Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Instaserfs (I of III)

Episode Date: June 17, 2015

In the sharing economy no one  can hear you work. This is because companies like Uber, Lyft, Postmates and others only employ “partners” or independent contractors. So your host decided to partner with Andrew Callaway, a 25 year old San Francisco native, to find out what its like to work in the sharing economy. As the official ToE instapoder Andrew will drive, shop, clean, deliver, and serve for a whole month, and he’s going to record his entire experience.  Plus in this episode technology journalist Sarah Lacey tells us the truth about Uber. ******Click on the image for the whole story about this installment*******   Special thanks to our new sponsor Zady.com

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called InstaSurf's Part One. All right, it's May 29th and I am on my way to my Uber sign-up vehicle inspection. By now, you've all most likely read an article or a blog post or listened to a radio show or a podcast about what it's like to start a startup in the order-stuff-online economy, the order-someone-around economy, or the drive-someone-around economy.

Actually, there's no real consensus about what we're supposed to call this thing. Personally, I like the on-demand economy. But for the sake of clarity, we're going to go with the sharing economy, which is what most people call it. Now, what I want to know is what it is like to work in the sharing economy. And when I say worker, I don't mean founder or programmer. I want to know what it's like to do someone's grocery shopping for Instacart.

I want to know what it's like to clean someone's bathroom for HomeJoy. And I want to know what it's like to drive people around in your car for Uber. That's what we're going to be doing here over the next few episodes. Well, I won't be doing any of that. I got myself a 25-year-old San Francisco native

to do the actual work. You can't cross right now. The speed's not coming, all right? Okay, so they rejected my car because I've got a couple of scratches on the back bumper. So I need to take it to a car shop to get it fixed.

I was wondering if I could stop by in a couple of minutes for you to just take a look. Yes, you may. Bring your car over here and we'll look at it and talk to you about it and estimate it. Okay, great, thank you. Okay. Andrew Callaway is going to spend a whole month working exclusively in the sharing economy. He's going to drive, shop, clean, deliver, and serve.

And he's going to record his entire experience. So we can get a sense of how this whole sharing economy thing actually works. Okay, I have $2,100. $2,100? Well, I'm going to need to think about that. Hey, Ben. It turns out I'm going to need $2,100 to get my car up to Uber standards. Is there any money for that?

Like, in the podcast budget? Andrew, there's no way we're going to be able to do this podcast if you can't get your shit together so you can drive for Uber. This is something you're going to have to take care of. But I thought I applied for a paid internship. Oh, this is way better, kid.

We are partners. So, I'm like your Instapotter? I am not spending that much money just to fix some scratches on my bumper. At least, not right now. I've been priced out of San Francisco, where I lived my whole life. I've just put down a deposit and first month's rent for my new apartment in Berkeley. I think agreeing to do this right now may have been a terrible mistake.

The ads for all these sharing economy startups do say that I can make $35 an hour. But what if I can't? I guess that would make a good podcast. But this is my real life. I am a good fit for this story, though. I've been an independent contractor for years. I make movies. Or, well, more often what I'm making are like commercials and promo videos for Bay Area tech companies.

So I know tons about freelancing stuff. Like the federal government taxes us self-employed people 7% more than real employees. And it's our responsibility to set aside money to pay these taxes every three months. On June 15th, I have to pay the federal government over $1,700. And then on the 1st, I have to pay rent, which is $1,700. And then on the first, I have to pay rent, which is $1,600. And like all freelancers, I'm still waiting on checks from jobs I did over two months ago. Like I said, maybe I shouldn't have signed up for this. I know that overall, I live a pretty luxurious life. But right now, I'm kind of stressing out about all the bills and the move, and it's hard for me to focus on signing up for sharing economy jobs. I was about to start signing up

for TaskRabbit, but I ended up hiring one instead. Yes, I'm here to help Andrew pack and move and make sure this place is thick and span before he leaves. TaskRabbit is a platform that hooks up freelancers like Selina with people who need stuff done like me. So I kind of use TaskRabbit as a break to be able to venture out and kind of do the things that I'm more passionate about. And it's a really great platform because it helps you set your own schedule. It helps you set your own rates. You know, you're not locked into like X amount of dollars per hour, you know. It took Selena five hours to pack up my stuff, so my total bill was $155 after a $20 promotional credit for being a first-time customer.

