Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility
been disabled since 2017. pays half my salary. gave up driving last year. not good at those prices. wife grows vegetables in summer.
agreed. Just because something is unsustainable if everyone were to have limited mobility doesn’t mean it’s unsustainable.
Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.
Why does OP think every delivery is made by car? Often times they are made by bike.
Especially in NYC. Bike delivery has been a thing there long before uberdashhub. Hell, it was a fucking plot point in Spiderman 2 back in 2004:
I think it was TMNT 2 that had a delivery guy on a moped back in like 92.
I see you’ve never been to the Midwest. Or the south. Or anywhere that isn’t Boston/new York/San Francisco.
I see you think only america exists
I mean the post clearly says $30 in fees in New York city
I’ll add in addition to the “not where I live” replies, I live in pretty textbook white suburban america and I believe I have never seen anything delivered to me or a neighbor or relative by a two-wheeled vehicle of any kind, even motorized. Every single time it is a private 4-seat passenger vehicle or larger.
It is different in other areas of course, like when visiting cities and other countries.
But damn are such vast swaths of suburban and rural america designed so specifically around cars. It would take forever to change even with a progressive culture & government. With the culture and government we have now, I will be stunned if I am not driving my own vehicle for the rest of my life, and I will not be surprised at all if it’s mostly ICE vehicles. I drive a well maintained 13 year old Mazda3 that gets 40mpg, so it’s not ideal versus more efficient and environmentally friendly types of transport, but at least it’s a more efficient use of the existing infrastructure than most americans.
Not where I live.
Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food…cold. Solely so that they don’t have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.
Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).
But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is “gig” - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person’s vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure…I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we’re all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.
Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let’s be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!
Sorry. This one really gets me.
The need this came out of COVID and a lack of people wanting to go out. It’s was a decent way to keep business open who would otherwise have to lay off all their staff. Once COVID ended, I assumed it would go away. However, money talks.
My wife was just saying how she thiks GPS is soon going to have a VIP tier to give you the best routes and the longer routes go to the people who don’t pay (but still have their data harvested).
That is a good point (re: COVID) that I had lost along the way, thanks. Those services did do good during that time, you’re right. I’m not so sure about the GPS thing, but hey, I never thought we’d see half the ugly shit we’re seeing these days, so why not?
My friends definitely think I’m weird cause I don’t use food delivery, but I see it from a germ perspective too. None of those drivers are certified food handler and their car is likely not a safe environment. I keep my cars spotless, but based on everyone’s car I’ve ever been in I’m the minority in that.
Every other point you made I agree with too, but man I just don’t see how people don’t also recognize that your food is travelling in someone else’s potential garbage. Just to save you from what? Getting up and grabbing some food yourself?
Yet another “wtf, y’all?”, good point. I can’t personally say that grosses me out, but I tend to be in the minority on that sort of topic myself, so I totally see what you’re saying. Aint no health inspector checking these vehicles (true of traditional delivery too I suppose).
And I mean…sometimes the drivers straight up eat some food, which is awful from the standpoint of your POV, but also just… truly hilarious to me.
I don’t disagree that it’s stupid but my problem is the stacking - Delivery fee and Service fee? The service is delivery! Why are they two fees? Either the cost of the delivery is being itemized in real time ($1.99 for gas, the rest for the human) or the delivery isn’t $1.99! If the cost to deliver an item is $20 and I make $50/hr working a project, maybe having food delivered makes sense.
But also, I know the delivery guy isn’t making all that and he’s delivering five orders so don’t charge me a service fee when I’m already subsidizing you paying him a shit wage.
Everything is shitty either way.
It’s so they can give “free delivery” and still charge a butt load of fees.
The service is delivery!
I read this and thought, “no, the service is that they were able to put pants on and leave their house today, unlike you.”
Please dont take that as a personal attack, I’m just sharing intrusive thoughts when they make me giggle
I use them fairly often because I’m just too fucking busy during the week. I have to get up at 5am to get ready for work, am too busy to take a real lunch break, and get home around 8-9 most nights. And that’s on nights I don’t have meetings (I work in municipal government, and public meetings like Council, P&Z, BOA, etc all meet at nights). We could hire more people, but that would require more income, and that requires council members to vote on raising their own property taxes, not to mention state law regarding tax increases.
Yeah, I could meal prep on the weekend, but that’s essentially allowing work to intrude on my weekends, and fuck that.
I’m essentially buying more time to relax in the very little relaxation time I have available.
How else can they get people to sign up for a $15/month subscription that gives "free delivery " while charging a fuckton for a delivery service?
