desk then that's fantastic but mine doesn't - if it is left outside it will probably be stolen.
> you are just piggybacking on their tears to make yourself feel better
Seems a little ad hominem, but taking it positively, a delivery worker should assume the worst and deliver to the door just in case there's a reason they've ordered a delivery and can't come downstairs unless something else has been agreed. They might be self isolating for covid for example. There's so many examples of why it should be delivered to the door, and there's no way to know if it is or isn't valid for that delivery, so that's what should happen.
> I love how when the consumer class talks about the service class ... but its a scenario that is certainly not the tear jerker you were expecting
That's why I added the other examples. Chill out a little.
The elderly/handicapped is an interesting situation, because (in the USA) companies are required by the ADA to make "reasonable accommodations" for the disabled. Which includes things like offering full-service gas fill-ups even at stations that are self-serve only.
So you could see delivery apps requiring "door delivery" for ADA purposes, and then people abusing that (because charging more for ADA compliance is usually a non-starter).
Personally I think it should just default to front-of-building but have a no-charge button to have delivery to the door which drivers can see in advance. Then if they don't want to bother they can skip it, and if people need a delivery to the door they can get that too without having to message and explain. Also gives people the option to add additional information on door codes/where to locate the door inside the apartment etc. Sure some people might abuse the system but I think most people, most of the time, are happy to go and get it from the front of the building.
If you really want you can have the tip automatically set to 15% instead of 10% for door deliveries but allow the user to reduce that if they want, should get around the ADA stuff I assume (but not sure).
I've always been severely disappointed that these "gig apps" aren't actually gig apps - you know, that support negotiation and other such things. Because having Uber tell me it will cost $10 but I get no service at all is not useful, especially if there was a driver who would have gone for it at $11 or $15 or whatever.
They would have a harder time making stupid money off the back of poor employees if they gave them any pricing power at all, hence the rules that prevent you from declining as many orders as you want. That alone should completely disqualify you from claiming that your employees aren't employees, that along with zero requirement for your drivers to register a business, because you know, they AREN'T INDEPENDENT BUSINESSES.
The service fees are actually insane, and it's super unclear what the fees go to. Not the person doing the work—that much is clear. I just automatically assume anyone who ordered with these apps is straight bad with money (outside of extenuating circumstances like being disabled or sick, that is, I happily order delivery when I'm sick).
If you're in a small enough town (that still has delivery people) you can often strike up a conversation with whoever did the delivery, and get "service outside the app" for much cheaper and nicer, and everything goes direct to them.
I have children and don't do delivery apps either. Its way more expensive per meal, generates way more trash, and in the end sitting hot and steamy in the packaging for 10+ minutes makes the food worse than if I had cooked it myself or we went out to eat it.
If anything, having kids is a reason to not do delivery apps. Having kids is expensive enough I don't need to spend an extra $10 a meal just to have someone bring it to me.
If we're talking convenience, its pretty much the same level of effort as throwing frozen foods in the air fryer or in the steaming tray of the rice cooker and coming back in like 10 minutes. Or reheat a meal-prepped food. Or cook one of the several quick recipes of things we usually have on hand. Or having fun slicing soft fruits and vegetables with plastic knives with the kids.
Most of the time that we do order takeout its because one or both of us are already out and about and will just swing by some restaurant on the way home. Or we'll pick up food to go and stop by the park on the way home and have a picnic.
So many options that are all massively better than ordering delivery foods from an app.
> If I'm making already poor decisions to eat fast food I might as well bike, walk, or drive to go get it and save myself another $10.
Okay, the context that you established in your prior comment is you've already decided to eat take out food. We're not talking about home cooking, which obviously is the main solution for parents. There's no point to getting sanctimonious about situations that people find themselves in for practical reasons.
