Instacart announces new Covid-19 policies and plans to hire 250k more shoppers | Hacker News Reader

Instacart announces new Covid-19 policies and plans to hire 250k more shoppers

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134 pointsrafaelc166 comments

Grocery stores should really just turn themselves into warehouses and only allow workers in the store. Grocery stores could provide safer working conditions by checking temps of employees before entering the store and providing masks and gloves for all workers. This would help mitigate the risk of covid exposure for both employees and customers.

This goes against labor trends in the supermarket industry since the early 1900s, and would increase labor needs considerably. The original grocery stores were full-service like this, but assortment was still small and tastes were provincial. Supermarkets have been shedding labor consistently since the full-service days, and are managed towards ever increasing the UPLH metric (Units Per Labor Hour). Instacart serves as a sort of stop gap measure during the uncertainties of this pandemic. The nature of Instacart "hiring" is non-binding: employees are not bound to do any amount of work, and Instacart is under no obligation to provide it. These 250,000 workers are not guaranteed any amount of wages or hours, which is much different than if the supermarket industry tried to do what you propose. That approach is much more appealing to the supermarket industry: as work surges, people who need the work do it, and as the work subsides, they fade into the wood work. Personally I advocate for strong worker rights and a healthy labor market, but it will take more than a pandemic to get the supermarket industry to increase their direct workforce significantly.

Here in Ontario, Canada we have an online food delivery service (https://grocerygateway.com) and they built a super-automated distribution factory to help run this (and all of their stores in the area).

A distribution center in the UK has already mastered this:

> The Ocado Andover CFC is a three-storey grid of storage crates containing groceries. On top of the grid a fleet of 1,100 robots grab items and deliver them to “pick stations” where “personal shoppers” assemble orders for delivery. According to Ocado, an order of 50 items takes five minutes to pick and pack.

http://www.canadiangrocer.com/top-stories/a-sneak-peak-at-th...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E

Google "automated grocery distribution", there's plenty of examples.

This is essentially unskilled labour moving boxes from one point to another. The exception is vegetables/fruit where a human discards the bad stuff before it goes into another box for delivery on a truck. 95% of that process could be automated. Including eventually the delivery drivers in between the distribution center <-> retail endpoint pickup centers (where consumers and last-mile Instacart/delivery drivers can go in person for pickup - I'm assuming humans will be needed for home delivery for a long time).

Instacarts biggest drawback is the cost and how they nickel-and-dime you, but GroceryGateway is run by the grocery store itself, and it's much better and actually helps you save money by shows you all the deals in the interface (imagine sorting a grocery store by discounts and price, as you walk through it gets more expensive). There is very little markup vs the stores, I've found it to be cheaper in practice, especially factoring in my time.

A fully integrated/automated version of this with far less urban real estate + labour costs will bring the prices down significantly.

I have a feeling only smaller luxury/farmers market/vegetable+fruit+meat only (+ semi-automated pantry section) shops will exist in the future. You don't really need to pick up most stuff by hand, but an in-person browsing UX can still be useful. Ikea stores are halfway to figuring this out.

I've used both and they are different services.

Grocerygateway you select like white bread and hope that yoir brand and brown bread doesn't come. You select apples and they are out and will give you pears.

InstantCart felt modern. You select the exact brand size. When the morning comes you will see the items the person found in real time on the app. The useful part was when an item is not found the delivery person will select a replacement that you see in real time and you can reject or replace with other items. For those that want a more interactive shopping experience I recommend, feels like I'm on the phone with someone as they shop.

With Ocado I select a time slot and they know what will be available with very few substitutions. Definitely not apples-for-pears level.

It's up to them to tune. They could make it exact(don't overpromise any stock) but then be stuck with unsold stock due to customers amending their orders. Or they can oversell slightly and offer refunds or returns for unwanted substitutions, which is what they do.

Yeah I agree, the future is somewhere in between the two. I basically want Instacart UI/UX attached to an automated grocery distribution center.