Selena's rate is $35 an hour. TaskRabbit takes 20%, which means she made $140 for the day, or $28 an hour. Not bad. And it seemed like she was really into it, even though she had a little bit of a cold. The only thing that, you know, is a little, I want to say sucky about this situation is that, you know, you don't get paid, you know, time off

like you would in another job. Right. So that's, I think that's the only thing that's like I've been having to learn how to manage as I've transitioned over. What's up? I work for TaskRabbit. TaskRabbit changed my life. Did TaskRabbit really change your life? Yeah, I think so. This is Jake G.

I hired him to move the boxes Selena packed up to my new place. And he helped me put my bed frame back together. Yeah, I tried to warn you, this shit's fucking weird, man. Do you have another one of these? As a task rabbit, Jake's landed some pretty interesting work. I'm a personal assistant for this lady in the dog patch area. She hasn't really been, like, communicating with the outside world too much, so I'm helping her get out and like

Just like connect with her old friends and out just like get out do stuff And she just like needs some positivity. So it's awesome. Like it's actually helping me out a lot too. When we finished Jake gave me a big hug. Thank you so much! Yeah! Have a good rest of your day man. Yeah, you too. You too. Enjoy your next gig. Okay, so Benjamin never gave me the money for my bumper,

but there are lots of other driving apps. Karma, Sidecar, Wings, Summon, Breeze, Co-Ride Co, Shuttle, and of course, Lyft. You know, the ones with the pink mustaches. I can also use my car to do deliveries. So I signed up for a ton of food delivery apps. Muntry, DoorDash, Sprig, SpoonRocket, Thistle, and Fluck. An acronym for Food Lovers United Co.

A company called Caviar that does deliveries for restaurants invited me to come in like 15 minutes after I signed up. If you work an independent contracting job or any one of those, you know that it's basically on your own, right? You'll set up your own schedule, so the more you work, the more effort you put in, the more you'll make. Instacart also instantly invited me to come in for an onboarding session. They do grocery deliveries. We know that it's difficult to get started, and it's something that we want you to stick with.

So for your first 20 batches, we actually guarantee a $10 per hour minimum. Almost all of my onboarding sessions have been exactly the same. First, they need to make sure everyone's got what it takes. Does anyone here have a bank account? Okay. Do you have a bank account? Okay. It must be a checking or savings account at a main institutional.

Bank cannot be PayPal or prepaid. None of these companies offer any real advice or guidance to prepare you for being an independent contractor, though. But they do offer some sweet incentives to get you to sign up your friends. If you guys have friends, if you start and you like it, you know, and you're making good money, then you can refer your friends, okay? And if you refer your friends and they shop with us for a certain amount of time, there's a hundred dollar bonus that you guys will get paid out. Some of the companies I signed up for, though, rejected me instantly.

Hi, Andrew. Thank you for applying to Homejoy. Unfortunately, after careful consideration, we have decided not to move forward with your application at this time. I must have failed their online cleaning quiz. But that's okay. There are so many more to sign up for. Xerex, Vattler, and Lux. These are valet parking services, but this is where I really draw the line.

Parking is the worst thing about driving in San Francisco, and I'm a relatively new driver. I'm definitely not comfortable parking some tech bros sports car. What if I scratch his bumper? I'm sure they offer insurance protection for the expensive cars, but will they protect me from the angry car owner? There are so many sharing economy businesses and they all have apps. Gig gig salad job runner czarly thumb tech creative circle Elance blog mutt viable dolly bell hops go really riff Riff Riff, Spark Plug, InstaEDU, Skillshare, Urban Sitter, Dog Vacay, Doggy B&B, Trash Co., and Washio. If I get sick of using my own car, I could rent it out to other people using GetAround.com. Or if I don't make enough money driving, I could put it on GetAround.com and put my apartment on Airbnb and then just stay

at my mom's house. But according to the folks at Postmates, if I drive for them, I won't have to do something like that because I'll be hearing this sound all the time. There we go. So it's really, really loud. We call it the sound of money. Yeah, this beeping sound. It comes out of the Postmates app, and they call it the sound of money. It's like something out of a bad sci-fi movie about the future of work. But what freaks me out even more than that is the Postmates' anti-human contact policy. Hugs are totally out of the question. And so is the handshake.

