For some context, I began delivery driving this month because I’m a college grad struggling to find meaningful career employment after a couple years and hundreds of applications. I needed a source of income to just survive… I have credit card debt building from living expenses, school payments soon, I want to help out my family financially, and I want to be able to afford to buy Christmas presents for my loved ones, and most of all I want to stop feeling completely worthless for doing nothing with my life when everyone else my age are starting their careers.
It’s not an ideal position to be in, I‘ve been working a lot of unpaid internships hoping to get a job doing research/policy in non-profit issue advocacy but haven’t had any luck. However, I’m grateful that I have a roof over my head and my family has a spare old car I can use to work with some autonomy. I know that’s a privilege that a lot of people don’t have in my position, so I try to count my blessings… Back to the point of the post->>
I was out dashing today, 7pm-12:30am, in a “very busy” city market (Downtown Baltimore) on a Saturday. Through that entire time I made abt $16 an hour on what’s supposed to be the busiest day of the week in the busiest market near me. I rarely had any orders come in (maybe 1-2 an hour) and the ones that did were far below $1/mi. I made $87 tonight and only $23 of it was from Door Dash, plus I had to buy $68 in gas so there goes what little money I did make.
I’m really frustrated because the previous Saturday I went out the same time and made $130 and had steady orders. I stay in hotspots, I constantly refresh my app when I’m not getting orders, and I always deliver on time with good ratings.
The only difference was my acceptance rate dropped below 50% since the last Saturday I was out. I thought it meant they wouldn’t give me priority on the diamond orders. I had NO IDEA that it meant they retaliate against you for not taking sub minimum wage orders by eliminating 90% of order offers you previously got. This isn’t the first night like this either, I’ve been out 3 other times since my rate dropped below 50%. Every night since Door Dash went from the main service I was delivering through when I had a higher acceptance rate, to giving me 2-3 orders a night remotely worth completing ($1.50/mi or not less than $12.50 an hour).
It’s very disheartening going out there and making less than minimum wage after fuel costs, unable to receive work even though I’m eager to do as many deliveries as it’ll give me. It just feels like shit. I’m trying to do all the right things but I feel like Door Dash threw me to the side once I stopped accepting orders that were essentially paying less than minimum wage. Uber eats wasn’t particularly fair in its pay either but at least it been giving me frequent orders. I try to follow all the DoorDash tips I find online. Idk what else to do.
Could anyone possibly help me figure out what to do? Anything would be extremely appreciated.
Thank you! And happy holidays everyone!