> The Ocado

Who are running a service to almost 0% of their normal customers right now

What makes you say that? New registrations have been closed for a long time

In the early 1900s they didn't have a lot of the technology we have today. There are things that can be automated away as well as many other logistical optimizations that can be made if you're designing the store as a warehouse instead of both a warehouse and a customer experience. That experience moves online. Of course this is more of a long term thing and would require a big investment.

Something like Trader Joes would be great for this. Very limited number of SKUs (e.g. 1-2 kinds of wheat bread, rather than 10). If you combine with automation, could get the costs down considerably. But I'd bet most of the labor hours are going to be burned on the delivery itself, not the assembling of the order.

Not everyone can afford delivery fees, especially with these layoffs. And those fees are not small at all hey.

Those fees are for everyone's safety. If other people have deliveries, I'm less likely to get sick and die.

Delivery fees should be part of the stimulus.

If everyone who can afford them paid delivery fees for everyone who can't, we'd all come out way ahead, both health-wise and economically. This is one of the biggest economic no-brainers since some states started making everyone wear a $2 cloth face mask to reduce R0.

"If other people have deliveries, I'm less likely to get sick and die."

Outside of the very worst-hit parts of the world, going shopping while taking precautions does not seem to be capable of raising the transmission rate to unacceptable levels. We're not trying to prevent every and all infection, only to keep the rate of new infections at a sustainable level.

Why do you say that?

The US seems to have an R0 of right around 1 with lockdowns. Shopping is the major place people continue to intermingle.

If we brought R0<<1, the virus would die off. If R0 > 1, we all get sick eventually.

And aside from that, school and work closures are much more expensive than food delivery. The ROI of not having everyone congregate in stores seems huge in comparison.

I say that because I don't think anyone expects the virus to die off, save for a mutation or herd immunity (via vaccine or otherwise). Lockdowns are not and never were intended to kill the virus. Only to control the spread.

I think this could be implemented with a pickup option

Then society should supplement their budget through social safety nets. I don't think its acceptable to risk the health of the grocery store employees because some people can't afford delivery (they don't even need delivery, just store pick up)

Not everyone is interested in what a random "shopper" decide that someone is going to get. It was tried in USSR where the shopper was whoever was a manager of a supermarket. Those got solidly trounced when the first "swiss markets" showed up.

You can afford them if you buy 2+ months of groceries at a time.

True, but so long as people are eating fresh bread, meat, fruit and milk they'll be going to the store for those - and won't they pick up the other things they need at the same time?

The entire point is that people aren't going out.

That is basically what Whole Foods in SF is doing. They are only open to the public from like 9a-1p and from 1p-7p its delivery workers only.

Online grocery shopping takes me twice as long, and I lose out on the discoverability of a physical store.

We used to do it but we stopped because they don’t know how to pick fruits and vegetables, and they never know what a turnip is.

> Grocery stores could provide safer working conditions by checking temps of employees before entering the store and providing masks and gloves for all workers

Checking temperatures is pretty much useless, when you can be totally asymptomatic, while spreading the virus for days.

That's the big difference (and difficulty) as compared to the first version of SARS, where symptoms appeared virtually instantly after infection.

> Checking temperatures is pretty much useless, when you can be totally asymptomatic, while spreading the virus for days.

It may not be 100% effective but it would surely help, possibly significantly. If we eliminated all but asymptomatic spread, how would that affect the reproduction rate?

It helps on the margins, just like masks and hand-washing. The more low-impact methods we can implement to reduce the transmission rate, the fewer high-impact methods are necessary.

They do this in some places. But still allow in customers. Checking tempature seems like a good way to avoid spreading other illnesses. Win-win.

What about the idea that we should build up herd immunity in the summer so we’re not dealing with corona and flu in the fall? I guess we’d want healthy people to be out together if so.

I heard that somewhere. Not sure if it makes sense.

Sorry that I don't have the sources here, but I remember reading a few times that many people will have a low amount of antibodies.

Then, on this video, the doctor mentions that we don't know yet how much antibodies you need to be completely/somewhat immune, which makes sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtP-QPv39kg

Also, even if you are immune, we also don't know yet how long that immunity lasts.

