Uber celebrates flight attendant who delivers for Eats on layovers
Superlative or dystopian nightmare?
Suberlative.
Uber Canada has published its first yearbook “celebrating some of this year’s best drivers and delivery people on the platform in true high-school yearbook fashion—by awarding superlatives!”
One of the featured drivers is “City Hopper” Federico, who has delivered in nine different cities. “As a flight attendant in Canada, he delivers with Uber whenever he has a layover,” says his yearbook badge. Local Toronto news blogTO has more:
Federico delivers for Uber as a side hustle, using layovers in different cities as a prime opportunity to explore while making some extra income in the process.
He started driving for the app in May 2018, laid off from his previous gig in customer service and looking to stay busy. He used the change as an opportunity to get himself a new car, signed up with Uber Eats, and was on the road delivering meals within two weeks.
He now works as a flight attendant, which gives him the opportunity to deliver food in various locales beyond Toronto on his frequent layovers.
Federico may very well be having a great time on his delivery jaunts, but a flight attendant driving for Uber on layovers to earn extra money is an odd thing to celebrate. (There is also a “City Hopper” in the first Uber U.S. yearbook: Brandon Lacey of Baltimore, who has delivered Uber Eats in eight cities.) The gig economy has always valorized the ability of an individual to string together as many jobs as possible, but outside of Uberland the idea of Federico hustling on Eats between flight assignments sounds more like a dystopian nightmare than a fun superlative.
Gig work of course predated Uber, but it was Uber and its peers that normalized platform jobs as an efficient, acceptable, and even desirable way to “make ends meet.” One story Uber used to love to tell was about teachers that drove on its platform. In a 2014 blog post, “Teachers: Driving Our Future,” Uber wrote:
Every day teachers are asked to do more with less, constantly faced with new challenges and limited resources. Uber opens the door for more possibilities and delivers a meaningful impact to the communities we serve… By utilizing Uber, teachers are increasing their earnings while dedicating their lives to shaping students’ futures – cultivating a generation that is imaginative, determined and believes in extraordinary possibilities.
Uber at the time declared these stories “inspiring,” but the reality is that such narratives have proved deeply damaging, as U.S. education secretary Miguel Cardona told Meet the Press over the weekend: “Adjusted for inflation, over the last 25 years, teachers have made a $29 increase in their salary. That’s unacceptable. The fact that we’ve normalized teachers driving Uber on the weekends to make ends meet.”
I’m reminded of that classic and brilliant Jia Tolentino essay, “The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death”:
At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear.
Companies like Uber depend on that flawed economic system. The vast majority of Uber drivers work part-time and do so to offset gaps in their income; the absence of stable, reliable, and liveable wages is what brings them to the platform. Sure, Uber gave teachers another way to earn, but it also legitimized the idea that it’s ok for teachers to make subpar wages because they could log on to drive after the bell.
We are now seeing this play out with inflation. In the most recent quarter, Uber said driver signups were up 76% over last year as rising costs of living drove more people onto the platform; in other words, the cost of living crisis is Uber’s gain. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi acknowledged as much on the quarterly earnings call: “Listen, no one wishes for a tough economic environment or elevated inflation that’s affecting so many of us including Uber drivers,” he said. “But at the same time, from a competitive standpoint, there’s no question that this operating environment is stronger for us.”
Pointless.
Elsewhere in Uber, the company is phasing out its Rewards program as it pushes people toward an Uber One membership instead. Customers have until the end of this month to earn points through Uber Rewards, and then until the end of October to redeem them. Uber launched rewards in 2018 to let customers earn and cash in points across its various services (rides, Eats, grocery delivery, Jump bikes and scooters once upon a time). Redemptions included discounts on Uber rides, free trips, free coffee at Starbucks, discounts on Uber Eats orders, and a free trial of HBO Max. Sadly I have yet to reach the minimum threshold for getting a Chosen Reward™ though I guess I still have a week to make it happen.
Rewards was an early step toward developing a loyalty program that kept consumers in the Uber ecosystem, allowing the company to cross-sell Uber riders on Uber Eats and vice versa. We talked earlier this month about how Khosrowshahi pitched investors ahead of the IPO on the idea that Uber was the “Amazon for transportation” with cars as the entry point to the platform. Then covid happened and the actual entry point became Eats, which brought in lots of new Uber users as people tested having food and groceries delivered to their homes during global lockdowns. People who use Uber for both rides and Eats have turned out to be especially valuable customers, averaging 12.6 transactions per month vs. 5 for those who only use one Uber service.
Uber launched One, its newish membership offering, late last year and counted 10 million members as of the second quarter. One is clearly Uber’s attempt to create its own version of Prime, the sprawling Amazon membership that churns out higher spend, higher frequency customers, but it could also help Uber to cut costs in its quixotic quest for profitability. The obvious benefit of Rewards to Uber users was that it was free. The obvious benefit of One to Uber is that it comes with a membership fee ($9.99/month or $99.99/year in the U.S.). That fee should in theory help Uber offset its spending on “consumer discounts, rider facing loyalty expense, promotions, credits and refunds” which totaled $2.4 billion, $2.0 billion, and $2.5 billion in the years 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.
E-bikes.
Well this is cool:
Paid posts.
🚖 James Parrott tells the inside story of the first-ever pay floor for Uber drivers
🎧 Julia Ticona on the dignity of the successful digital hustle
Other stuff.
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