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228 hours. 3,932 miles, 447 trips. 27 days straight, not a single day with no deliveries. $3,630 earned - before gas, wear and tear, taxes, and expenses. After all, I’m 1099, and all the liability and maintenance is my responsibility.
The luster is wearing off the job some now, but I still feel the call to keep going back out, trying to score the best offers.
On a Friday, refusing a garbage offer drops my acceptance rate to 69% on DoorDash - 1% below the 70% threshold to maintain my Platinum status. Then I take another percentage hit because an offer comes in while I have the app paused — which is supposed to be technically impossible. Frustrated, I contact support, but they say they are powerless to do anything about it. This drop can be fixed if I accept enough crap orders to get out of purgatory, but it’s not a 1:1 ratio. I’ll have to take several offers to move up a single percentage point, and I won’t get to be picky about them, even if they’re money-losers for me. If I don’t, however, I lose access to my hard-earned Platinum benefits, which includes being able to work whenever I want (without having to wait for slots to become available) and have access to the best-paying offers with the highest tips. In a city with an estimated 86,000 dashers, these benefits equate to real dollars if I’m going to work for DoorDash. Although I’m not at all certain DoorDash knows what the words “high-paying offer” actually mean
I don’t want to have to eat more garbage deliveries. I don’t want to be paid $3.75 to go 4.1 miles so I can spend 10 minutes trying to navigate some labyrinthine apartment complex carrying a paper bag from from McDonalds while I try to find a specific apartment number among a sea of non-sequential, illogical apartment numbers. It’s like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. I make a video a couple days later to illustrate just one example of the problem:
For days, I’ve been thinking about creating a YouTube channel to help people working delivery gigs learn the ins and outs of the job that can only be gleaned from experience. I’m so frustrated with DoorDash’s system of penalization for not taking bad offers that I want to make a video about how I already quit working for them after just a few weeks, but I don’t have time or energy for getting something like that set up. I’m too busy working.
I switch my workload to Uber Eats, which doesn’t penalize me for not taking the worst offers, and I stick with it until Sunday morning, when things are a bit slow. Since I never make the ‘I quit’ video, I’m not committed to the boycott. I need more orders, so I decide to give DoorDash another shot, just in case.
The first order is a coffee run, but I only have to go a few miles. The second is a trip to some Liquor store in the hood, where I pick up cans of Bud Light in a black plastic bag, and have to call a second customer to ask if she’s willing to take half a dozen tallboys of some beverage called Cayman Jack, because they’re sold out of the dozen smaller cans she ordered. She sounds exasperated, but agrees. Another black plastic bag gets handed to me.
I load up and head off, stopping first to drop off the beer to a man with a deep tan, tattooed forearms, and sunglasses under a meshback cap. As he stands next to his pickup truck in the driveway, I transition, chameleon-like, into complaining about having to scan and verify his ID with my phone because I work for a corporation full of “f*cking lawyers,” and he laughs in a voice that sounds like he has cigarettes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and tells me I don’t have to worry about him. Good. That means I’ve done my job of convincing him we’re on the same team. Then I’m off to deliver the tallboys of Cayman Jack to a blonde with bad teeth in a zip-up hoodie who can’t trouble herself to pause her gossipy phone conversation while I verify her ID and ask her to sign a box like an Etch-a-Sketch on my screen.
After all, I’m just a delivery driver, no better than hired help. No need to pretend like I’m a human being.
A silver-haired woman in a multi-million dollar house answers her door reluctantly as I drop off some food. She has no idea about the order, but I’m at the right address, so it’s presumably for someone staying with her. I ask if I can hand her the items, and she makes some scoffing remark about her hands being full, then acts like a martyr for taking it anyway, as she asks me, “What’s all this?” I tell her it’s “Dinner for Lindsey,” hoping that means something to her. A knowing look crosses her face, and she takes it, seeming annoyed, and closes the door.
I’m sorry to have troubled you, ma’am, with this order that was placed from your home. I am just the delivery driver. I do not generate these inconveniences on my own.
I spend an enormous amount of time delivering to the rich, if not the famous. A guy who has the vibe of a New York Mafia hitman opens up the gates on the driveway of his $10 million dollar home to receive his cheesesteak order from the mall. “I appreciate you, brother, I appreciate you” he says, sounding like he’s from the Bronx, his slicked back Peaky Blinders hair and fastidiously smoked cigarette like aesthetics from a show I’ve not yet caught on HBO. But he’s cool to me and I don’t know his backstory, so he could be the angel of death for all I care. I’m not looking for a drinking buddy. This is business.
A family of pleasant, white-as-the-driven snow Canadians in a neighborhood of 10,000 square foot homes north of $14 million sign for an alcohol delivery flanked by full-sized replicas of the terracotta sculptures of Qin Shi Huang, one soldier on each side of their enormous front door. I snap a surreptitious photo, because I’m impressed.
I drive down the street and see a house that just goes on and on and on. And the views from this gated community don’t disappoint.