From a previous thread, I estimated that if NY had 20% antibody presence for 15k dead, that implies there will be 60k dead by the end of the process. Roughly one 9/11 every week or so?

> What about the idea that we should build up herd immunity in the summer so we’re not dealing with corona and flu in the fall?

Nobody currently knows whether or not getting COVID-19 makes you immune to getting it again.

Do you have a source? I can’t think of any other virus that works like that (except hiv which attacks the immune system)

The coronaviruses that cause about 20% of common colds work that way.

do you have a source on that?

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-dont-immune-colds.htm...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532754-600-can-you-...

Thanks for providing those. Interesting reading however:

The first article is talking about rhinovirus not corona.

The second article just says we don’t know, but it does mention monkeys developing a strong immunity.

https://twitter.com/statesdj/status/1252698777296797698?s=21

> If you’re hoping a vaccine is going to be a knight in shining armor saving the day, you may be in for a disappointment. SARSCOV2 is a highly contagious virus. A vaccine will need to induce durable high level immunity, but coronaviruses often don’t induce that kind of immunity 1/ > There’s a nice preprint just out on antibody responses to SARSCOV2. Lots of people don’t develop much of an IgM response and the IgG response fades noticeably after just two months https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066407v... 2/ This is consistent with the other human coronaviruses. They induce an immune response, but it tends to fade so the same virus can reinfect us a year or two later. https://t.co/MFQyjhZF0T?amp=1 3/ The experience with veterinary vaccines for coronaviruses is also not great. There are economically important coronaviruses infecting farm animals and we’ve been trying to develop good vaccines for decades. Most on these vaccines are putzy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7138383/ 4/

The thread’s longer but the prognosis is not good.

I've been receiving the influenza vaccination every year. It wouldn't be a huge problem to receive also SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on top of that. Also at some point my kid received Rota-virus vaccinations every 3-6 months. It would be a hassle to inject everyone but doable in a country with modern medical system.

I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with this kind of speculation in the context of the thread (namely: infected people might not develop immunity, therefore herd immunity might not be possible).

Is it possible that we won't develop an effective vaccine? Yes, of course. We've never successfully made a coronavirus vaccine.

But 1) that doesn't tell you much about the natural state of immunity for a virus (i.e. there are/were lots of viruses that infer immunity for which we had difficulty creating a vaccine), and 2) let's say you're right, and it isn't possible to gain immunity at all...what are we supposed to do then? Lock ourselves inside forever?

Obviously, we're eventually going to end this, one way or another. Either we achieve herd immunity, or we just learn to live with another endemic virus that is occasionally fatal to a small percentage of the infected.

I feel like there are a lot of "contrarian" types here who just want to make a fetish of the societal doom aspect of this thing.

My biggest gripe with this headline is the word "hire". Let's rephrase that to: "250k shoppers signed up". They were not hired. They don't have benefits, they don't have medical, and they are most definitely not employees.

The word 'hire' has nothing to do with whether the job is full-time or part-time: it applies to both (e.g. 'I hired a babysitter').

"Hiring" a babysitter means you have engaged her/him for a specific period and compensation commitment. Otherwise, you're just adding them to your Contacts.

Instacart hasn't hired these people in any traditional sense, they've just added those people to their Contacts with no compensation commitment.

That is your definition of hire but it is not what the actual definition of the word is or implies. You can hire a babysitter, 1099 contractor, W2 employee, day laborer, and so on and so forth.

But it says "plans to hire".

Anyone know if they've fixed the bug where someone could set the tip to $50 and then remove it entirely at or after delivery ("tip baiting")?

https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/people-are-baiting-grocery-del...

Bug or feature? If the shopper does a terrible job and brings the complete wrong things, you should be able to reduce the tip.

Presumably the argument against this is that it should not be allowed because then the shoppers don't make a reasonable living wage. Then why not solve the actual problem? Raise the delivery fee to where the wage is reasonable, don't make them rely as heavily on tips.

You should only be able to reduce the tip through a dispute with Instacart justifying the compensation reduction (and banned for repeat abuse of the process), compensation that was offered as part of the job bid.

Then it’s not a tip at all.

The solution is to not show hypothetical tips to workers before the tip is finalized.