If they do try to go in for a handshake, just deflect it with a quick fist bump. You know, it does seem like I should be able to pay all my bills if I work overtime at as many of these sharing economy companies as I can this month. But all these rules and demands and this nonsense that I'm not supposed to shake people's hands? That is actually stressing me out even more than the money part now. Maybe the problem isn't that these companies don't see us as employees. Maybe the real problem is that they don't see us as humans. I think there's a reason the conversation always veers to Uber, and it's because Uber is, really the sharing economy is Uber, whether we like it or not.

That's where the money has been created. That's where the quote-unquote jobs that aren't really jobs have been created. That's where it has impacted the majority of people. Since Andrew, my Insta partner, failed to get his car fixed, I reached out to technology journalist Sarah Lacey so we could learn more about Uber. Uber is the most successful sharing economy business out there. Drivers use their own cars to ferry people around. Uber is the most successful sharing economy business out there. Drivers use their own cars to ferry people around. Uber is also the sharing economy business most vocal about what it thinks about the people doing the actual work. They hope to get rid of their drivers as soon as possible. They've already invested billions of dollars in robotic self-driving cars. Pando.com, the online magazine Sarah Lacey founded,

has been watching Uber since the beginning. And she says we should be frightened of where Uber wants to take us. Uber wants to take over all transportation, private cars, buses, taxis, everything. They want to run all transportation within a city. And I think what worries me is people get so seduced by really appealing software and a really good service that they don't think down the road 20 steps from now. What if there are no more buses? What if there's no more BART? What if

there's no more, you know, no one owns their own vehicles anymore? What if every single thing goes through Uber? What does that mean? Because if we think Uber is bad when they're having to compete in a market, imagine 10 years from now if they're the only option what it looks like. It's horrifying. It's post-apocalyptic. Sarah's followed and written about a number of high-profile cases where women have been harassed and raped by their Uber drivers. She's been very outspoken about what she perceives as a total disregard for a woman's safety. In the fall of 2014, though, she took it a step further. She deleted Uber from her phone. The final straw for me was this horrible promotion that was happening in Lyon, France, that basically showed all these

sort of pictures of scantily clad drivers, and was a promotion basically saying prostitutes would pick you up. So if any women were driving for Uber, they were essentially sending a message to the riders that it was okay to treat them like hookers, which is incredibly offensive, obviously. Now, when this was exposed, they took down the program, but no one was fired or reprimanded because they said that person was showing initiative. There's just not a respect for women that runs throughout this whole company. Sarah wrote a blog post explaining why she deleted Uber from her phone.

A lot of people read it. It got a lot of attention, but, you know, we're a pretty small blog. Like, it certainly was not, you know, the, you know, blue-black-dress-melting-BuzzFeed-servers kind of attention. But, you know, I was shocked about a month later when I was actually in London for work, and I got a call from Ben Smith from BuzzFeed, and he said he had to tell me about a pretty disturbing conversation he had just overheard at a dinner party. As a lot of people who follow the story now know, what he detailed was a senior Uber exec

who I've never met, named Emile Michael, who at an off-the-record dinner party of journalists proceeded to detail a million-dollar plan to destroy journalists' lives, especially mine. And a lot of the details of the plan weren't printed because they were just gross, and they were so anti-woman, and all of the ways that he wanted to go about destroying my life were exactly the ways if you were running a political campaign and you had a woman opponent, you would go about trying to destroy her life.

It was particularly disturbing because he said that he wanted to go after my family and that he wanted to do it in a way that would never be traced back to Uber. Uber did tweet Sarah an apology. But then, a few days later, Uber investor Ashton Kutcher tweeted out, what's wrong with going after shady journalists? Tagging PandoDaily and Uber.

Incidents like this, Sarah says, explain why there are not so many journalists willing to take on powerful sharing economy companies. But it's not like there's a hungry audience for this sort of stuff either. The problem is a tech press who doesn't want to question it. And a tech press who wants to play to readers, who just want to feel great about working at startups and want to feel like everything startups do is great. And there's just people who don't want to hear it.

