So, as far as I can see, the meme “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app” has achieved legendary status on Hexbear, mostly as a form of satire, to make fun of it. That’s the full version I could find:
“I do self-criticism constantly because I’m trapped in a Maoist cult where comrades (white terrorists) criticize me mercilessly for having a fascist credit card (VISA Silver Signature Rewards). They won’t let me order vegan pizza anymore because the phone is fascist and “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app” is “bad vibes”
Now, I find myself in a country where these delivery apps have arrived relatively “recently”, sparking a vast social and political uprising. Workers are indeed treated extremely poorly, with NO job security, and they operate in a legal grey area (like, they are de facto employees, but they are treated as auto-entrepreneurs… neoliberal dream to destroy workers’ rights).
Adding to this, the working conditions can be quite perilous. In my city, traffic is notoriously chaotic, and cycling is dangerous. But not potentially dangerous, bodies-on-the-street-every-month dangerous. While we do have a well-established public transportation system, the city’s bike infrastructure is still quite underdeveloped, and cars dominate the roadways.
I’m aware that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and yadda yadda. However, I find this particular form of consumption especially horrible. This is a highly walkable city with a wide range of food options readily available, making it unnecessary to rely on food delivery apps. And it really does feels like “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app". Mostly racialized workers, working dangerously in grey areas of law.
Have you normalized food delivery in your lifestyle? How do you deal with it? How do you navigate these ethical concerns?
When I order I try to do it through their own phone line or go and collect it myself. Besides, you often find it is cheaper (by about 10%).
Now and then I use the bourgeois app and it’s usually when I am hungover. I feel bad about it, which dials my hangover up into an exquisite malaise.
I’d rather go to the restaurant myself or cook on my own. I don’t really want some random person picking up my food and bringing it to my house.
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I don’t like to order delivery in general, but when I do it’s from places that have dedicated staff for that job.
Pizza places, at least in the US, have delivered for a long time, to the point where even 20 years ago it would be weird if they didn’t have employees doing deliveries. It long predates services like Uber Eats and Door dash, although those may have taken over delivery or inserted themselves as middlemen in the ordering process.
That said, from what I’ve heard pizza delivery is a bad job that pays pretty much nothing other than tips, so maybe it’s always been bad.
The scam is that on paper it looks like good money if you don’t count the car expenses.
I’ve heard most places make you pay for gas too
Pizza delivery was honestly a great job if you had a shitty old Toyota you could work on yourself, was reliable and got good gas mileage.
Me and the guy who drove the 80s CR-X were crushing it. Literal shoeboxes full of cash, untaxed and untracable. Sushi comped. Whatever the fuck we wanted to do on our days off. The people with car payments on a new Chevy that needed a new transmission at 60,000 miles, or the people who god forbid drove actual TRUCKS all over the city to deliver a pizza… not so good. They were miserable and for good reason. The tires alone - which you will be going through - cost EASILY 4x as much on any newer car than some old hatchback on 14s. If you don’t change your own oil, well first of all this job probably isn’t for you, but it’ll cost you easily an extra $30-40 a month for the increased oil capacity of a larger engine.
I reckon I spent an easy $10 a day on gas, making 40mpg. You double or triple that, you’re talking up to $900 a month on gas… It gets out of hand super quickly. High MPG is probably your #1 key to success or failure in driving for a living.
I think 90% of the Lyft/Uber trap is that you basically have to have a $10,000+ car (probably $15,000+ these days) to even get in on it. Destroying THAT car is a lot different from some old shitbox that’s maybe worth $1,500, and if it comes down to it you can get a new engine or a transmission for that much anyway.
I’ll use it sometimes because a lot of items are actually cheaper than getting takeout because of the commute costs (I have no car and live in a neighborhood with minimal food options)
If you’re gonna use it, tip well and if you live in an apartment, let them drop it off in the lobby instead of making them come up to your door
It’s important not to fall into lifestylism at the expense of more radical action. Consumerism or consumptive ethics is the false consciousness that dominates western society, tricking us into filtering all our problems through our perspectives as individual consumers, tricking us into thinking we can make a difference by mildly altering our individual consumption. Additionally, if that lifestylism makes us more insular or less approachable, it weakens our ability to directly speak to the masses.