Maybe I'm taking crazy pills, but what about getting rid of a tip altogether and have a reasonable wage?

All tips do is subsidizing the employer allowing them to pay less and makes customers feel guilty to provide tip, even when there was nothing special about the service or even when it was bad.

What about any number of other things that can go wrong? They say something rude to you or are in some other way unprofessional? You know, the kinds of customer service niceties that are the entire point of tipping.

I’d suggest then not basing your business model on dumping your costs on the worker and the customer, so these hacks and discussions are negated.

Dumping costs on the customer is fine if it’s transparent. Hiding behind tipping rather than wages based on the cost of providing a service is unsustainable.

I mean what do they expect? A shame based tipping economy for delivery?

Yes, a lot of companies rely on you feeling personally bad for the person you're dealing with when having an issue with the company as a whole. The company tries to "humanize" themselves in this way by tossing a peon/cog onto the front lines to bear the brunt of customer hostilities, with little resources to actually solve problems, then when the satisfaction survey comes down they'll hold the cog personally responsible for the dissatisfaction of the customer instead of actually reviewing and changing customer-hostile policies.

"Make a human connection and smile", doesn't solve dark pattern markup fees(Instacart), or terrible search interface that steers you towards the what the business wants you to buy at the price they want you to buy it at(Amazon), or that you got $200 in overdraft fees on $15 worth of purchases(any major bank).

these are the economies (efficiencies) many large corporations gain when they use (often low-wage, high-pressure) call centers to substitute for real customer service/sales.

they suck away power/information from both sides of the transaction (low-wage worker & customer) and use arms-length arguments to shield the managers & owners from the complexities and cost of genuine, trusting human interaction. it's dehumanizing all around.

How many customer service niceties are you exchanging with your instacart deliverer?

Before covid it was a short "thanks" or "nice day out". Now I don't even seen them because they usually just leave it outside the gate.

On my recent order, about half a dozen interactions while she picked the order, because many items were out of stock and she made substitutions.

> What about any number of other things that can go wrong? They say something rude to you or are in some other way unprofessional?

This should be fairly unusual.

If someone's dropping tips on every order, they should lose the ability to do so.

at that point it should probably no longer be called a tip... sounds like a different form of compensation

Right, like a guaranteed incentive bonus. With an indisputable deliverable, like GPS at the person's house. But, as with everything, it could probably end up being gamed.

I think the best way to solve it is simply not show shoppers the tip ahead of time so that it isn't a factor in choosing the job. That way people can't game the system.

Alternatively, they could give the buyer the option of "locking" the tip so it can't be changed, or of keeping it variable, or a % of it variable so that shoppers can make an informed judgment about the likelihood of getting a certain tip level.

Jesus, no. Just make it impossible to fuck people over like this. It's not complicated. Tweak the app so it's not possible. Done. Easy.

People shouldn't get paid in tips. The fees should go up to cover cost-of-living and hazard pay, or at least until there are enough shoppers to cover demand.

I should be able to get reliable orders with $0 tip. I shouldn't pay less, and people shouldn't get paid less; it should go into the fee.

If it is a tip, I should have control. One shopper got me the wrong bag of food. If tips are there, tips are intended to manage that, not to bribe someone into taking an order.

There are legitimate reasons to lower a tip. Tips should come at the end after the service is rendered. If the shopper is aware of it ahead of time it’s more like a bribe than a tip.

How are you supposed to tip BEFORE getting your things?

I mean, a tip should be according to the service provided. If it takes way longer than expected, or the items are wrong, why would you tip $50?

Maybe the problem is allowing the tip to be put before receiving your things...

It’s a dark pattern to pull people on to the platform who wouldn’t do the work for the tipless comp alone. “Surge pricing” that can be revoked by the buyer at will. At least Uber doesn’t let riders renig on the surge fee.

*renege

iPhone autocorrect always seems to fail in just the wrong ways.

You're supposed to tip? I tried Safeway delivery and there was no option to tip. Tipping needs to just go away. It's completely arbitrary.