They don't want to believe it. Sarah Lacey is by no means down on the sharing economy itself, though. Postmates is her favorite delivery service. And after she deleted Uber, she added the Lyft app to her phone. Although note to drivers, she doesn't like sitting in the front seat. It will take time for sharing economy companies to work out the kinks with the people who sign up to do the labor, she says. But in the long run, none of these companies will ever become large employers. Because the majority of people are not quitting good six-figure jobs for the flexibility of driving an Uber and working for 10 different sharing economy companies.

Most people I know would not quit a job to maintain a vehicle and make $19,000 a year driving all over the city and destroying their vehicle. 508, on my way downtown, got another job. Kayla. Kayla. Hey, how are you? How are you doing? Good, good. How are you? Good.

All right. Wow. That was pretty cool. I just had somebody in a lift line who when I called to see where she was, she said she had accidentally gotten into another lift. I guess there are so many of us on the road now, it's a pretty easy mistake to make. I remember the first time I took an Uber. It was back in 2011.

I got a text that said the car was outside so I went and I saw a fancy black car with the blinkers on. So I went up to the driver and I asked if he was my Uber. And this made him furious. Do you really think that I am an Uber driver? In a car like this? I said, yeah, man, I kind of think, yeah they do drive cars like that. And then a gorgeous woman in high heels walked right past me and to his car. And before he took off, he pointed right at me and said, that guy thought I was an Uber driver. And they laughed and laughed hey good how are you yeah so at first this guy picked up on the viz just

talked on his phone. But later, he mentioned that he had just graduated from film school. So yeah, I mean apparently driving an Uber or Lyft is like great for networking. Lyft just sent out this email about all the startups that began in a Lyft ride. So I decided I would give him my card. Nice. Oh nice. Sweet. so what do you do like oh all kinds of all kinds of stuff yeah I'm just a sole proprietorship pretty much but you know

I do a lot of a lot of spots for the tech industry let me know man I'm looking for I'm a good DP and I'm a good gaffer. Yeah, maybe I should have just given him a referral code to do some Lyft driving instead of my business card. I mean, I don't know if I can get him paid film work, but I do know if he started driving for Lyft, we'd both get 500 bucks after his 50th ride. So it's been a really busy shift. I picked up all kinds of different people. Businessmen, some really cute couples, and some students, and a lot of programmers who just moved here. It's so funny. Most of them haven't even taken the beauty buses one time.

Everybody was really nice, though. On my last shift, I let some hipsters smoke their pot in my car. Is this usually going to happen right now? Yeah, we're going to smoke weed on the lift, dog. Nice. Okay, so wait. I have to ask now. Are you a cop? Um, no. We're from fucking Philly, and we just want to get high.

There you go. Yeah. I mean, I'm, like, legitimately making friends and money. So, it's cool. I ended up making $76.65 for four hours of driving, which is almost $20 an hour. But after taxes and gas mileage, my total is $51.10, or $12.87 an hour, right above minimum wage. Please take out your phone now and install the InstaShopper app if you haven't already. There are over 20,000 items in a grocery store,

so you need to take great care in making sure that you're picking the correct item. The strategy we use to always pick the correct item is nice shoppers have fun. 23 minutes before my first Instacart shift started, I got a text saying, please head to Safeway now. But I figured, since I agreed to start at 4, I would get in my car at 4. Plus, I wanted to watch the video again to remember all the rules....such as small elbow macaroni versus large elbow macaroni. This training video is awful. Totally different from their fancy, polished, customer-facing video. They clearly didn't put any budget into this one.

It's out of focus, overexposed. Maybe I should hit up corporate headquarters and pitch them on a better video for their workers. Okay, I'm procrastinating. I just don't want to do this one. Alright, so it's 4pm, and I just got a message saying that I have my first order. Let's see, I'm looking for an option to reject it, but the only button says acknowledge order. Let's see. I just tried to message customer support to let them know I'm going to be late, but my message was rejected.

So apparently customer support is the only one that can initiate contact. Fuck. is the only one that can initiate contact. Fuck, okay, so I just got a message saying that it's my last warning to acknowledge the order. I don't know what they're gonna do if I don't acknowledge it, but okay, accepted. When I finally made it to SF, I got a job right away. A gallon is, it was out of Whole Foods. How many ounces?