I find myself annoyed by a douchebro in a white Lamborghini, wondering what twist of fate led to him driving that car looking like he has an IQ of 87 while I’m delivering food for $100-$200 a day if I’m putting in 12-14 hours.
There are Cybertrucks everywhere now. A Ferrari in matte blood red reminds me of the uniforms of Emperor Palpatine’s Imperial Guard.
I deliver fast food from Wendy’s to a valet working at a posh hotel, where fancy people driving fancy cars and wearing fancy clothes are lined up outside waiting to get in. In addition to a purple Huracán Spyder and a Ferrari 812 Superfast in Bianco, someone’s got a Rezvani Tank parked outside. The MSRP on just these three vehicles comes to nearly a million dollars. There’s a white Jeep Rubicon parked next to the Spyder, and it almost makes me feel like I belong, since I’m driving a charcoal gray one myself, the convertible top down to let in the throbbing beat from the club scene inside the building.
A house I deliver to has a large gate blocking the driveway, and when I call the customer he says he’s coming out to meet me. But he emerges a hundred feet away from the gate next door. “I thought I was delivering to 7466,” I say, looking at the street number on the post, feeling as though I’ve made some mistake. “It’s the same house,” he says, his tone borderline apologetic, as though he’s embarrassed by the size of his multiple-gate-spanning home, or maybe even his own wealth.
The house right up the street is $29 million, though, and it’s for sale if you have that kind of scratch. It sits midway up a mountain like a medieval castle, lit up like a beacon on a hill. I try to snap a photo, but it’s dark, and everything comes out looking muddy.
A shop and deliver client docks my tip without explanation, presumably because the grocery store is sold out of several of his items and my “fulfillment rate” for the order dropped below 100%. We did not get to have a conversation about the fact that there was nothing I could do about empty shelves. I’ve been complaining on social media for months that every time I go to the grocery store, they’re sold out of at least one thing I’m there to buy. This is the new normal. Broken supply chains. Understaffed stores. The hint of third world realities creeping into the first. I’ll never know for sure why he reduced my tip. Everything goes through the app, and human interaction after delivery is designed to be impossible.
I take a late-night Dairy Queen order at the end of a 12-hour day, when all I want to do is go home. But it’s a $21 offer to go less than 7 miles, and that’s normally what I’d make in a whole hour of work. So I dig deep, find my way through the tired to some reserve pocket of willpower, and drum up the energy to do just one last run. But when I arrive, the teenaged employees have closed the store early and refuse to answer the door when I knock, only shrugging like it’s not up to them. I call support, and a woman with a thick accent answers from somewhere in Delhi or Mumbai. She tells me the best they can do is give me $3 for my trouble, when I’ve spent close to twice that in gas for a trip I was already too exhausted to take. I explain to her that I have now paid the company to take the trip, rather than the company paying me, but she is a slave to the policy and has no power to do more for me. As I make my way home, I discover that the highway is closed for nighttime weekend maintenance, doubling my time to get back, and I spend the drive through the surface streets cursing loudly and slamming my hands on the steering wheel, as though it makes any damned difference.
A couple days later, I get a $33 offer to deliver a single item 16 miles away. Again, I think it’s a great way to end my night, so I accept, only to find out when I finally get to the store that the item isn’t even in their inventory system, and I’m the second driver to come looking for it. The first was supposed to cancel, but she didn’t bother. So I spend the next 10-15 minutes on the phone, first with the frustrated customer, then with Uber Eats support. 8,500 miles away, a woman in a call center in South Central Asia tells me that $4 is the best they can do for my lost time and gas. I tell her it’s exploitative the way they keep doing this, but we both know she’s as powerless as I am. I shrug and drive home and pour myself a drink.
What appears to be a simple shop order turns into me having to haul 9 cases of bottled water to a penthouse suite in a high-rise apartment complex, where the parking is difficult and I get hassled for using an electric vehicle space by an old guy in a golf cart who maybe works in maintenance, or security, there’s no way to be sure. The customer won’t answer his phone, so I have to talk to a woman in building management, who apologetically offers me a flimsy foldable wagon to drag my load across a large courtyard and into the elevators, because the sturdy carts are “only for the residents.” There are multiple problems with the order, and what should have been a half hour job turns into two hours, leaving me exhausted and sweating, all for $11. I look up the customer, and he’s a social media influencer of some kind.
Didn’t I used to be one of those?
Either way, the views from the top floor are nice.
I have begun to realize my own foolishness. Despite these occasional misfires, I really enjoy this work for some reason, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be underpaid, screwed over, or left high and dry. I am already the highest level of driver for both of the companies I currently deliver for, and I have a perfect customer review score on both platforms, but that and $6 (plus tax) will buy me a much-needed coffee. In just under a month of driving, I have ascended to the very pinnacle of the available ranks, but that’s like getting a gold star on a badly-done coloring page.
The bar is so low it’s a trip hazard.
