Uber is a Vampire Sucking The Blood of Countless Hardworking People in the Service Industry
Uber, formerly called UberCab, is a worldwide tech business based out of San Francisco that was incorporated in 2009. Uber primarily focuses on providing crowd-sourced taxi-cab and food delivery services through their smart phone mobile application. Uber is currently operating in 633 cities throughout the globe. Their business model has brought in plenty of revenue for the company, but at what cost and at who's expense?
In 2015, I started working for a very popular pizza restaurant in my city. Business was booming and my checks were decent for the amount of work that I was doing. I was running food and working the to go station for take out orders. We didn't have a delivery service due to the style of pizza that we were making being too fragile to stand up to long periods of time in transit. (I'm sorry, but Neapolitan style pizza just doesn't taste good after it's been sitting in a box for thirty minutes...) Nevertheless, we had quite a decent amount of revenue from our to-go orders at that time and I was getting tipped by guests that came in to pick the food up.
Fast forward one year. Word started floating around the store that we would soon be implementing Uber Eats, Uber's food delivery service, into our system and we would be doing a lot more to go orders. When pushed on whether or not the restaurant would benefit from the new protocol, the management gave a somewhat quizzical response. They seemed to be happy that we would be getting more revenue, that they would be getting to inflate the bottom line, but they also seemed to know that it would be at the expense of the cooks who only get paid a flat rate, and the people boxing the food. They did not mention that Uber DOESN'T TIP on their orders. This is very important point to leave out, as it effectively means a cut in pay for anyone dealing with to-goes.
Eventually, we saw the day when Uber Eats started at our store. The first day was a nightmare. We weren't ready for the volume of the orders and we had to shut off the service multiple times. On a normal busy night, it was not hard to keep up with the volume of orders from a full dining room and a decent amount of to-gos. This night, a Wednesday if I recall correctly, was absolutely unmanageable. The four food runners that we normally had staffed were not enough and the management had to step into the role of a food runner for as long as Uber was online. This occasion quickly led to many changes in the structure of the store and systems surrounding handling to-gos that drastically changed the way the restaurant ran. For who's benefit? Uber's and the Restaurant owner's.
Eventually, we were able to adjust to working with the massive volume of food orders from Uber Eats, but my personal wages and quality of life were not the only things suffering. Food quality suffered as there was not enough time to spend making sure each item was up to the restaurant's high standards. Dining room experience suffered as there were not as many people to help serve the guests and give them an enjoyable experience. A few months down the road, the restaurant's Yelp reviews slowly started to creep down from 4.3 stars to below 3.9. People started coming to dine in less in favor of ordering from Uber. I don't know about you, but 90% of the reason I go out to a restaurant nowadays is to be able to see people and be seen by people. I wouldn't give a crap about eating some bougie pizza if I couldn't do it in a great community setting.
Long story short, extrapolated over the countless restaurants in the 633 cities that Uber currently services, an immeasurable amount of labor is being exploited to benefit Uber's stockholders. I don't think it's right. People should be paid for their efforts. I recently started working at a restaurant that doesn't accept Uber Eats orders. It has been a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and my bank balance has inflated considerably. I will never work at another restaurant that uses Uber Eats and you shouldn't either.