
Postmates postmortem: eight hours as delivery drivers - CaliforniaKarl
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/03/16/postmates-postmortem-eight-hours-as-delivery-drivers/
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elvirs
'consider leaving a decent tip' the way for profit businesses underpay their
workers and society is expected to make up for that through tipping bothers me
so much. The underpaying business owner is richer than 95% of customers who
pay extra so the rich guy's worker makes a decent salary. The tipping culture
is abused so much in USA. There are restaurants in Brooklyn that automatically
add 18% gratuity charged and still leave space for tipping and the waiter
gives you looks if you leave that space blank. All these gig economy companies
are valued in billions and have made millions for their executives and
investors but still won't pay a decent salary to their workers and I am
supposed pick up that bill? No thanks

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trendia
Tipping is also used to help the worker avoid paying taxes, since many service
workers don't report 100% of their tip income as required.

And although companies would be able to deduct salary expense to reduce their
own tax bill, they still benefit from the tipping scheme. If the worker
receives, say, $10 in tips, the company would have to pay them $15-$20 to give
them the same after-tax income, since a large portion of the wages would go
towards income tax and social security. So, if the worker makes the same take-
home pay through tipping rather than wages, the company and the customer both
pay less! The real cost is borne by the taxpayer, who has to pay higher taxes
elsewhere to make up for the loss.

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AFNobody
> The real cost is borne by the taxpayer, who has to pay higher taxes
> elsewhere to make up for the loss.

Even using your logic, your basically admitting its the business owner
screwing the general population by creating an incentive structure that
encourages tax evasion.

The externality this creates (taxpayers pay more, tax enforcement costs more)
which means you are crewing the government out of enough money the customers
stop benefiting from the "lower price" since they all have to pay it back in
higher taxes to make up the shortfall + increased enforcement costs.

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m_eiman
_If you order through a service like Postmates, be generous with your workers.
We scraped together only about $9.00 per hr for our eight hours of work, even
before accounting for the cost of gas and the time we saved by working as a
group. If you’re make a request, your worker might be operating well under
minimum wage — be patient, and consider leaving a decent tip if you can._

Oooor you could get your legal system to make the company the minimum wage
(after expenses).

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wereHamster
Why does america fight so hard against providing workers with fair wages?
Don't you think your neighbours are worth even the minimum that is required to
have a dignified life? Serious question…

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jacob019
It's hard to run a profitable business. For some of these services the choice
may be between exploiting workers or not brokering work. American culture
seems to worship convenience at this time. With the current environment of low
unemployment and rising wages, I would expect there to be pressure on these
services to increse pay, but how much will the market bear and how much do we
want these services?

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smt88
If my business relies on buying wood, cutting it, and selling it, but my
customers won't pay a high enough price to cover my costs, what happens?

I go out of business.

There's no reason society should subsidize business models that don't work for
unnecessary products.

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jacob019
What is the nature of this subsidy?

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dboreham
Tips

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foolinaround
As a personal anecdote, I had to sit down a friend who was driving Uber for a
few months - to break down his costs and the money he made - turns out that in
his case, after all expenses (car, personal - like child care etc) -- on most
days, he was losing money, and he made a max of 3-4 dollars on a few days.

He was aghast, and now does not drive. Many people who do not have jobs get
suckered in to the promise of 'working' but end up in a worse situation.

I believe that we in the tech community need to self-police ourselves about
these predatory practices that we have engendered on the society and call out
those who suck the very last blood drops from the general population, that
does not have the skills to analyze their situation.

This is no different from the various regulations around pay-day loans, etc.

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dogruck
What was the biggest gap in his understanding of his own accounts?

Suppose I work a regular office job. If I make $X, but pay out $Y in child
care and other expenses (commute/car), then it won’t take me long to notice if
$X =~ $Y.

Was the biggest gap unaccounted expenses for his car?

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foolinaround
in his case, he never put together all of the numbers. For instance, it did
not even strike him that if he stayed at home, he would not have to incur the
childcare expense. That was the biggest change.

