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Comment by maxehmookau | Hacker News Reader

I worry that you (and me, and others) have bought in to the "flexibility" bullshit that Uber often spouts.

Most people still have the same rough, basic needs. A "supplementary" income is not enough to do this. Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job, but doesn't get the pay or protections of a full-time worker.

Especially in the UK and other more regulated countries than the US, becoming an Uber driver takes time and money as you require a licence. People aren't doing it as a side-gig. It's their job. And Uber knows it.

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> Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job

There's an interesting statistical effect here.

Let's say there are 50 Uber drivers. 10 of them are doing it full-time; the others are doing it 5 hours a week for some additional income. That's 10 * 40 + 40 * 5 = 600 hours of driving per week, of which 400 is by the full-time drivers. So if you ask your driver whether they are full-time, they will say "yes" with about 2/3 probability, but the number of part-time drivers greatly exceeds the number of full-time drivers.

This effect is even stronger if you typically take Uber at times when part-time drivers are less likely to drive.

To your last point, location does matter a great deal here. Anecdotally, in my suburban area, I know a fair number of stay-at-home parents who do some driving on the side, esp. while the kids are in school. They most emphatically do not want to be driving full-time, or doing anything else full-time: if they wanted a full-time job they would not be stay-at-home parents. I am quite certain that this dynamic does not hold across all Uber markets, by any means.

This is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of employer-employee relationships that are flexible and not full-time. I'd wager to say that the majority of Americans are employed in such an arrangement.

You would lose that wager badly; the vast majority of Americans that are in the workforce at all are employed full-time. See, e.g.,

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm

Looks like I was wrong. Thanks for the reference and stats!

'Flexible working' has been sold as 'the gig economy' but the reality is many people have to scrabble around doing multiple jobs to make ends meet and are playing musical chairs with short term jobs suddenly ending. Uber et al have put a glamorous sheen on this as they flaunt the wealth they have raised as middle men around mobile phone apps and enterprise scale back ends.

I meet a lot who are students (eg, nursing). Driving for Uber is their only job, they'll do it as many hours as they can get, approaching FT. But they need the flexibility, they might do it in the short-term when they're between school terms or clinicals, and oftentimes they are free at the points where we need the most drivers on the road.

This is more of a college funding problem.

> I worry that you (and me, and others) have bought in to the "flexibility" bullshit that Uber often spouts.

For as long as I have been taking Uber (which is ~5 years), I almost always make small talk with the driver. In almost every single case, they have mentioned the flexibility as a key factor as to why they drive for Uber (and yes, they also do complain about falling incomes as time has gone by).

I don’t personally care for Uber, but I’ve used it enough for the convenience and heard the same story. For what it’s worth, I don’t think OP has much depth on this or probably has even used the service much at all.

Some folks pick their social justice topic and blow it up 100x. Anyone who disagrees is a monster.

When I'm in NYC, it does seem like most do it as a full time job, but they like the flexible hours. In upstate NY, most Uber/Lyft drivers I talk to treat it as a side hustle, fun thing to do to chat with folks, or a post retirement activity. Based on my experience, denser cities have more drivers treating it as a full time job with multiple apps used to find riders, and in less dense areas (including LA) many drivers seem to have other non-driving jobs.

I definitely find the experience much better than taxis, especially in NYC, on average.

This is very unique to NY and this is because NY regulations have made it unprofitable to be a rideshare driver for anything less than full time. NY basically killed all the part time jobs.

Next time you ride with one, ask them about what they have to do to become a rideshare driver in NY and if the burden of regulations and costs paid to the state would be worth if it they were not doing the work full time.

While I agree in general, in specific, a significant proportion of Uber drivers I've used in Canada were doing it not even for supplementary profit, but for Fun. I've been picked up in $80k vehicles by guys who did it a few hours a week to see the town, meet people, kill time in productive ways.

Of course, I've also seen people who were current or ex taxi drivers, working fulltime on several services.

Taking that at face value, I'd say that "limit drivers doing it 'for fun' in exchange for better pay/protections for drivers doing it to eke out a living" seems like a reasonable trade-off...

