sid nv

Had my first suggestion of job rejection due to ageism recently, when an application asked a couple of questions that indicated my age. Shortly after my application I received a message stating that the hiring process had moved on, and the same job was re-advertised the next day.

I have now signed up for a job delivering food using my own car. The hiring company avoids the minimum wage requirement by operating couriers as independent contractors rather than employees. Financially it is a ridiculous proposition, but a lifetime of work has rendered me incapable of relaxing in my dotage. I have now completed around 40 deliveries.
My initial expectation was of delivering boatloads of pre-ordered Sushi to wealthy tax-dodgers residing in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and being tipped with $100 bills. Not so, quite the opposite. A typical delivery involves going to McDonald's, waiting in line to place the order myself, waiting unpaid for the order to be prepared, and then driving 50 yards to the trailer park to deliver to Miss Lardy who cannot be bothered to walk across the street to fetch her quarterpounder large fries and bucket of Dr Pepper. The most popular destination is a massive apartment complex whose existence I was formerly unaware of. This place is a labyrinth of blocks labelled A through Z with children playing in areas decorated in pigeon shit.
I very seldom eat out and make up sandwiches to take to work, so it has been interesting to visit various eateries. I especially like Wendy's. Wendy's is a fast-food burger chain so I was expecting the worst, but our local Wendy's has very nice decor, a fireplace, wood-effect tiled flooring, large windows framing a view of the mountains, and 4-piece spicy chicken nuggets for $0.99. What more could one want? Delightful place.

Steerpike

Regarding "A typical delivery involves going to McDonald's, waiting in line to place the order myself, " ... surely, these services have 'apps' and the apps let the buyer place the order? If you have to place the order yourself, do you also have to pay it yourself? or is that part handled for you? That seems so odd.

I salute your resilience in giving this a try! Are these mainly lunch runs, evening runs, or 4 in the morning munchie runs?

sid nv

The customer uses an app to place the order, but for most fast-food joints I have to get in line or use the drive-thru to place the order and use a debit card provided by the company to pay. The busy times for me are dinner time (or lunchtime, depending on which side of the tracks you come from) and teatime. Sundays is a little different, people order food at all hours.

I quite enjoy this job as it gets me out of the house for a few hours and I get to pootle around town. My wife often comes along, I do the driving and she walks the order to the customer door. We had an amusing incident this morning. Denny's was packed full and the waiting area and lobby were crammed with people waiting for a table. We were waiting for the to-go order to be prepared. The Maitre d' announced "Party of 4, Miguel", at which point a guy said "Those two old people over there were here before us", pointing at us and everyone looked over. My wife retorted 'What's with the "old"!'. The guy looked mortified and came over and apologised, but we could not stop laughing.

scrubbedexpat091

Are you making a profit after your expenses?

sid nv

That is a good question, and can probably only be answered accurately in the long term. However if I take today as an example, I earned $31.51 over a period of 5.5 hours and drove 32 miles. If I use the IRS mileage rate of 58c per mile to calculate expenses, I have $18.56 in costs, resulting in a profit of $12.95, or $2.35 per hour. And that is on a good day. Businesses often benefit from employing relatives, so if I take my wife along for the ride there should be some consideration for her effort but I have not yet figured out how that works.

As admirable as this bit of capitalist exploitation is, I have to wonder how long this practice will stand up to scrutiny especially in libtard states like California.

scrubbedexpat091

We had thought about trying it, but after talking to a few people we know who have tried, seems to be little left after the cost of gas and of course wear and tear on the car, one friend my wife as said she ended up averaging $3-$4 per hour most days.

Now the person we know who rides a bike and just accepts orders for downtown area, he makes okay money but of course no gas and downtown and is pretty compact, provided one is in the physical shape to deliver via bicycle.