Hauling kids to the shop to get take out is not always easy or desirable. Obviously, this is all very contextual. If you have teenagers, you can send them down to the shop and have them bring it back to you. If you live in a suburb, you can strap everyone into their car seats and go to the drive through. But for the context which is the point of the discussion -- a person who lives in an apartment with a small child and wants to get take out that night -- it's not crazy to want it to come to your door instead of having to go to the front desk. It might not be possible to haul N boxes of food and M children in the elevator as a single parent. Obviously, this is tricky because the delivery person also has the problem of not wanting their bike stolen. It seems like a good compromise solution is the deliveries mostly go to the front desk, but you can pay an extra fee to get them to come to your door, but again, this is all practical stuff, not a matter of getting snotty that how dare someone be too lazy to walk to the farm and pull up the carrots themselves, blah blah…
Another data point to show why places like McDonalds never offered delivery in the first place. It's just not worth it.
Something these "disruptors" just don't get. They either have to charge too much, pay too little, or often the combo platter of both.
They've increased the number of unique parties involved to four and have removed the possibility of real accountability from all of them. Of course it's a shitshow. Everyone has different incentives and they are often at odds with the incentives of the other parties.
I think I'm in the minority, but I just would not order a delivery in 90% of the cases. If I remember myself say in 2005-2010 I would order Pizza once in 1.5 months, and I was ready to come downstairs to receive a package.
These days I order food, knowing that it will allow me uninterrupted work (I'll just receive a package and get back to work). If I have to interrupt my "flow-ish" state anyway, I'll just go out or make an omelette in 10 minutes.
Context: I live 10 minutes away from a high street in London.
If you have to go into the street to pick up your order, I don't see the point in food delivery. You might as well walk to the restaurant at that point.
Do you like, live in a city or something? The closest restaurant to me is 7 miles and the closest one I will eat from, 11. I would gladly go to my driveway!
I don't use food delivery because there's nothing I would want that I could have delivered. But it takes me close to half an hour to drive out and pick something up. If I had good delivery options I would probably use them now and then.
(If I lived in a city though and had options within a 5 minute walk, I'd probably just pick up takeout myself.) Honestly, I usually have something in the freezer if I just want something quick but sometimes I don't feel like thinking about cooking even something simple.
You don’t even have to put on real shoes to go downstairs. You can put on slippers. Even in the most dense city, food delivery to the street level is more convenient than walking to the restaurant.
What if you can't walk? I'm disabled and both walking and driving are out of the equation. (When I do get food delivered, I am waiting at the door for them.)
"I'm going to leave this here, just like I'm supposed to do according to my work contract" is sympathetic. "I'm going to eat your food and make a video of myself doing it and put it on the internet" is extremely strange.
In the end it's sort of a feel-good story. Watching that video I'm reassured that I'm not the only one whose culture is in decline...
Ordering in food is probably the most wasteful dangerous thing the average young person can do. Food costs 20x more than making it yourself, getting it in your hands in perfect condition is a random crapshoot (from cold food to left out ingredients multiple difficulty level by number of meals) and there is no more likely way to catch illnesses, food poisoning and lifelong stomach issues.
I stopped ordering out and started preparing meals ahead. No more nervous days wondering if the food will come, no more angry phone calls trying to get items fixed, no more delivery fees+tip+taxes+plus insane cost of food.
Not sure why you're being downvoted for stating this.
To add to what you said, environmentally it's awful. Where I live it, most of the food deliveries were bicycle based a few years ago. Now it's all cars, mopeds and e-bikes (the best of a bad bunch) as anything less makes the delivery driver less competitive against the others.
The bikes/e-bikes ignore traffic lights and flow, causing close-calls and collisions in pedestrian areas (where they pick up the food).
None of the economic, environmental and moral (laziness) waste can possibly be justified for the sort of rubbish that is being sold on a takeaway app. It's always just junk like burgers, chips, and cakes.
I'm pretty much done with delivery apps. I'll either order pizza directly from the pizzeria or go pickup the food myself. It's faster, hot, tastier, and cheaper. Food delivery as a service is following the path of Airbnb, a good idea in theory, but not in practice. Too much variation, no quality control--little recourse, just roll the dice again next time.
Imagine getting paid to deliver something and complaining about actually having to deliver it. I can see the problems they face, but delivering an item...most of the way...isn't the solution.
They are between a rock and a hard place: I think the game StarCitizen had a perfect visualization of their problem.