No individual has any right to make a living doing anything they want to. If sufficient people are willing to do a job at a reduced wage because they enjoy it, that is their right.

This is like saying that libraries should ban unpaid volunteers in order to justify the hiring of more librarians.

Labour laws set minimum standards that all companies and employees / contractors / whatever should adhere to, because it reduces the likelihood of abuse.

The "right" you mention doesn't exist in e.g. countries with minimum wage laws.

It is illegal in the US to have volunteers do work that would otherwise be done by a paid employee. That's why unpaid internships are, by default, illegal - to be legal they must replace the payment with school credit and valuable experience, basically.

Anybody doing it for fun is going to be doing it less than 32 hours. So they'd be a part-time employee instead of a contractor. Part-time employees don't get many benefits either.

These people are the exception that Uber uses to push its bullshit narrative. We shouldn't be buying in to it.

People need dependable employment to survive and thrive.

Why do you think this?

This is absurdly regional. Do you live in the region considering the legal change and take uber regularly enough to know if it's their fte?

How do you know it's the exception? You have hard figures?

No, but he has an ax to grind, which is better than data. /s

So basically desperate people ruin everything?

Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work (and make a little extra cash). Now because desperate people have commandeered the platform as their sole source of income, I should not be able to do that anymore?

Seems like you can't have nice things at all because of this. If I make an app called "Clean Streets" that pays a dime per piece of litter picked up from local streets, desperate people would try to turn it into a full time living and I would be sued for abusing people, not paying living wage, not giving full benefits, etc. (even though I just wanted to incentivize passively cleaning up of litter, geez)

A healthy society is more important than clever technocrats.

This is the mantra of all government regulation (which is really just a legislated grab at power):

“I know it’s bad for you, but it will be better for others. And because we think that’s more important, you have no choice.”

An objectively free society is always better than your subjectively “healthy” society.

You vote, I vote, we all vote, and whatever policy wins becomes the law. And it looks like this is going to become law. The people have spoken.

If one takes issue, plenty of other states to choose from to better experience one’s personal idea of “freedom”.

The only "free" society is you alone in a large area. In any other place, with other humans nearby, you will not be "free". And this definition of "Freedom" only looks at the impact from other humans, totally ignoring the restrictions the world itself imposes on you (but to human psychology those don't matter nearly as much as the will of other people imposed on yourself).

This sounds cliche, and it is, but for whatever reason I feel kind of forced to reemphasize the obvious in response to your self-centered-universe-outlook comment.

In a human society, the alternative to government is rule of the strongest. That's how we got nobles and kings, later the great capitalist tycoons and their private police and armies.

> An objectively free society

That does not mean anything. Well, it means you are trying to shove your world-view down everybody else's throat while shutting out any discussion and arguments that you dislike.

>In a human society, the alternative to government is rule of the strongest. That's how we got nobles and kings, later the great capitalist tycoons and their private police and armies

If you feel that that's the case then you must realize that what stopped this status quoue wasn't legislation but industrialization and guns. Legislation is always after the fact.

Guns were around for a few hundred years before this alleged democratizing effect.

Also, of note, is that guns were invented in China thousands of years ago and it has been a monarchy or dictatorship since then.

Steam engines have been around since the 1st century, but like guns, they weren't going to be as important as they could be without all the advancements in ideology, planning and sciences that resulted in industrialization.

Which brings me back to my point, the current status of civilization is due much less to legislation than people say it is.

If you specifically mean the existence of an elected group of people writing the laws matters less than people say it does, we agree.

But if you say that the systematic codification of rules (i.e., laws) matters less than people say it does, we disagree completely. Laws literally defined every major civilization back to the dawn of recorded human history.

For more modern examples, CA's employee rights laws are the reason that SV happened in SV rather than New York, Boston, Chicago, or Detroit--all cities with larger scientific and industrial bases than SF or LA. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act literally made the internet as it exists today possible; without it Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and even Amazon and Google couldn't exist as they do today.

Hmm - or phrased more accurately, your group's (aggregated) choice is less valuable than others' (aggregated) choice.

How many people do you think go through the process of signing up for Uber simply to arbitrage the 5-10 minutes gained on HOV lanes?

