The Mad, Mad Hatter

There are real labor problems here. Base pay is often insulting. Customer tips carry too much of the burden. Workers need better protections, more transparent algorithms, protection from arbitrary deactivation, and actual recourse when the app or a customer screws them over. Car-dependent delivery is also an environmental and infrastructural problem, though in a denser city I’d still be doing this work; I’d just be doing it by bike.

But when people talk about delivery work, I rarely see them talk to actual delivery workers. I see a lot of abstract arguments about convenience, consumer decadence, “hustle culture,” and internalized neoliberalism. Meanwhile, when I’m out working and waiting in restaurants for orders, the other Dashers I meet are usually people who only speak Spanish, people who read as neurodivergent, visibly physically disabled people, or some combination of the above.

I have not met this mythical Disco Elysium poor ultraliberal hustlegrinder-wannabe people seem to be arguing with. Maybe that archetype exists somewhere. If it exists among any kind of gig worker, it would probably be rideshare drivers. But most of what I see looks less like “rise and grind” and more like “this is one of the few forms of work available to people who need flexibility, low barriers to entry, limited managerial surveillance, or a way to work around language barriers, disability, burnout, chronic illnesses and injuries with symptoms that come and go unpredictably, caregiving, résumé gaps, or discrimination.”

That does not make the current system good. It means the current system is filling a real gap that a lot of supposedly better systems do not even acknowledge.

As a disabled person who is burnout-prone and demand-sensitive, contracting as a delivery driver has given me an unprecedented level of financial flexibility. I can work when I have capacity. I can stop when I’m deteriorating. I can build my day around my actual body instead of being trapped under a manager who thinks “reliable” means “able to perform the same way every day no matter what.” That matters. It does not cancel out the exploitation, but it is also not fake just because it is politically inconvenient.

And delivery itself is not some inherently decadent evil. Sometimes people live alone. Sometimes they are sick. Sometimes they are disabled, exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, overloaded, or recovering from something else - perhaps the stress and fatigue induced by their own job. Sometimes they need medicine, groceries, or a meal that will actually unplug their sinuses instead of whatever generic community-care slop someone thinks they should be grateful for. Humans are allowed to need specificity. “Food” is not the same as “the food I can actually eat right now.”

A serious labor critique would ask how to make delivery work safer, better-paid, less tip-dependent, less car-dependent, less algorithmically punitive, and less precarious. It would ask what kinds of flexible, accessible work should exist for people who cannot thrive in conventional employment. It would ask how cities could support bike delivery, worker cooperatives, public infrastructure, and real protections without simply replacing one bad system with a moral sermon about how nobody should ever want takeout.

But a lot of the discourse does not do that. It treats convenience itself as suspicious. It treats wanting flexible work as false consciousness. It treats the needs of disabled people, immigrants, and other people who can't fit into traditional employment structures as details to be swept aside in favor of a cleaner political image.

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

YES I DO AND MY PREFERENCE IS FLAMBERT

beef

Daily:

1. Load and run dishwasher. (5 mins) //Alternately: Run hot soapy water in your sink and drown your dishes. (Don't wash them yet. Some people call this "soaking" ... I call it waiting for the bubbles to stop.)

2. Put away things on counters in kitchen and wipe counters. (Now wash and stick dishes in drying rack/on a towel.)

3. Take a quick look at the living room/bedroom and pick up stuff/trash that stands out. If you're picking up a lot of trash daily, get a cheap trashcan for wherever the trash piles up.

4. Wipe down flat surfaces with a damp cloth.

5. Do a quick check of toilet/sink and wipe as necessary.

6. Vacuum/sweep. That should take ~ 20-30 minutes at most.

Weekly:

1. Start a load of laundry with your clothes.

2. Put clearer stuff in toilets (no scrubbing yet).

3. Do daily chores. ^

4. Scrub toilets.

5. If washer is still going, take a break until it's ready to throw in dryer.

6. Set a timer so you don't forget to switch out your laundry!

7. Play/relax.

8. Switch laundry. Set towels/sheets going in washer while clothes are drying.

9. Spray room deodorizer/light a smelly candle.

10. Run a damp mop over floors.

11. Relax until dryer is done (set an alarm as necessary). Switch laundry again.

so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.

BUT