A Telling DoorDash Moment

Courtesy of another dasher

Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash

He was a tall African American dasher I ran into at a bistro called Au Zatar in New York City’s East Village. As we waited for the restaurant to hand over our respective bags, I began chatting with the man about DoorDash’s practice of blaming and punishing its dashers for circumstances beyond their control. Namely, restaurants that make us wait a long time for the food.

“I’m so sick of getting contract violations when restaurants make me wait for over 10 minutes,” I noted out loud to my new friend. “This bullshit is stressing me out.”

Here in New York, the two leading food delivery app companies to work for are DoorDash and Uber Eats. Mostly, the guys I’ve talked to favor the latter. Better pay/more dashes/ fewer headaches — and like that. This guy was working Uber Eats.

“Who you working for?” he asked after digesting my complaint.

When I told him DoorDash, his response was priceless. “DoorDash,” he fairly exploded. “Why you wanna work for those douchebags?”

Apparently, experience had taught him well. He’d been a multi-app guy at one point until suffering a DoorDash drubbing at which point he deleted their app and moved on to just work the Uber Eats beat.

Both of our packages came before he had a chance to elaborate further. His parting words still echo in my ears.

“Good luck with those assholes. Stay safe.”

The obvious question here would be “So go work for Uber, you moron. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Here’s where another reality and theme enters this essay. Four plus years ago when I applied to Uber, Grubhub, and DoorDash for employment through their internet portals, only DoorDash would employ me. The other two wouldn’t owing to my heinous background check (’cause ya know, guys who cheat on their taxes and get caught are likely to be poor delivery people).

In fact, DoorDash was apparently so hungry for deliveristas during the pandemic that they hired me before the check came back. The other two waited and then rejected me based on my felony.

It is now over four years and 10,400 deliveries without incident later and I still can’t get a job with anybody but Whoredash. It’s the old “once a tax cheat — always a threat to our customers.”

What? Am I gonna teach the recipients of the food how to unsuccessfully dodge the IRS? Gimme a break.

What’s so frustrating about all this is there is simply no office where I could go to complain — or human being you can even get on the phone to state your case at Uber or Grubhub. And likewise, when DoorDash fucks you out of money or blames you for somebody else’s tardiness, you just have to fucking eat it.

Here’s a sad hypothetical:

Ok, Bill. You get to meet the CEO of DoorDash in person to register your complaint — provided you react in one of two ways. That’s the caveat to meeting the man. You either tell him what a wonderful company he’s running — or you spit on his shoes. Which will it be?

You have to ask? Everybody has a fantasy. Mine used to be having gorgeous women fall head over heels for me. Now it’s changed.

And yes, yesterday, Chloe’s, some restaurant on Bleeker Street made me wait 26 minutes for the food. The recipient gave me a $9 tip for staying the course and delivering her meal. The company gave me a contract violation because that’s the way DoorDash rolls.

Two more in the next 99 and I get fucked out of my bonus pay.

P.S. Hey DoorDash. I know you’ve been snooping around my Linkedin page. That’s why I wrote this. I know you’re reading. Fix your effing app so it knows I’m waiting when I say I am! Oh — and by the way. That new version I just downloaded? It’s freezing all the time. It sucks.