Compare vs. Uber/Lyfts actual use case - to displace taxis and public transport while under-paying it's drivers.

How free do you want?

Free enough I can employ anyone at any wage, to do any job?

Free enough I can employ children and send them down mines?

Free enough I can just come around and take your house?

> "I know it’s bad for you, but it will be better for others. And because we think that’s more important, you have no choice.”

If you don't like this logic, why do you support the OPs use of the inverse proposition:

"I know it’s bad for all of you, but it will be better for me. And because I think that’s more important, I'd like everyone to agree without directly justifying it.”

Even if you believe in a society of objective freedom, there are multiple senses of freedom. There are "freedoms from" as well as "freedoms to", and you seem to be carefully and convexly limiting the definition of "objectively free society" fits exactly cognitive cognitive volume you want, without regard to how other people might define that concept.

> If you don't like this logic, why do you support the OPs use of the inverse proposition:

It's really simple, because the inverse doesn't involve legislation, where an individual is forced to do something at risk of life and limb.

But importantly it relies on legislation. It relies on the existence of very specific market conditions that are held in place by the state. It then supposes that these artificial conditions we cal the workplace shouldn't change if they impact the author, who is rich, to benefit the "desperate" (a larger and poorer cohort of people, I read from the OP's post).

Legislation is there either way. It is involved in each case. And as employment (often dangerous) is required for living in the US, it seems pretty weird to view this structural change that only mildly inconvenienced some of the most egregious users of the very broad "contractor" status in existing law, I can't quite work out why this is important.

Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work

Slugging might be an option.[1] Doesn't help with additional income, or work very well for suburb-to-suburb commutes, but at least in DC, it's a very popular option, especially coming from the south on the I-95 corridor.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

There's also scoop, which is explicitly for this kind of activity. You define your route to and from work and then it matches you to people who are going the same place at the same time as you.

Yes? Why do you think we need things like minimum wage and OSHA? Because there are desperate people and people who exploit them.

That’s why capitalists love immigration and outsourcing. Desperation lowers operating costs.

you can’t mix all things together as an argument for some unrelated third thing. Yes, we need OSHA which has nothing to do with the fact that people are choosing on their own to drive for Uber because it is convenient for them. If you classify them as employees, many of them won’t be able to do the thing they are voluntarily choosing to do.

They are all the same category of things - making it illegal for a person to work in a job that they are volunteering to take. Maybe it's illegal because the pay is below minimum wage, maybe it's because they are doing something without following the safety requirements of OSHA. Some people think this is a sign that minimum wage/child labor laws/any such restriction should be removed. Others, like myself, think that it should be possible for everyone to have better options available so that nobody does want to work for scraps.

“The same category of things” still doesn’t make it relevant. It’s obviously not illegal in the US to drive a taxi cab and cab drivers do not make any more money than Uber drivers. The issue is that if someone wants to earn part time income, Uber provides a great option. And these rules would destroy that option. I really don’t know why people cannot be left to make this decision for themselves.

From looking at the condition of the drivers and the cabs they maintained before the arrival of Uber & Lyft, I don't think NYC's medallion system (or its equivalent in other cities) were following any modest safety requirements that were in place back then.

People loved these ride-hailing apps because of how lousy the typical taxi cab experience was for most people.

~ Most of the drivers were not native English speakers and would not put any effort into conducting their business genially.

~ They would refuse to take credit cards despite having card readers or would disable them to take cash.

~ At late hours you were at the mercy of the dispatcher (from the central office) if they would send a taxi at all or if the driver would take your business instead of ditching you to pickup passengers for longer (and more profitable) trips.

~ There was zero accountability in a whole host of areas like that.

There were always computer-dispatched car services in New York, decades before Uber. The reason people prefer Uber is because Computer Car costs $60 to go to the airport and Uber, by contracting with desperate amateurs and their unmaintained jalopies, undercuts their price.

Those services were, and still are, much worse than Uber and the like. They're not bad in any absolute sense; just relatively bad. I'm pretty sure they weren't and aren't "computer-dispatched" in the same way Uber and the like are either. For one, you almost always had and have to speak to a person by phone, and often more than once, e.g. to receive updates about when a driver could be expected to arrive.

