During tough times since the pandemic started, I began working on delivery apps to supplement lost income.
While working on GrubHub, it became clear the application literally forces drivers to make split-second decisions to accept an order or risk 1) losing a lucrative job, 2) face a drop in acceptance rates, and 3) jeopardize their standing in receiving future orders through a system called the “program level.”
The program level is an algorithm tabulating your acceptance rate of jobs and whether you have missed any offers. What does this mean? It means that you could be driving on a street or freeway and have seconds to evaluate travel time, distance, and compensation, all of which can adversely impact your earnings during a shift. Unlike other delivery apps, which don't require you to respond to an offer, GrubHub literally puts drivers in the position of risking their own safety while driving in order to mitigate the loss of future deliveries and income. If you miss too many offers (while driving for instance), your program level will eventually drop and you will effectively be demoted and receive fewer and fewer offers in the future – jeopardizing your income from the app.
From the time an offer comes in, you often have only 10 seconds to accept. In other words, if you want to continue to make money on the app, you are forced to engage in dangerous/distracting phone activity, often while driving.
Thanks GrubHub, for creating a punitive system that pits workers' livelihood against their safety.