In order for tipping to go away, the employer needs to provide a higher level of compensation equal to the average $tips typically earned. But companies like tipping because it offloads some of the salary burden as an additional line-item expense to the buyer.

the companies won't increase wage unless people stop tipping, why increase wage if employees are happy?

Good luck convincing companies to give up fat profits. If only we had some sort of governing body to make edicts that everyone follows. Laws, if you will. They could require companies to pay a living wage.

Tipping will be necessary while Instacart underpays their employees.

If the tip is visible before the services rendered that should be separate as its basically bidding on the services not a tip. A separate tip should be editable and hidden until after services are rendered.

It would make more sense if the grocery buyers were instead bidding on a delivery service by an instacart shopper. This is really what is happening with tipped groceries delivery.

I think they fixed it partially. Last time I got instacart delivered the options were: keep your current tip, 5%, 10%, and 15%. You're no longer allowed to edit your tip to 0 but if you did tip a large sum then you can reduce your tip to 5%.

I think there is a (small, mostly hidden) option to set any tip amount. They just removed the 0% preset.

I know I’ll get downvoted for saying this. But I believe I shouldn’t have to tip and make up for a shitty employer. But at the same time I’ve had many bad deliveries due to this. So now I tip well then switch back to 0, this way I get normal treatment that is unrelated to how I tip.

I understand that people might disagree with me but I’m tired of this constant shaming when I genuinely believe that if we all stopped tipping minimum wage would increase.

As a consumer I highly recommend Amazon Fresh. No pre-paid tip bull shit if you don't want to and in 50+ deliveries I've had exactly one bad experience that I left a customer support inquiry about - which never repeated itself.

Amazon logistics are unmatched and there is a very clean continuity between deliveries that shows quality control or at least per-location notes on accessing buildings and units efficiently.

Down side is you have to refresh the checkout page throughout the day in order to get a delivery window. Sometimes you luck out and can get same-day delivery, sometimes you have to wait a couple days.

How Amazon doesn't have a queuing ability for delivery slots is beyond me. This requirement to keep checking back is absurd. My father has Parkinsons and it's very difficult for him to go to the page and refresh it. People don't understand the disappointment of doing a very difficult task to be told "try again later".

On top of that you have engineers in the Bay Area running scripts like ahertel/Amazon-Fresh-Whole-Foods-delivery-slot-finder and taking all the slots before people like my father even have a chance of getting one.

Not sure a good solution exists. There is more demand than slots. Waiting a month for groceries while stock changes and you are left with 50% of your original list doesn't work either. If he can get a slot or not it is better to know immediately so he can shop around.

This service isn't for your father, another service that provides help for people with parkijsons would assist him in these and other situations.

This service absolutely is for people like my father and people who are not like my father. A shitty user experience that is totally solvable is the problem. He's also immunocompromised with congestive heart failure and high blood pressure. Due to this terrible user experience, he's forced to leave his home to go to the supermarket in person when he's one of the people that should not be leaving his home.

A good solution is the FIFO queuing system that Ticketmaster uses for ticket sales or the one that Yelp uses for first-come-first-serve restaurants like Nojo in Hayes Valley, SF.

Let people sign up for slots, put their name on a list, and prompt them to choose slots as they come up. This can also be used to prevent people from getting two slows back to back before someone else gets their shot if you make it so they can only sign up again after their name has been called and they've gotten a slot.

Where I am in Maryland Amazon Fresh has had no delivery windows since before lockdown started. On top of that, I think they recently changed the site to block new customers. Safeway and Peapod have also had no slots. I've been using Instacart despite their hidden and obvious markups because I can get same-day with them while with others I can get nothing at all.

But once this is over I'll start going back to stores, or use a direct seller like Amazon. Inserting a third party into this process seems pointless and inefficient to me - though as current circumstances shows, it does have its advantages.

Check out https://anycart.com/ - they scrape available delivery slots for you. Also can save you a lot of time / effort and money if you prefer to order by recipe although lots of ingredients are out of stock. (disclosure: investor)

Sometimes you luck out and can get same-day delivery, sometimes you have to wait a couple days.