Steerpike

I've always been a strong supporter of minimum wage standards, but I don't think they should apply to every type of job. I think anyone working at (eg) Walmart, or McDonalds, or on a factory production line, should be eligible for minimum wage. But what about a security guard at the front desk of an office building, who is paid to basically sit there and be a 'presence', and is allowed to read a book ... less clear to me.

When you say $32 over 5.5 hours, with only 32 miles covered, how did that 5.5 hours break down? 32 miles shouldn't take more than an hour to drive, so the rest of the time was presumably ... waiting around? Waiting in your car, at home, at the cash registers ...? If the system operated at 'full capacity' - that is, you were 100% occupied/busy for the entire time, how much do you think you could have made in that 5.5 hours?

Giantaxe

It's not less clear to me... that security guard is still giving up their time to sit there being bored out of their skull. I doubt it's an activity they'd choose to do absent being paid for it.

scrubbedexpat091

And in the event of an emergency they will likely be assisting. I did security in hotels and its not as boring as your walking the property and in a large high-rise a walk through takes an hour usually, so there is something to do, and while most nights it was a boring boring job, some nights was nothing but on the go, dealing with one issue after another, anything from fire alarms going off, to violence in the rooms and needing to call police, often the public only see's someone sitting around, but you never really know what the job actually entails unless you have done it.

Any security job I ever had paid above min wage, its a crappy job for the most part and any reputable company will need to pay above minimum to attract employees, I generally made $14-$15/hr in So. California doing it, back then min wage was lower vs now though, here in BC some security jobs push $20/hr.

sid nv

Agreed. This does raise the question of how work should be measured. Classically in Joules, and I love that a related unit for measuring heat is the British Thermal Unit or BTU, which is used in the US but no longer used in the UK due to the incroach of soppy metric units.

jeepster

Not to belabor the point (but i will). Pizza Delivery is min wage, a buck or two per delivery and a tip (most of the time). Just have to wait in the kitchen for the pizzas to come out and maybe get a mistake at the end of the night. Better than working for the corporate UBERs and delivering big macs of all things. Dominoes, Pizza Hut or your local pizza joint.

sid nv

The attraction of working for the UBERs is that you get to pick and choose what orders to accept, so in theory you have complete flexibility with hours and you are your own boss. The reality is as I found out yesterday when I accepted an order to drive to the other end of town (which itself is unusual), I arrived at Round Table to discover the order was not ready to pick up but I had to order and pay for the Pizza which is another 20 minutes waiting for the Pizza to be prepared during which I am not being paid.
As it happens, Round Table are hiring delivery drivers. So how does this work if there are no orders coming in? Is it a fixed hours shift? Does the driver have to accept any other duties while idle on shift: cleaning the kitchen, restrooms etc?

jeepster

The way it used to work for me is you wait around for the order. Nothing else to do but maybe read a book or bs with the other drivers. I can't imagine driving 20 min. to pick up an order (and on top of that you had to pay for it, Ridiculous). There's easier ways to make a buck. It's time to start job hopping, everybody does it.

Steerpike

This deal where orders don't seem to be placed for you, and aren't paid for by the original buyer through their 'app', suggests a really crappy outfit doing the service. Is this one of the many companies I've seen out and about (doordash, grubhub, postmates, etc)? It would be interesting to see if your particular service is just a bad implementation.

I eat out all the time and see all these companies doing pickups, so I know they are busy - especially doordash and grubhub. They show up at the restaurant and seem to pick up their order and leave without any fuss.

https://urbantastebud.com/best-food-...-service-apps/

However, I have never in my life ordered home delivery (not even pizza!) so I can't say I know how the whole process works, end-to-end. I prefer my food freshly prepared and don't trust the delivery folks to handle the order cleanly/safely. Also, I don't like having strangers come to my door ... (Amazon delivery is blowing that particular fettish! ).

SpoogleDrummer

Probably the same as any other delivery people, they pay you very little and you get paid by mileage/tips so if you're not delivering you're not earning.