Just fyi, like 99% of food delivery via gig workers in nyc is done via e-bike
I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I’ve seen.
This cuts both ways actually. you can have 10 guys going through a drive thru or one 1 making 10 stops. The one guy making ten stops results in less traffic and fewer emissions.
Does that happen in a meaningful amount? Drivers getting multiple orders for the same place with close by destinations? I think it’s vastly more common that you just have 10 drivers at different locations on behalf of 10 customers.
I do a lot of DD, and I’d bet that 75%+ of my restaurant orders are a single order going to a single house. I prefer grocery delivery, and it’s probably closer to 50% for those, as we often get a couple of orders at once.
Occasionally we get a single drop off with 2 stops (pick up food from a restaurant and something from a drug or grocery store, and drop them both off together).
I’ve never gotten more than 3 orders at once, and those are pretty rare.
When you build infrastructure that requires you take cars everywhere you minimize people going to get things for themselves
I find it funny that the tip is already there before you get your food. I mean, did the driver make the burrito? He might be late and you get cold food, he might be a dick.
Mandatory tips in general is a silly concept for me. The driver should be earning a fair salary without it and the price of the food/delivery should account for the staff costs. And any tips should be a voluntary extra. I feel the same about adding taxes on top of the sticker price the way they do in the US. That was an unexpected culture shock for me when I went there a few years ago.
Especially given the high probability that the app doesn’t even pass on that full amount to the driver.
None of us need to purchase this goofy ass delivery powered by virtual slave labor. Spend no money, cause no harm. Let those capitalists seethe we no longer need to endlessly consume to be happy.
A lot of these are delivered by bike nowadays, no?
Edit: since people keep asking without reading below, I mean specifically in NYC.
there’s no way to make delivery worth it for small items like this, be it by foot / bike / electric scooter / carrier pigeon
Well apparently there is considering it’s a popular service. I’m not sure what you mean by this.
Pneumatic tubes!
An instant burrito in every home!
rofl
NYC actually used to have a citywide system like this. It was for mail but there’s no reason somebody couldn’t have snuck a burrito or a rolled-up pizza into one of those cannisters.
BRING IT BACK BRING IT BACK
With the tax being $8.04, the order is not that small.
Pizza delivery has been popular for several decades. Pizza is cheap but they made the numbers work. It’s actually weird that it was just pizza until recently.
The cost is middlemen needing to get their cut. Half the cost here is them getting their cut. $15 to use an app one time is what is unsustainable here.
These things for college campuses are great. They take up no more space than a person and can be a huge help when one is busy or sick.
exactly why airport pizza has such an amazing business model, because pizza can be delivered efficiently by aircraft to places up to a couple hundred miles away without relying on non-existant roads or rail
In a large metropolis, yes. Unfortunately most cities in the USA are spread out so much that you almost need a car to go to the bathroom.
no. they are all delivered by car, even if they say it’s by bike.
bikes are too slow for be good for delivery
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Speed is measured differently in the US
yes, miles per hour instead of meters per second
Why was the subtotal of the actual food being ordered omitted?
Likely because it would give meaningful context to the amounts of the fees, and the ragebaiting OOP wants to avoid that.
$92 assuming they’re being honest about it being New York and it’s for food delivery. Since their tax rate is 8.75% for prepared food.
The $30 in fees don’t seem unreasonable when you think about it.
A chunk is taxes and well, they’d have been there anyway so I’m not counting them.
A chunk is tip, which was voluntary so I’m not including it.
That leaves about $15 for a delivery fee, in New York. Not sure what the driver makes but a portion of that $15 is going to them.
The real question is about how this person values their opportunity cost, because they actively decided that the time they would save was worth paying the extra delivery fees and tip. They made that decision and THEN complained about the injustice of…. Their own behavior and choices?
Damn, I think I’ll be in the ground before I’ve ever paid that much for a meal, delivery or not, lol.
this is some quality ragebait right here
This is dumb, hating for the sake of hating just shows a low level of thinking. Cars are very useful tools that have practical applications that aren’t going away any time soon, and delivery services are an example of that.
The issue with cars is that we decided to designed our cities and towns around them at the expense of pedestrians, culture, and the environment. This has spawned societies that are plagued with long commutes, inactive lifestyles, dangerous infrastructure, smog, and an arms race to get comically huge cars. Criticizing the car industry, the car lobby, specific aspects of cars, or our urban layouts is perfectly valid. Blindly hating on cars just because they’re cars is counterproductive.
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