128 ounces. That order was easy. All she wanted was three half gallons of the fancy milk that comes in the glass jugs. The kind that you're supposed to return to the store, and they get refilled. I'm an Instacart person. I handed the cashier my phone which had a special code for me. Thank you, thank you so much.

My instructions were to leave the milk by her door and not to knock. And as I drove away, I saw the door open and a few strands of blonde hair pop out and grab the bag. Oh, and look. One block away, there's the Safeway. Completed. With a picture of her heart.

All done for now. Want $25? Have your friend mention your name when applying, and after they do 10 hours of work, you will be $25 richer. Instacart ended my shift at 8.45. And even though the app had ordered me all over the city, I spent most of the day chilling in parking lots. Besides the milk, there was only even one other order. And that was a ghost order. Okay, let me explain a little bit about how the app works. Instacart doesn't let you see the order until you get to the store,

because then you might pick and choose depending upon how complicated the order is. So when I got to the Whole Foods across town, I pushed the start shopping button, but there wasn't anything in the shopping list. Zero items. Completely blank. This is what Instacart calls a ghost order. It was real enough for me to call customer service, though, and the rep told me it happens a lot, and that I should just wait for another order. Which I did, but another order never came. So now, checking my summary email, it turns out I made $26. I can't tell if I got paid for the ghost order, but I definitely didn't get paid for the 56 miles I drove today. So that means I made negative $6, or negative $1.50 an hour.

I'm on my way home. I can't believe I've been driving all night long. I don't know if I have what it takes to be a power driver. That is the sound of my last ride. A group of three coked-up venture capitalist bros and two of their girlfriends trying to sound spiritual. I picked them up around 6 a.m.

They wanted to watch the sunrise at Sutra Tower, but the problem with that plan was the sun was already up. They thought it was so funny that I was working on a podcast. They made me turn off the app and hang out with them at the top of the hill for like an hour. They kept calling me Mr. Investigative Journalist. At Sutro Tower, there was a group of Chinese people

doing Tai Chi and a clearing near us. The humming was like the techies' response to them. One of these dudes in a neon green muscle tee runs right up to them, walks in between them to the center of their formation,

and started mocking their moves like fake dancing then his girlfriend ran up and took an instagram photo another one of the girls gave me her analysis of the difference between lyft drivers and uber drivers i get in a lyft ride people understand how cool i am like the minute i get in Uber... But with Uber, they don't? When I get in an Uber ride, I feel like they judge me for my shaved head instead of thinking it's very cool. And we want to share things when I get in a Lyft ride.

And when I get in an Uber, we just start going to work. I was so ashamed to be standing next to these people. But I didn't want to say anything before they raided me. All right. So this is the checkout process for Andrew. It's a fantastic ride. Picked us up on time. Let us put more people in the car than was legal.

He's a Lyft driver. Actually is in this car right here. Oh, drove us, drove us to the top. Sutra Hill. Yeah. You can request him as soon as I'm car right here Drove us Drove us to the top Sutro Hill Yeah you can request him As soon as I'm done with him Yeah

Drove us to the top of Sutro Hill View was terrible Navigated the fog Got out Got off the clock Hanging out with us Talking about his projects and stuff Super awesome

So I'm gonna go with The one dollar tip And the five stars And the comments Should be the one dollar tip and the five stars. And the comments should be... Everything that you just said. Except for all the illegal things. Andrew, for the win. And so yeah

I drove them home off the clock And they didn't pay me for that But they did offer to be My Facebook friend Now it's 8 in the morning And I'm gonna have to figure out The tally for the night after I get some sleep. But I know for sure that over the past two hours, I made $6. you have been listening to benjamin walker theory of everything

this installment is called insta-Surf's Part 1. Sarah Lacey at pando.com. The best way to keep up to date with The Theory of Everything is the newsletter, or you can follow me on Twitter at Benjamin Walker. You can find the links for both of those at toe.prx.org. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, the world's greatest podcast network. Check out all the other shows in our tribe. Everything you need to know is at radiotopia.fm. Radiotopia. from PRX.

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