> Others, like myself, think that it should be possible for everyone to have better options available so that nobody does want to work for scraps.

It sure seems like a lot of people will have to continue to work , e.g. for less than minimum wage, and without almost any legal protections, until better options are made available to them.

I'm more inclined to welcome incremental improvements, no matter how modest, than to bemoan everything short of some kind of ideal possibly-possible future.

For one, does "everyone", for you, include every person in the world? Should everyone making a living with less than "better" options be forced to stop working as they are now and wait for those better options to materialize? It seems pretty obvious to me that accepting something less than perfect is better than refusing to accept anything that falls short in the interim.

A study in 2000 suggested your average low level street dealer made $20-30k/yr [1]. That's no benefits, no OSHA, no minimum wage, no child labor laws, is frequently violent, etc. Surely things have changed, particularly with the spreading decriminalization of marijuana, but I think it's still relevant. When we're talking about restricting poor people from accepting some kinds of work, we must bear in mind that we may like their other options even less.

[1]: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittVenkates...

Heh, I wonder if a more effective way to wage the War on Drugs would be to stop prosecuting street-level dealers for drugs, but simply enforce employee status on them :-p

Some of the people on this website are insanely cloistered lol holy cow. Those dang desperate (read: poor) people ruin everything!

> Yes? Why do you think we need things like minimum wage and OSHA? Because there are desperate people and people who exploit them.

Nobody is intentionally exploiting anybody; desperate people exploit themselves.

So the solution is either gatekeeping or rate limiting.

a) only allow people that meet a minimum economic status to make money from the app.

b) limit the amount of money/time that can be spent on the app so it is clear the intent is not to provide full-benefits careers.

You don't actually need a minimum wage, as it's a very recent invention. Things worked fine before that was introduced. And do you really have to assume employers always "exploit" employees? That's the basic idea of communism and it's always a disaster. Employers don't exploit labour. It's a trade that leaves both sides better off.

Yes, was a problem long before Marx came around. Since recorded history and probably even earlier then that. That’s just human history, I’m pretty sure there are types of both ants and bees that enslave other insects and make them maintain their colonies.

> Employers don't exploit labour.

lol

> So basically desperate people ruin everything?

What a perfect distillation of the empathy-deficient and contemptuous attitude that a large fraction of rich, fortunate techies have towards everyone else. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

You cherry picked a part of OPs post. The rest of it is a reasonable argument. You can refute it or otherwise you’re clinging to an emotional argument and not rational one.

Let's not infantilize these poor and "desperate" drivers who don't know any better than to be exploited by the technocrats.

They were doing no better illegally sub-contracting with illegal sub-lessees of taxi medallions who themselves illegally forked out hundreds of thousands of dollars to wealthy medallion owners who hoarded them and prevented anyone else from legally procuring them.

The previous taxi system ( prior to the arrival of ride-hailing apps ) was thoroughly corrupt at every level. I hope thats not up for debate.

Immigrant new-arrival drivers would pay daily fixed amounts to illegally "lease" these cabs (on the daily) to those at the bottom of the chain of operators described above.

They were already "part-time" (well before the arrival of Uber and Lyft) and weren't afforded many of the protections the medallion issuing body put in place.

It was a thoroughly corrupt sham that the governing bodies paid little attention to and hand waived the illegal practices because they were (and are) themselves corrupt rent-seekers who were in bed with those interests they truly protected.

The officials knew it.

The medallion owners knew it.

The sub-vendors knew it.

The immigrant daily-wage-slaves knew it.

This is why Uber, Lyft and others were such life savers when they arrived. Everyone hated taxi cabs.

The CC machine was always broken. Wildly under insured (despite the regulation!) No service in tough neighborhoods late at night when you needed them. Would drive while yelling on the phone. Despite the fares shown (very high) the guys driving looked totally broke. NO WAY were they actually getting the $$.

That was the trick: the "app" the GP describes already exists! It's called the deposit system on recyclables, and somehow, governments never consider promoting such full time redeemers into employees!

Do you think governments should turn away all such recyclables that the homeless bring in on the grounds that they're not making a living wage? If not, you see the legit problem the GP described.

> Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work (and make a little extra cash)

No one does this. This argument exists in a fantasy land.

Im pretty sure if you made an app that would pay people a dime for every piece of trash they picked up, Delhi would just have even more cobras.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

Well, I'm thinking more along the lines of Italki. The app would just be for escrow and connecting people.

Someone posts a trash bounty for their neighborhood. Another person accepts the bounty. They exchange messages, the acceptance criteria is agreed upon, and the transaction is completed after the bounty poster has verified the trash is gone.

I think such an app would work great for cleaning up public places, but would break down as soon as people started tried to turn it into a career.

Who do you imagine is doing these jobs? It's people who need money.

It's almost as though...we as a society continually assess whether the harm from some activity exceeds benefit, and react accordingly?

Or maybe we're starting to expect that people building things have responsibility to foresee potential harms arising from their use, whether or not part of the intended use case, and to build in an equitable way?

After all, if "inadvertently deepens abject poverty" is a possible outcome of a tool you're building, maybe the problem is with the design and not the people using it.

I'm pretty sure actually, uniformly enforcing all of the currently existing labor laws would 'inadvertently deepen abject poverty' too. There are a lot of people working black or gray market jobs (i.e. workers for whom the 'employment' relationship is itself illegal, at least in some aspects) already.

There are tens of millions of people in the U.S. that are not legally permitted to reside here, let alone work. Are you also in favor of actually enforcing those laws and either preventing them from working or deporting them?

> It's almost as though...we as a society continually assess whether the harm from some activity exceeds benefit, and react accordingly?

I do not think that U.S. society, or any country really, could be even approximately described like this, accurately. As just one example, minimum wage laws were originally introduced to prevent minorities (e.g. black people) from undercutting the wages of ethnic-majority workers (i.e. 'white' people). As another, a large number of U.S. states require certification or licensing for people to cut or style other's hair. I am extremely skeptical that such laws or regulations were enacted because a fair cost-benefit analysis implied that such were reasonable.

> So basically desperate people ruin everything?

This is due to people (non-consciously or not-explicitly) holding or believing something like 'The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics'.

In a nutshell, it's often better to ignore a problem than attempt to improve it in any way less than perfect, at least in terms of other third parties' reactions.

> Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job

That's odd, because all my Uber drivers are doing it part time. A vast majority work in fields with either odd hours (vet techs, nursing) or with breaks (teachers) and use Lyft/Uber to fill in the gaps and make extra cash. The only driver I've had in the past few months who was full time was a recent immigrant who implied he was missing some documents to be able to get a regular job.

Uber and Lyft drivers fit the definition of independent contractor perfectly. I cannot imagine how they would qualify as employees. Increasing the money required to onboard people inherently reduces the people you can serve.

It would be hilarious if they stopped having Uber drivers in California and just paid Nevada Uber drivers to make the trips instead

> It would be hilarious if they stopped having Uber drivers in California and just paid Nevada Uber drivers to make the trips instead

Do you mean trips that begin in California and end in California? If Uber systematically does this, I'd hope to see a new law that is a "bug fix" that makes Uber CEO eligible for life in prison with no opportunity for parole for doing this.

If they can find a way to do this profitably, it shows how unrealistic California labor laws can be

EDIT: Also, remember that neither Lyft or Uber have ever been profitable

Interesting that there aren't many side-gig drivers in the UK.

I've taken Uber/Lyft in many parts of the US, and side-gig drivers are quite common. Often drivers are students, working around their schedule, part-time parents, semi-retired, or otherwise genuinely looking to supplement income.

I wouldn't be surprised if barriers to entry like licenses kept these folks at bay. I also wouldn't be surprised if a stronger social safety obviated the need for supplemental income.

Yeah, it absolutely does keep these folks at bay. As it should.

I only want to get in a taxi when the driver has been carefully vetted which the licensing system provides. Uber cannot be trusted to vet drivers properly as it has no incentive to do so.

Having been a full-time uber and lyft driver, I think this law is going to be a huge problem. Basically, Lyft and Uber will now force drivers to only work for one at a time. I'm also considering driving during the commute, just for kicks, and I think it would be silly to reclass me as a FTE or PTE.

