I'm a Doordash driver. Doordash calls us “Dashers.”
Earlier today I was working and got sent a batch of three orders at the same time, from the same merchant, Rite Aid. The orders were people's prescription drugs. The first order was 7 miles from the merchant. The second order was 10 miles from the merchant. The third order was 11 miles away from the merchant. The first order must travel a minimum distance of 7 miles, the second requires a min distance of 10 miles, the third order, 11 miles. In total, this is 28 miles.
This batch of 3 orders was presented to me as $22.00 to drive 11 miles and deliver all 3 orders. Not 28 miles, but rather 11 miles. If these 3 orders were not batched orders, they would be sent to 3 different drivers, one order for each driver, the first driver would be paid for a 7 mile delivery, the second driver would be paid for the 10 miles driven, and the third driver would be paid to drive the 11 miles necessary to delivery the third order. So the driver with the third order going 11 miles would be paid $22.00, the same amount of money that I got paid for delivering all 3 orders. The second driver would get paid approx $20.00 for driving 10 miles. The first driver would get paid approx $14 to drive the first order 7 miles. 2 dollars per mile. What happens to the pay for the first and second orders?
Doordash of course keeps it. They pocket the $34.00 that they would otherwise pay to the first 2 workers, getting 2 orders delivered for free. Totally free. The customers pay the same amount. They don't pay a reduced cost because their order happens to be part of a batch of orders. The customer pays before the orders are ever even placed, meaning, the customer can't possibly be paying for a batched order, because if an order is not placed, it does not get added into the algorithms of Doordash where orders are then either batched together or they aren't. Fucking wage theft. This is just one single example. I have others but I don't want this post to be all that long.