Which is ridiculous. Why don't they just let me schedule the delivery up to, say, 2 weeks out? They'd retain more customers and smooth out the demand spikes that are as bad for retailers as they are for consumers.

In my area at least, they do have something similar to this now called Fast & Flexible.

https://news.instacart.com/introducing-fast-flexible-order-a...

Stock availability changes on fresh food in two weeks.

Especially when you can't predict demand because you're intentionally rejecting valid market signals.

I don't need a two-hour window. Let me order a week in advance, with a two-day window. This will work better than what they're doing now, which basically isn't working at all.

Needing to have Amazon Prime is a decent disadvantage for Amazon Fresh.

Do you have to tip?

I don't use Fresh, but tipping in Prime Now and Instacart is optional. Although I've been doubling my usual tip around this time. These shoppers are taking a risk doing this job.

Are there 250k people that are willing to work a job like this right now? Sure, there's lots of unemployed, but for at least the next few months they're getting ~60% of their base salary (up to some cap) + an additional $600/week.

One of my friends sons is making $300 to $500 per day working Instacart right now. Partly because where we live the demand is high and there are not enough Instacarters to meet that demand. The delivery time is currently at least 3 days out. He is young and healthy so he doesn't really have that fear.

If Instacart really pumped up it's protocols and had a way to report health protocol violations, I'd be more inclined to use it as a customer.

I hope your friend's son is staying safe. $300-$500/day is nothing to sneeze at, but it's essentially danger pay.

I don't disagree with you. She worries about him and his safety.

500*365 = $182,500

that's amazing

And all you have to do is work every day during a pandemic.

As it should be. Food delivery in an emergency is a critical service, and should be rewarded appropriately.

not only critical-- lots of jobs are critical (janitor) but don't pay much. This is also hazardous right now. Look at some of the worst states like NJ & NY right now: There's mini outbreaks at a lot of supermarkets.

I don't know where you live, but that is not the experience of the 32 people I have furloughed (across a handful of states), except for my one guy in MA. He is the only one I know of who is getting the $600 kicker, and the only one who is getting a meaningful percentage of his base salary. Most of my people are in GA where they max out at some $365/wk and no extra $600.

So probably at some point - even if some benefit is supposed to be coming, with no particular timeframe - you want to pay your rent or get hungry, and Instacart doesn't look so bad.

All unemployed workers in the US receive the extra $600/week Federal benefit. Sometimes it takes time for the States to start paying (and they are particularly backlogged at the moment) but once approved, the amount paid is backdated to the filing date. Based on the extra Federal benefit, on average, any employee who was/is making less than $22/hour is better off on unemployment (exact number varies by State.) For this and other reasons, I imagine Instacart will have a hard time attracting workers.

Exactly the case, it is taking an extreme amount of time in some states. I have family that lost a job, it took 5 weeks to begin receiving unemployment, and another week for the additional $600/week to come in.

On the plus side, that unemployment benefit is definitely helping with social distancing - with the additional benefits they are essentially making an additional $13/hour over the job they lost and I am sure are in no hurry to find a replacement.

I think you're underestimating the number of people who need cash ASAP.

The $600 extra is nationwide, every state. If they aren't getting it, maybe they were unemployed too far before the crisis?

Otherwise, a vast # of fired workers come from relativy low paying service I dustry jobs. Even $300 capped plus the extra $600 works out to about $47,000 per year. More than most service industry workers. Also, about 35 states have caps at $400 or higher. The most impacted states are as high as $600-$700. If you're capped in one of those states and getting the extra $600, that works out to about $62,000/ year.

Please note I'm not saying this is wrong to do. I don't think a lot of people would stay on those short term benefits if they could get a steady job. But instacart is far from a steady job, and any temporary I crease in pay from the surge in demand will eventually go away. Not worth giving up those unemployment benefits while they're still available without a better job guarantee.

I thought the extra $600 is only for 4 months.

Yep, 4 months. I don't mean they'll actually get that annual salary, just that if they were making less than that annual salary before losing their job then their weekly pay will be more with unemployment + $600. As such, there's no reason to take an unsecured gig-worker job without benefits and with a higher risk of exposure. This is what I means when I say that the millions of new unemployed workers might not be flocking to instacart's 250k hiring binge.