That’s not to say all consumption is fine, that we should stop caring about things. It’s that we have to recognize where this effect isn’t serving us, to understand if and when there might be tensions at play between different values and resources and time.
It’s honestly one of the reasons I like the meme: “bad vibes” is the best way I can describe delivery, as well as a lot of types of consumption. But like, I’m not gonna make an issue of it when the coworkers I’m trying to organize try to get food delivered. It’s not a cardinal sin and doing so would undermine something much more important.
For context, I’ve worked as a delivery driver for doorfash and uber, so I know the experience, at least for the places I’ve lived. It’s not great work, deceptively underpaid and manipulative. The main reason I don’t personally order delivery is because it’s so fuckin expensive for such shit food. But on the rare occasions I do it’s only if I can tip enough to make it a fair wage.
If you’re concerned about the working conditions, the best course of action would be to talk to drivers and help them organize. It makes very little difference in my day to day life as a driver whether any given person decides ordering delivery is unethical.
Direct action gets the goods, as they say.
GOOD post
It might not apply to your country’s conditions but here in mine lots of restaurants run delivery services parallel to the third-party Uber services and the like.
So, for example, most pizza restaurants here will have their own staff who they employ as kitchenhands etc. that also get tasked to do delivery or, when it’s peak hours, they have dedicated delivery staff on shift.
Instead of ordering from an app like Uber, I will intentionally order from restaurants directly because the money goes directly to the business and to paid staff who have better working conditions than what Uber offers.
It’s not a common action for me, though I know some who use it a lot. When I had the Rona I think I used Ubereats maybe twice. The over-reliance some have on these delivery services can be a bit debaucherous, but the service existing in of itself isn’t evil. Capitalism and contract employee programs on the other hand, is.
I don’t use the food delivery apps. I can’t afford them and I kinda like cooking.
yeah, i figured it was a product of growing up extremely rural and this stuff being new to me - now that i actually live in range of delivery places i’d much rather walk 10 minutes than order anything delivered. its a mix of guilt and social awkwardness. i’m not sure that the guilt part actually makes sense materially, because if i just walk instead, yeah i’m not bothering anyone but surely that also means a worker isn’t getting paid? i’m not sure if my way is better or worse, but as a Fellow Poor i just feel incredibly bad about the idea of economically coercing someone into doing unnessecary shit for me. nice to know its not just me being weird.
although very occasionally places send me offers or free shit thats only accessible through one of these delivery services and i can’t really afford to turn down a free/cheap meal
in the situation you describe, i would not order pizza even if i could afford it, that crosses the line from “no ethical consumption” into “fuck the workers! i want my treats!!” territory
If my fat ass can get around with no car, no bike, a broken foot, and completely refrain from using these apps… Unless you are completely bedridden, I’m sure you can reduce your use of them by at least 90% too.
Or order pizza or Chinese from a restaurant like a normal person.
It’s like people saying “I literally can’t live my life without Amazon.” Yes the fuck you can. The first time I’ve used Amazon in three years was to get the medical brace for my leg because it was the only place that could get it to me overnight, and I live in a major city. I -actually- didn’t have any other options, and it was an -actual- emergency.
Harden the fuck up a little bit. There’s no ethical consumption… but do you have to pick the worst form, every time?
Harden the fuck up a little bit.
dork rhetoric
The comrades (white terrorists) are right. I’ve never used any of these apps, but then again I mainly cook for myself anyway. Last year, the biggest food delivery company here was sold to DoorDash and I got to read so much
about what a great success the company was while mostly ignoring the conditions of the workers, sorry, entrepreneurs.I got food delivered to my home for the first time in probably a decade a couple months ago. I got food poisoning and got some groceries delivered.
My parents rarely if ever ordered delivery. My dad would always just drive to wherever we ordered from to pick it up. I think it was partly like his quiet time for the day, and also my parents just not wanting to pay delivery fees or tip a driver.
I have used the apps to get food delivered to the office maybe 20-30 times max over my working life, not counting the times where it was like an office wide link for lunch that they were paying for.