When you try to trade resources, you make say 4% income on the trade. So if you trade say 2-million you can win about 200k or 400k, depending on server state. However the risk is your ship blows up, which could be because of a buggy crash or a server crash. The risk was "is the value I get from the work worth it if a single crash can undo days worth of effort".
Same is happening here. They are risking a month of income in order to do a single delivery. However if they leave it by the door "I never got the order" and thus they get penalized. So basically damned if you do, damned if you don't. So they basically said "well if I get penalized ANYWAYS... might as well eat it, because it is equivalent to me"
I see zero ethical issues with what is happening.
Now if the motorbike was provided by the company, and it gets stolen? Cool, the employee doesn't care, and I assure you, the company would change its policy in a day "nope, you come downstairs!"
Edit: The root of the gig economy is that all the risk is shifted to the employee, but none of the benefits. A friend of mine is an HVAC tech, and he gets a company car. If he is about to be late to an appointment because of parking issues... "well, leave the car, we'll pay for the ticket, just get to the job" and he doesn't care. Why? Because the company assumes the risk as they should. He's not a gig worker.
This is fair, but I think it is a minor difference. However the shock-and-awe is driving things to better behaviors so it works. I am sure the delivery worker tried a a lot of different things first.
The service that the customer paid for, according to the apps and detailed in the article, is street-level delivery only.
So imagine paying for one thing and then extorting an additional service out of the driver because the service gives you more power than the driver.
Seems to me the legislation should be focused on the delivery app companies -- force them to pay workers extra if an order requires the extra time and risk of inside delivery. And maybe even cover the cost of anything stolen while they're workers are on the job. They'd very quickly figure out a solution.
Sounds like the primary worry is having their bike or other gear stolen, which is reasonable I think. If you can't earn without those things, then you won't want to risk them.
The solution seems to be either to get customers to come down, or to eliminate crime. I'd take a guess that having customers come down is a quicker and cheaper solution to implement.
Another solution is having a proper bicycle lock. Yes, they’re heavy but I bike around with Kryptonites largest and thickest U-lock, as well as sometimes with a 25-lb 18mm motorcycle chain for the bicycle.
I do think the food delivery model should only work for customers willing to pay delivery people $25+/hr, especially considering you’re not just paying what should be a living wage for labor but also renting the capital that the delivery person brings to the job (car, bicycle, locks, etc)
And if you're a thief (not all thieves are just random people walking by) you will KNOW that someone who just jumped off a bike and locked it will not be back for a certain time, and tossing the bike into a truck, lock and all, could be a moment's time.
So now you need to lock it to something, causing even more time lost.
That's what I did when I did bicycle deliveries. Yes it was a pain, but I considered it part of the job. But I was working for an individual pizza shop which did a good job making the job worthwhile overall and paid me well enough for my time and this sort of "extra effort".
And you likely had "downtime" when waiting at the shop for an order to deliver; these delivery people are often servicing an almost infinite number of orders and shops, and the next order is just an app click away.
Sort of. I'd help out around the pizza shop if there wasn't a bicycle delivery to be done. I could handle any of the other positions in the shop as well. But yes, there was generally plenty of downtime, other than maybe a 2-4 hour super rush period around lunch or dinner some days.
Much of the current "labor complaints" in general come from the maximization that doesn't "exist on paper" - jobs often involved "downtime" (even if you have slogans like "if you can lean, you can clean") and a few hours each day of absolute panic crunch-time.
Now we're becoming quite capable of optimizing it so that the panic crunch-time is the entire shift (and if it isn't you make less than minimum wage) via these "Silicon Valley gig apps".
Now imagine the pizza shop put you in a race with another delivery driver, and the loser was going to be banned from delivering and making that extra money.
Because that's the reality these delivery apps set up.
Yeah, these gig workers need to be paid enough to cover the time for faffing about with locks that are large enough to deter thieves for 10 minutes or so. I doubt they are, which drives these conflicts.
The problem is more than just payment, but the worker competition dynamic the apps are built around. It doesn't matter if you are paid handsomely per order delivered, including ample time and effort to properly lock everything up or truly do anything the customer wants and is willing to tip for, as long as the company pushes more orders to the people delivering faster, it will force a race to the bottom in service quality.