Also, he factored in the petrol, but not the vehicle depreciation cost.

Also, there was lost opportunity in studying and improving his skills, and we
just did not put a price to it.

He had this nagging doubts, but the pressure of a male sitting at home and not
earning - lead to family esteem issues, and so he went along.

~~~
dogruck
Interesting, thanks for replying with the details.

What would happen if people fully quantified other activities. For example,
the full cost of drinking, while watching your favorite sport, with friends.

You initially think, “so what, it’s just 3 hours, plus $25 in beer and food.”

Most don’t account for the missed opportunity cost.

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habosa
I used to do postmates on my bike in San Francisco. Just on the weekends as a
way to get paid to work out, I never needed the money.

This was in 2015 but I was making $16-20 per hour. Doing it on my bike I had
no expenses at all. I'd do maybe two deliveries per hour or three if I got
easy ones (like the guy who had me deliver a Roam burger to a house 100ft
away).

The reason I quit was because they removed more and more information from the
view you'd get before accepting the job. On a bike that's not ok. There are
many things I can't carry and many hills I'd prefer not to bike.

It honestly can be pretty stressful. The app rings really loud (can't disable)
and then all of a sudden the clock is ticking. You could be asked to get
anything from anywhere and bring it to anywhere and it has to be done in one
hour or less.

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username223
Good on them! I wish more Stanford undergrads would experience the other side
of the modern economy first-hand, even if only for a few hours. In any case,
they should have been able to figure out that someone using their own car to
deliver a $7 burrito from Chipotle is probably making next to nothing.

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CaliforniaKarl
> In any case, they should have been able to figure out that someone using
> their own car to deliver a $7 burrito from Chipotle is probably making next
> to nothing.

I expect that they did, but if they committed from the start to spend a day
(or however much time) on the project, then they had to complete it, for the
sake of the story.

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philfrasty
This seems to be common across the globe with this "business" model. Drivers
get paid minimum wage and have to pay gas/repairs/etc themselves. Recent
documentary [1] on Foodora in Berlin where a driver even had to go to court
because they didn't pay his salary for the previous months.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnb-p7zVvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnb-p7zVvM)

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settsu
_In the current US marketplace_ , $9/hr for essentially a zero skill delivery
driver isn’t terrible, is it?

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CaliforniaKarl
I expect some people may take issue with "In the current US marketplace",
including me, but I don't have enough info at hand to comment, so I won't!

But, I will note, according to
[https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm),
the current minimum wage in California is either $10.50 or $11.00 per hour,
and so yes, that's pretty terrible.

Note to mention…

>We scraped together only about $9.00 per hr for our eight hours of work, even
before accounting for the cost of gas and the time we saved by working as a
group.

Note the "we" and the "even before accounting for the cost of gas". I think
they meant $9 per hour for the group, which means that's less than $9 per hour
per person. Also, that doesn't include the cost of fuel or wear and tear on
the car.

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idunno246
they probably had more than one person in the car, which is probably against
tos anyway. The first day they made $63 in 5 hours, about 12.50. but the
second day was $12 in 3 hours.

basically postmates should have told them to logout the second day. and $16
for 2.5 hours for the laptop is really bad.

the first 2.5 hours they were making $19/hour. it seems like all of these
platforms you can make an OK wage if you learn how to game bonuses/surge
pay/demand, but its counter to the work whenever you want.

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UncleEntity
I was talking with a guy a while back that did one of these delivery services
but with bicycles (Ubereats maybe?) -- he would cheat and get his wife to
drive him around so they could spend "quality" time together though.

IIRC we claimed he made $60-$100 hours a day (also IIRC he mostly only worked
the weekends or maybe his wife only drove him around on the weekends) sticking
to the busy areas, Downtown Phoenix and Oldtown Scottsdale.

Depends on what you make of it I suppose, he seemed happy to get out of the
house.

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hemantv
Is Instacart, Doordash Uber Lyft any different? Or for that matter any of the
gig economy jobs?

Why pick on Postmates? Any ulterior motive by authors?

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stupidgeek314
they had to start with one of them...

