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Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

restofworld.org

181–190 of 246 posts

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is your argument that we should try to remain ignorant of these things? Is that really the most charitable way you could read parents comment? Obviously they're not arguing for that, but rather arguing for "voting with your money", so stop using services where abuse is evident/apparent. And yes, it's a fairly large list, but it's not unmanageable. Me and my family try to do the same, it's not a huge hassle and it's…

It isn't manageable. Do you have any idea how electronics are made? How the materials are obtained?

I'd like to believe I have some clue, yes.

It feels like you allude that I don't. Is there something specific you'd like to mention here, or am I supposed to guess?

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#182
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that was true 20+ years ago too and they came to your door. I don't disagree with the larger point per se, I just find it interesting that it changed.

> Sure, but that was true 20+ years ago too and they came to your door. Not really. Minimum wage adjusted for inflation - and especially rent - is down in most places. You can't pay people $2 for something and that $2 goes less and less far and expect your quality of service to not get worse.

[deleted]

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#183
post #42

US perspective (eg theft of bikes / crime is not AS serious a problem as Brazil, although it can be bad): I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand, I fully empathize with the delivery drivers (particularly if the rules / policy of the app is NOT doorstep delivery) and where theft is a real issue. However, as a (US) consumer, where the apps DO allow us to request doorstep delivery, I think there is no issue with consumers…

> US perspective (eg theft of bikes / crime is not AS serious a problem as Brazil, although it can be bad): In the US we take the utilitarian perspective that the thief who took my bike has gained more happiness than I have lost without it, so maybe bike theft is a good thing[0]. In Brazil a bike is probably a fair bit more dear and may more likely be the user's only form of rapid personal transportation. [0] https:/…

> In the US we take the utilitarian perspective that the thief who took my bike has gained more happiness than I have lost without it, so maybe bike theft is a good thing

Haha not a snowflake's chance in hell. In much of the USA you can use deadly force to defend against property crime on private property. Conditions do apply, but that's beside the point (and are rarely enforced in self defense cases unless you went full retard on the crim).

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#184

I hate all of these companies. The streets in my city, especially in the evening, are now flush with their drivers zooming around on e-bikes, e-scooters, and mopeds, often on the sidewalks, with little regard for the traffic laws or pedestrians, and I've personally witnessed them colliding with pedestrians on multiple occasions (thankfully not badly hurt). I have never used any of the services, and I take spiteful pl…

food

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#185
post #180
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is to not use apps and stop being lazy / going after the most convenient route. Humans are addicted to convenience no matter the cost.

>Humans are addicted to convenience no matter the cost. Another way of stating this is that people pay for convenience, and why not?

Folks subvert _security measures_ due to perceived or real inconvenience also.

In this example one is getting paid to do a task, security controls make the task longer, less convenient, the human will find ways to subvert the inconvenience of the security controls.

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you not having children.

There's a thing called a stove... I use it.

> If I'm making already poor decisions to eat fast food I might as well bike, walk, or drive to go get it and save myself another $10.

Okay, the context that you established in your prior comment is you've already decided to eat take out food. We're not talking about home cooking, which obviously is the main solution for parents. There's no point to getting sanctimonious about situations that people find themselves in for practical reasons.

Hauling kids to the shop to get take out is not always easy or desirable. Obviously, this is all very contextual. If you have teenagers, you can send them down to the shop and have them bring it back to you. If you live in a suburb, you can strap everyone into their car seats and go to the drive through. But for the context which is the point of the discussion -- a person who lives in an apartment with a small child and wants to get take out that night -- it's not crazy to want it to come to your door instead of having to go to the front desk. It might not be possible to haul N boxes of food and M children in the elevator as a single parent. Obviously, this is tricky because the delivery person also has the problem of not wanting their bike stolen. It seems like a good compromise solution is the deliveries mostly go to the front desk, but you can pay an extra fee to get them to come to your door, but again, this is all practical stuff, not a matter of getting snotty that how dare someone be too lazy to walk to the farm and pull up the carrots themselves, blah blah…

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#187
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, the deliverers are expected by the terms of the app to bring the order only to the street level door. Some consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating to compel the deliverers to bring the order upstairs.

> consumers leverage their power to give a good or bad rating I guess they don’t operate on tips in Brazil? In New York, a delivery driver demanding a customer come down to collect would be wagering their tip for time.

A depressing number of customers don’t even tip anyway so I can understand a driver not caring.

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but it is insane that people that live in areas with no parking can request doorstep delivery in the United States. People that live on the 10th story of a luxury high rise in the downtown of a major city with a 5 minute security process will request doorstep delivery, forcing drivers to occupy driving lanes for minutes with their hazards thrown as they navigate the byzantine favela that the villager has reque…

> their $8 Mcdonalds order be brought to. Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee. Look, the customer base for Uber eats is lazy. That’s why they are ordering McDonalds delivery in the first place. Guilting them for meeting at the door isn’t going to work. In New York, if I’m coming to the door to meet the delivery, then I may as well just walk the 1/4 block to get it myself. Delivery has figured out how to…

> Their $8 McDonalds order with a $14 delivery fee.

It seems everyone is dancing around the obvious central fact: the drivers get an embarrassingly small amount of that $14 fee. The customer pays a premium, the driver is paid a pittance, it’s hardly surprising there’s an expectations mismatch around customer service.

If the delivery apps charged a fee that accurately represented their role in the transaction (running automated software matching driver with customer) it might be a better experience for both customers and drivers. But the companies have sky high valuations they now need to deliver on, so they can’t.

> Delivery has figured out how to get to hallway doors for 50-100 years. This is a solved problem.

Right. Pre delivery apps I’d order in NYC and have no problems with doorstep delivery. So apply simple logic: what’s changed? The customers haven’t. The drivers haven’t. But there’s a new middleman.

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#189

Zzz. Expecting the delivery workers to eat the difference between "5-second hand-off to somebody who's waiting at the street entrance"* and "gotta secure their vehicle & stuff and get through your building security and figure our where your apartment is and trek up there and..." is an age-old "treat your servants like shit because you can" move. *The article is very clear that the delivery app's Terms of Service spec…

Not quite. The Brazilian elite (that’s middle class and above, considering 30-40 million Brazilians live with hunger or near hunger) live in a dystopia of their own making where both parties are at risk of violence here.

Virtually all middle class and above housing is a tall tower with gates and security around it. Often double gate or triple gate. Just the time to get across that can be 5-10 min. If it’s your first time due to the need for ID.

The driver who leaves his bike outside risks losing it, but the person who comes down to get their food risks the driver being armed and robbing them or kidnapping them. Thus you have a sort of a Prisoner’s Dillema where nobody wins and everyone loses (except the app).

For the customer the safest thing is to get the driver through the triple lock, then have him drop off the food at your door inside the building and leave it there.

For the driver the safest and most efficient is to drop it off at the security at the door, but these days the security sometimes is virtual only anyway, there is no one to drop it off to, just cameras and fingerprint sensors.

So there is no way out of the game, except like many have said the apps should just charge for doorstep delivery. But this makes their lives more complicated, so they’d really like not to even if it results in death and robbery for both parties.

Capitalism in Brasil hits different.

Re: Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers

#190

"I'm going to leave this here, just like I'm supposed to do according to my work contract" is sympathetic. "I'm going to eat your food and make a video of myself doing it and put it on the internet" is extremely strange. In the end it's sort of a feel-good story. Watching that video I'm reassured that I'm not the only one whose culture is in decline...

They’re trolling because that’s one of the few ways a human being that’s not upper class can get attention in the Brazilian cacophony.
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