True but, angle grinders make a lot if noise and very conspicuous sparks. Of course thieves will still do it if they can get away with it, but it’s not a very quick or stealthy method.
Picking the lock, in the other hand, is pretty fast and won’t attract much attention. Thief just needs to be sophisticated enough to have the correct picking tool and practice with it a bit.
I usually spend more on my lock and chains than I do on my bicycle. The bicycle may only cost $100-300 but I don’t have to buy it 4+ times if it’s never stolen.
I do follow LPL, love the channel. I’ve never been worried about bike thieves picking locks, I’ve never seen or heard of them doing that. I’ve only seen/heard of them them using destructive methods, typically bolt cutters.
If the average bike thief gets as good at picking locks at LPL, we’re very screwed!
I haven't heard of this being common (sorta surprisingly), but you can get a battery angle grinder for $40 these days and it'll go through literally any bike lock that exists in seconds.
Maybe it's not common because it is VERY loud and sparkly.
I feel like it would be pretty tricky on an 18-22mm thick chain without clamping them in some kind of vice. These are nearly impractically heavy (30-40 lbs for a 6' chain), but I have carried them around on my bike sometimes, and will often keep one at the rack at work and one on the rack at home, and haven't seen anyone try to get into them.
I think if a chain that thick wobbles it would just break the angle grinder blade?
They already have to deal with crime at the other end - it's not uncommon, where I live, to see videos of people stealing scooters and bikes as the rider steps into a restaurant.
The least customers could do is to take care of their end.
What are customers going to do? Go get it themselves? Clearly not. The potential loss of someone's property they use to deliver isn't worth it, as the article mentions. It also mentions laws enacted to support the delivery workers.
> Two Brazilian cities and one state are discussing bills to allow drivers to refuse deliveries at the door — three cities have already approved them.
Kick out delivery apps who don't adhere to the law, simple as that. Important to remember that these workers are humans; remember the human.
If the payment for the service doesn't cover the costs of the service (insurance for a bike and for the loss of work before a new one is found), then what is so surprising? The market is adjusting: if the cost is fixed, then the offer (quality of service) gets reduced.
Imagine being in a world where you can wave your finger over some little glass shard, and a hot meal of your choosing is delivered to you.
Then imagine complaining that you had to go outside your house to get it. I think the act of getting off the couch and going downstairs before consuming your food is probably a good thing for your health; and the primary reason for all of this is the delivery driver, who is likely living a harder life than you, doesn’t want to lose their livelihood.
The same logic extends however far you feel like making it extend, though.
Imagine being in a world where you can wave your finger over some little glass shard, and a hot meal of your choosing is prepared for you, and all you have to do is go get it. Obviously it's absurd to imagine that anyone would ever want it to also be brought to them.
Yes, you can extend the logic forever, however that ignores the obvious and enormous power differential between the two parties.
The first has to go down and get their food, a minor inconvienience.
The other has to risk losing their delivery vehicle / property when it gets stolen while they are in the building (an enormous, possibly income-destroying inconvienience)
I'm saying that the person in the building should maybe have a little gratitude for their position and empathy for the delivery driver
Not everything can be bought. The situation delivery workers are in is not one of choice, of decision over their own conditions of living and working, regarding the number of working hours, the independence, the wages, etc...
To blindly expect those people to do whatever you want because you have the money makes you look closer to a Disney Villain than a human being who wants to build a society with these people.
I think the issue is that maybe the customer doesn’t have the money to make the laborer do what they want. At a much higher wage, the delivery person would be happy to risk their bicycle / other capital.
Imagine paying the lowest bidder to deliver something and then complaining when it's late or in the wrong place. I can see the problems they face, but not hiring a professional to do the job .... isn't the solution.
Imagine someone thinking you can spend pride somewhere. This, in my experience, is a dog whistle for "do the shit job regardless of negative costs inflicted on the worker for someone else's benefit." People became accustom to the consumer excess from the abuse gig workers take, and now that workers have some leverage, consumers are clutching their pearls over the loss.