Remember flexibility takes many forms being just full-time or not.

Consider NYC taxi drivers. They have 4am to 4pm shifts. This creates many problems (eg getting a cab between 3pm and 4pm due to the shift change such that they had to have a special regime for those who still needed to go to the airport).

What if you wanted or needed to pick up your kids after school at 3pm? That's a problem for a taxi driver. But an Uber or Lyft driver has the flexibility to simply stop accepting fares.

So doing it full-time does not make these situations equivalent I guess is my point.

Except that at least some of the uber drivers that I've seen most definitely do this as a side job (ie they have another primary job that has a lot of off days/variable schedule and as a side job they Uber to make some extra money). If the proposed laws allow for this kind of use case then fine.

Not to mention that almost all Uber drivers I've seen have both Uber and Lyft signs in their windows so obviously they work with both. That's a good thing, gives them more choices and helps keep those companies honest and even if you argue that in practice Uber/Lyft don't seem to provide drivers the benefits of such competition (they may be colluding) then I ask you, isn't the solution to that to promote more competition? So be very careful with enacting laws if you want to create real competition to help the drivers.

Are they better off if Uber and Lyft go out of business and they have no jobs? Presumably if they had a better option they would be doing it.

Uber can afford to pay more and provide more stable employment. They choose not to because it hurts their margins. Fixing this will help drivers and still won't put Uber out of business.

I'm pretty sure Uber are still losing money, and have never shown evidence of positive unit-margin, so I'm not sure they can afford this.

There are plenty of companies and entrepreneurs that aren't artificially propped up by VC money that are waiting for any opportunity to eat Uber/Lyft's lunch.

In fact, many regional ride-hailing app companies already are.

I often come across South Asian women driving for Uber in London while their kids are in nursery / primary school. Uber's flexibility seems to fit perfectly with a more modern view of labour vs child rearing responsibilities.

There aren't anywhere near enough flexible part time jobs that stay at home mums and dads can do while their kids are in school.

Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job

If we're polling for anecdata, my experience has been quite the opposite. But I suspect this is very dependent on what time you ride - in evenings, I often encountered people driving for a couple hours after work.

  Especially in the UK and other more regulated countries
  than the US, becoming an Uber driver takes time and 
  money as you require a licence. People aren't doing it
  as a side-gig.

What special abilities does London's licensing body require the driver of a black cab have to have over any other civilian driver?

I know black cab drivers need to be able to memorize maps of various neighborhoods but isnt that rather antiquated in the age of advanced GPS & traffic apps that do the same job better?

I'm all for thorough and deep background checks (and regulation to mandate them), to weed out sketchy drivers or those with criminal pasts, who drive for Uber & Lyft but anything beyond that is just bureaucratic over-reach & rent-seeking by the government.

Black cabs are, again, the exception to the rule. The vast majority of Ubers in the UK are licensed to local bodies and not Transport for London. Getting a Black Cab licence in London takes _YEARS_. Becoming a licensed minicab driver takes about 1 year.

> I know black cab drivers need to be able to memorize maps of various neighborhoods.

I assume you're referring to what we call "The Knowledge" and it's an exam that takes literally years to pass. You have to be able to name every single road, junction and corner in the entirety of Greater London from memory. The fact that people still use black cabs (and often pay a premium to do so) shows the value in local knowledge over the Google Maps hive-mind.

Well, or it's because a black cab is often nearby and can be easily flagged on the street, whereas Ubers are technically illegal (or did that get fixed) and cannot be spotted on the street.

The Knowledge is archaic. It exists only because regulation is ossifying and because existing black cab drivers feel "I had to do it, so should they". It's literally hardly changed since the 1800s and doesn't even cover all of London, just a six mile radius from Charing Cross.

Google Maps can do it better, more reliably and faster than any person, without the massive costs and overheads involved in the entire licensing and examination regime required. The amount of labour hours required for these cabbies to memorise the layout of central London alone is a staggering cost and there's no reason for it.

I’ve met plenty of Uber drivers who drive to pay their car payment, insurance, etc.

two members of my family do it on the weekend. one my friend does it on off days from job at costco.

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