If you’re making greater than say $36k/year (which is well below the median salary range for the US), unemployment will be a (potentially drastic) cut in pay. Sure, it’s better than nothing, but more often than not folks can barely stay above water without radical changes in their spending.

>$36k/year (which is well below the median salary range for the US)

"The U.S. Census Bureau lists the annual median personal income at $31,099 in 2016."

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

Looking at the census publication directly[0], seems Wikipedia is wrong then.

[0] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

That's household income, which includes multiple people's income for households in which multiple people work. Median income for individuals was $33,706 in 2018, the last year for which data is available. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Now you’re starting to see the problem. Everyone has their way of calculating median and each, while factually correct given the set of parameters, is incompatible for comparison to anything not using the same methods/process.

That $31k figure includes part time workers, who dream drag down the number, and who won't be getting full unemployment anyway. So it's a bad comparison.

The median full time worker in the USA make over $50k a year according to data collected by the BLS

That's for men ($991/week). For women it's about $42k ($796/week)

$1052 for men ($54,808)

$852 for women ($44,304)

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf

Average it out (more men than women in full time workforce) and it's $50k a year or so

You are looking at data from 2016, comment below has an updated source of data

It's not a pay cut with the extra $600/week added in. So why give up those benefits for an uncertain, unstable gig-worker job with Instacart?

> So why give up those benefits for an uncertain, unstable gig-worker job with Instacart?

Two reasons:

1. If you make less than the unemployment rate for the week in a gig job, from my understanding you will get topped up by unemployment to the max level you were eligible for. So taking a gig worker job has no bottom side risk (income wise) if true, just the opportunity to make more than you would on unemployment. I can’t guarantee this is true everywhere, but I’ve heard anecdotally of it being true in some states.

2. I know of / know directly a bunch of tech industry workers across who were furloughed / laid off and live in NYC. Salary range for tech jobs here is all over the place depending on position, so to simplify the math, let’s make a WAG and say $104k annually is the average (likely low, but some roles in tech in NYC are way under $100k). So their weekly pay is equivalent to $2k/week.

NY unemployment caps out at a very low ~$500/week, give or take $50, and so even with the $600 kicker (when you finally start getting it, it’s delayed and backfilled to start), it’s an almost 45% cut in salary without notice and on top of that, you might be stuck spending on cobra for insurance depending on employer generosity.

Cobra can easily cost $700/month for an individual (what I’ve paid before anyway), and could be easily over a grand for a family who has great medical coverage as is generally the case with tech jobs. So now that $1100 pay/week (which takes multiple weeks to actually start coming in generally, hope you have savings or a severance) is starting to look more like $800-900/week.

Given rents on the low end are generally greater than 2 weeks of that level pay (if not a lot more), can you start to see how unattractive unemployment gets?

I’m lucky and still am employed, but if I wasn’t, even in the best case where my employer pays cobra for some duration, I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent with 100% of the unemployment benefits (and I live in a cheaper area, for the size place, than is average for NYC metro with reasonable commutes), let alone any other bills.

I think you may not be factoring in the extra $600/week, which I mention in my comments. Even if you are, the following points still apply:

#1: That may depend on state. Where I'm at, you only get to keep half of any income you earn while unemployment, and even that caps out at $200. So gig work worth $400/week will earn you $200. Is that worth the risk of Covid exposure? States like NY & NJ, the hardest hit for unemployment as well, are having mini outbreaks at grocery stores.

#2. What you were making before you got fired isn't relevant in this discussion: This is about which is the better choice, unemployment vs. gig work (instacart) . What matters is whether you can earn more from gig work than unemployment + $600. And again, add in the extra Covid exposure risk to the gig-work equation

Regarding NY unemployment caps: Again, doesn't matter if gig work is paying less than unemployment + $600. And as always, covid exposure risk. To expand on that topic, if you or someone you live with is in a high-risk group, nothing else really matters: food shopping gig work is a very dangerous option.

