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.
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.