Perhaps the problem is America is economically biased. If your pride in your trivial job brings you respect in your community, then maybe it's worth it, even if you're struggling to make ends meet. If your pride buys you not a modicum of social standing, and barely let's you provide basic essentials for yourself, and you're treated with contempt or as an invisible person by your community, why put pride into the job?
I did read the article. I was responding to a point someone made, which I took to be about America(rightly or wrongly), not to the article itself. I suspect OP doesn't actually know much about Brazil.
While we're talking about missed reading, perhaps you should check out the commenting guidelines.
The only time someone has refused to deliver to my door it was because they recently had surgery that amputated their leg. They called and told me the deal and I happily met them on the street.
I wonder if this specific case isn't counterproductive activism, which will create opportunity for a new food delivery segment that specifically promises door delivery.
Wrong perspective. When enough customers are fed up there will be an opportunity ripe for entrepreneurship. Labour is always in greater supply than customers.
Video autoplays; but my Firefox is configured to not autoplay. I consider that at best malicious; I stopped reading and closed the tab (it was distracting me).
all the commercials still show the food arriving at your door in the us at least. if it does not come to my door like my packages, I am just not going to pay for the service. the companies will figure it out.
I hate all of these companies. The streets in my city, especially in the evening, are now flush with their drivers zooming around on e-bikes, e-scooters, and mopeds, often on the sidewalks, with little regard for the traffic laws or pedestrians, and I've personally witnessed them colliding with pedestrians on multiple occasions (thankfully not badly hurt). I have never used any of the services, and I take spiteful pleasure in knowing that those who do are wasting their money and poisoning themselves with unhealthy ****.
When I was a little boy, we didn't get food delivered to our cubes by Gammas. Instead, we could leave our cubes anytime we wanted. We'd go to places called "grocery stores" to buy food wasn't even cooked yet! Then we'd take our "groceries" back to our cube and cooked it ourself. Sometimes, we'd even invite the people in nearby cubes to eat it with us.
The absolute entitlement to believe that delivery workers should be coming up to your door at the 9th floor, while complaining about "ethics".
You're using a delivery service like Uber Eats, Deliveroo or Doordash that are well known to underpay, overwork and unjustly punish workers that do not maximize their deliveries per hour, and you have the gall to complain that they're not taking pride in their jobs from your ivory tower.
Your feet are not going to die because your fat ass has to get up from the couch. Put on some slippers, some pants and go down. Do it early too, every app offers tracking, don't make them wait for five minutes while you find your keys.
I meant that some people (like motion-challenged and otherwise disabled) cannot leave their flats easily.
This is independent from my being Portuguese and having Brazilian relatives who have witnessed (and been victims of) violent (and murderous) acts during robberies.
Want to keep being snarky, or should we move on to discuss that life is _really hard_ in some places?
At what point do consumers become responsible for the choices made by businesses that they patronize?
I expect the working conditions and pay of your delivery driver exceeds that of the person who made your pants. Don't you also owe those workers a fair shake?
While I do not have any control over whether the place I buy my jeans from uses overworked children from Bangladesh, I also have the very basic human empathy needed to know you shouldn't complain to said children when your Shein order isn't next day delivery.
By all means, blast Uber, blast <shitty gig economy company>, but passing on the blame onto the guy that barely makes minimum wage and destroys his car/bike in the process is downright moronic.
If you feel guilt for paying a Uber eats driver to go up a couple flights of stairs but don't feel any for employing children to produce textiles because "I can't do anything about it", I promise you that your moral compass isn't working correctly.
I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand, I fully empathize with the delivery drivers (particularly if the rules / policy of the app is NOT doorstep delivery) and where theft is a real issue.
However, as a (US) consumer, where the apps DO allow us to request doorstep delivery, I think there is no issue with consumers wanting to get the service they paid for. Uber Eats / Doordash charge a pretty hefty premium in terms of markup & delivery fees, and we're paying for the service of having food delivered to our door. You can call us lazy or whatever other names you want, but consumers do have the right to expect to receive a service they've paid for. And it is not our responsibility to make sure the delivery services are paying the drivers properly.