I’m not sure if I have a theme for today’s blog, and maybe sometimes that’s ok. Maybe sometimes just sitting down and writing out whatever comes to mind is the way to go. It probably normally isn’t, but we’ll see what happens today. Let’s start with a song that has been stuck in my head for a few days.
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
Speaking of take out, I’ve been delivering Uber Eats as my primary source of income for a little over a month now. I love the flexibility of my schedule, but I hate that fucking company. I’m going to write some stuff about Amazon soon, and my basic take on that situation is that if you hate the working conditions then stop working there. I know that pretty much everyone is hiring here in Texas, so if you need a job then come here. It may not pay as well as your Amazon job, but that’s the tradeoff, isn’t it?
Where I am with Uber Eats is that they’re not horrible to their workers. As a company, they pay poorly, but tips make up for it so that sometimes I do pretty well now. But do you know how long it took for Uber to fix the problem where people didn’t know how to tip without a 50 page owner’s manual? But that’s an old complaint. I got a new complaint.
Nirvana – Heart Shaped Box
Now the main problem that I have is that I want to deliver late night. I’m usually awake all night, so why not go out and take some deliveries? Well, I’ll tell you why.
The Godfathers – Tell Me Why
Sometime between 10th and 11th every night…
Charlatans UK – Tremelo Song
Sorry, sometime between 10 and 11 every night the fast food restaurants that are the primary source of late night deliveries start to become unreliable. They’re paying a bunch of people to make food who decide they no longer want to make food. You always know what’s going on the moment you pull up to the speaker box and rather than offering you the latest promo, they explain that you can only pay with Apple Pay if your phone is at least 70% charged or that you can have anything on the menu as long as it’s made with beef, tomato, and some moldy tortillas we found in the back. It means that they don’t want to take your order and they’re certainly not going to make an Uber order.
For some reason they view the Uber driver as the enemy. If I wasn’t willing to pick up the delivery then they would obviously not have to make it; nevermind the eight other cars that are there who didn’t order through Uber Eats because they know they won’t get their food because so many of these fast food restaurants act like we’re the enemy. My problem is that I’ve been complaining to Uber and McDonald’s and Jack in the Box and soon to be adding Taco Bell to that list if they keep their shit up, but the basic take of all these companies is, “What are ya gonna do?”
How about close your god damn restaurants at 10 pm if you can’t trust your overnight people to make the fucking orders? You have no idea, because you’re not going to these places and watching, just how many people drive off when they see the line around the building. You’re paying people, and probably better than your rush workers, to turn people away and make people wait in line for twenty minutes for a hamburger that is designed to be cooked in 45 seconds.
As for Uber, they just keep giving us a $3 comp for going to the restaurant, but I’d rather take the order to the person who ordered it. It pays better and is technically my purpose when I’m delivering, to take food to people who either can’t, or don’t want to, go out. It’s not my purpose to argue with assholes about why they can’t make a damn burrito. And that $3 per cancelled delivery isn’t shit for my pocket book.
What I don’t understand is why Uber Eats doesn’t threaten to drop these restaurants. Ok, I guess McDonald’s is probably one of their biggest revenue sources, but how much money are you losing every time I have to cancel an order? It’s not just the $3 per order you pay me, it’s the part where someone ordered $15 worth of food and you’re not getting your $2.49 (or whatever) from your delivery fee, or the $5.25 (or whatever) from your 30% of the order. If my calculations are correct then that’s reasonably $10.74 each delivery that Uber is losing because they don’t give these restaurants a cancellation rate that they can’t go over. Not to mention that the people like me who would deliver overnight just stop doing it, meaning fewer orders get fulfilled than normally would even with the cancellations.
“poor-performance-of-website” by Limelight Leads is licensed under CC BY 2.0
This is pretty much what I believe the creators of Uber see when they go to sleep. That and Cleopatra with a single horn coming out of her head eating a cheeseburger.
As for those of us doing Uber Eats, we should call and complain. For those of you who want a late night Jack Job (or whatever they call their burgers) and get turned away, you should call and complain. If these restaurant customer lines get overwhelmed with people who are irritated, maybe they’ll take it seriously. Or maybe not. I tried explaining to McDonald’s once how I used to eat at McDonald’s somewhere between 1 to 4 times a month, but no longer want to go there because of delivering Uber Eats. I’m not being dramatic. I detest McDonald’s as a company now. I’m not saying I’ll never eat there again, but I pretty much won’t. The customer service person didn’t seem to care. But how many people have you lost as customers because of that? Some of these places have gained me as a customer. Maybe you’re not losing money yet, but when your sales start going down, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Avril Lavigne – Complicated
This became a bigger blog post than I expected. I little bit comp… well, you know.
Chris McGinty is a blogger who is secure in knowing that if Uber gets mad at him for this and suspends his account that it just doesn’t even matter. They need me as a driver more than I need them as a source of income.