The work goes on. I drop off some ice cream at an enormous home with a porch covered in children’s toys; when I look it up on Zillow, I see that it’s worth nearly $8 million. Not for the first time, and not for the last, I wonder where I’ve gone wrong in my life that so many people — even people with little kids — are so much further ahead of me in life. I used to make decent money. People used to think I was smart. I used to own a home. But my life imploded, I made some incredibly stupid mistakes, and now I’m a washed-up grandfather twice over, reduced to delivering people’s guilty late-night fast food cravings to their lavish estates. I can see it in the eyes of some of the people I meet: I truly do not matter. I am a means to an end.
Maybe this is a good reminder. Maybe this is a reset that I need. Maybe a lot of things, but who can say for sure?
All I want is a nice home for my family. All I want is to stop paying $5300 a month in rent (which will become more if we move) for a house that’s barely big enough to fit us and all our crap. I want a place my kids can call home, and come back to, but my oldest biological child is graduating from high school this weekend and I’m still out here hustling for pennies, wishing for something I should have figured out how to do long ago.
Still, the road calls to me. One more offer, one more restaurant, one more delivery at a house I can’t afford.
Momentum. Purpose. Mission. Forward movement. Maybe it’s not real, but it feels like something. When I’m on the job, I know exactly what to do next, and I don’t have time for self-pity. When I’m at my desk, I flounder before the thought of all the mistakes, the unrealized possibilities, the wasted potential.
I absorb the sights, the sounds, the energy of all these places. As I wait for orders to come out of busy restaurant kitchens, I watch and observe the people and the place, filling my writer’s quiver (really, the Notes app on my phone) with descriptive texture for later. I tell myself I’m going to be a successful writer again some day, and this is fodder for the mill.
I can’t tell if I’m lying, and I’m not sure I want to know.
An obese young hostess with huge fake eyelashes and permed hair died a deep, toothpaste green saunters shamelessly over in a little black dress several sizes too small. She asks me who I’m picking up for. Her thighs bunch up beneath a too-high hemline, her dress cut so low that her expansive, shapeless breasts threaten to escape. She wears an airy pink chiffon kimono with a floral print as a kind of coverup, but it billows like a sail behind her as she moves, hiding precisely none of her over-exposed flesh. I can’t imagine having that kind of confidence.
A 40-something man in a filthy midnight blue pullover waits outside a senior center for me to deliver his sour patch gummies and his sour patch-flavored energy drinks, his sweater stretched tight over a potbelly so round it looks like he’s smuggling a beach ball inside his shirt. It’s a hot day, but he’s dressed for fall. His hair is a mess of tangled, oily curls; his mustache thick and walrus-like. His face is thick and doughy, and he does not speak when I greet him, only grunts, squinting at me through beady eyes. As soon as the package is in his hand, he turns away to skulk back inside the building like some kind of fabled sugar troll.
An old man in a red satin jacket over a teal flannel shirt sits at a restaurant bar alone, a tall, clear plastic cup of ice water planted between his outstretched hands. He is gaunt, his pale gray hair slicked back behind his ears. He makes no move to drink from the glass, but hovers over it like an anchor, a reason for existing in this space. It looks to be nearly full, the volume of the liquid reduced by only one or two perfunctory sips. He wears a frown that somehow involves the entirety of his face; a hangdog expression that stretches from his drooping, wispy eyebrows past the downturned corners of his mouth to the jowls that hang from his cheeks. His blue, watery eyes roam the room aimlessly, as though looking for purchase, and I cannot escape the impression that he has stories he desperately wants to offer, if only he could find a willing recipient.
I fill my days listening to books, returning to fiction, my first love. I’ve plowed through Roadside Picnic, Axiom’s End, Annihilation, and now, I’m working my way through Authority. (Bronson Pinchot’s reading of this book is just excellent.)
I drive through the increasingly warm nights, my hand out the window, the soft, dry air flowing through my outstretched fingers like silk. I like to put the top down so I can see the stars, but the wind dries out my eyes, making me feel tired before I’ve met my personal quota for the day.
I never know where the next pickup or drop off will be. It occurs to me that if I had lived a century or more ago, I probably would have been a sailor or explorer, off on one adventure after another.
When I get home, I pull the bottle of vodka from the chest freezer in my garage. The alcohol content is too high to freeze all the way, so it pours as a thick, viscous liquid, sliding into my glass like iced syrup. I don’t have much, just enough to get some of the knots in my shoulders to begin to release.
I’ve put too many miles on an expensive 4X4, and spent way too much on gas to make the meager profits worth it, so I don’t know how much longer this can last. At the very least, I’ll need a different car, with better mileage. One I can run into the ground. I keep asking myself if continuing is absurd, but this perspective shift has been desperately needed, and I can feel it changing me, making me more myself again. I am reminded of my solo travels through Europe while in college, alone with my thoughts, every decision about where to go and what to do entirely my own.
At first, I found the idea of having to do a menial job humiliating. I was surprised to discover, however, that when I am delivering, I feel free. I am focused. I am never bored, because it provides a kind of structured spontaneity. There is a low-grade excitement to the work that keeps my interest while not putting a strain on my creativity. When I finally get a chance to sit down and write, it no longer feels labored.
My artistic impulse is invigorated and refreshed.
However long I must continue until I can figure out better-paying work, the experience has been worth every moment of my time.