Regarding health insurance: Compared to instacart, you're better off with cobra: Instacart gives access to Stride health plans. I just got a quote: $1200/month for an extremely high deductible plan ($7k) , $1450/month for a merely high deductible plan ($4k).

Regarding rent: If unemployment + $600 is the same or more than you were making, you're no worse off than when you had a job.

So the questions remains: Why would you choose a gig worker job that is unstable, lacks benefits, and exposes you to extra covid risk if you can make about the same collecting unemployment? If I were in that position, I'd stick with unemployment. If I had the opportunity for a stable job with halfway decent benefits, even if it paid less than unemployment + $600 then I'd take it. If unemployment benefits ran out, I'd be screwed: I'm in a high risk group for Covid-19, as is my wife-- gig work that gives me a high risk for exposure is a really bad option. The only reasonable option for me would be to strip down expenses to the bare minimums, ask the bank to defer mortgage payments, and hope things are better in 6 months.

You can probably make more with Instacart right now.

Depends on the area, and the areas paying the most will be the ones worst hit by COVID-19. How many of the unemployed have pre existing conditions? How many are willing to risk not just their health, even if it's just a 1/1000 chance they'd die if they're less risky and get sick, but also risk those around them if they get sick and give it to others? I have my family, my wife is at risk. Her parents, with us, are also at risk. Things aren't as simple as "you'd make more money with Instacart" even if that's true for where you live.

Does gig work disqualify you for unemployment?

I think it depends, in most states, by whether you pay into the unemployment insurance fund. Contract workers like gig workers usually don't, at least not in many states. I thought the bailout passed made provisions for gig workers though, but I could be wrong.

Any income earned would count against your unemployment benefit.

Jobless claims for the last 5 weeks totals around 26.5 million.

"In March, the company announced it will hire 300,000 new full-service shoppers on top of its existing 200,000 shoppers. It has since met that goal, and with today’s hiring news, Instacart’s shopper network will be 750,000 shoppers. The company also announced earlier this month that it is more than doubling its care team, from 1,200 agents to 3,000 agents."

I am really surprised they have that many people doing this work! That's not meant to be a comment on the work or the people or anything, just those numbers are HUGE. I had no idea they had so many people.

I was too. But then I ran across a thread on nextdoor a week or so ago. Long story short, the poster wanted a legit company as opposed to some random person purchasing stuff. I thought of explaining to the person that a random person is really what you get anyway, but I thought better of it. People do trust a company. They seem to think they do some sort of basic security check.

Or the ability to refund if something goes wrong.

My gut tells me these statistics are heavily gamified. Is it daily active users for the app the shoppers use? Is this all shoppers who signed-up AND made deliveries this month? Is this inactive shoppers from 5 months ago? What about shoppers who sign up and never actually accept a bid?

I know, slightly off-topic, but I wish instacart didn't mark up the price of each item. It feels like it lacks transparency and is some sort of dark pattern because I don't know how much I'm paying for, say, food and how much I'm paying instacart. I'd much rather see a flat % fee, say 10% or something.

That’s because it is a dark pattern of hiding the true price through death by a thousand fees.

They try to get you from every angle. They mark up the price. They add a service fee. They add a delivery fee. They add a tip (which is its own can of worms...)

If it was just “Buy whatever you want at regular price but we’ll throw on $40” a lot of people would balk.

Airbnb is also a very big user of this pattern. You can't search by total price, including fees, just the base nightly rate: which makes it difficult to compare options, since one host might have a $20 cleaning fee, and another has a $250 one.

That can make a big difference in total price for short (2-3 night) stays.

I end up with 40 browser tabs. Oh, and if you want to book via mobile app, they charge more for that. Have to use a web browser for the best price.

I built a browser extension to help mitigate this type of issue. A lot of people like to think about the cost of lodging in terms of nightly price as opposed to the total, so the extension shows the true nightly price of a stay, after account for all fees, taxes, etc. Unfortunately, right now there's not a great way to get the true* totals to show up in search results, but the extension will show you the real price per night of your stay once you're on a place's listing page.

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/airbnb-price-per-n...

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/airbnb-price-...

And it's completely open source: https://github.com/davidsawyer/airbnb-price-per-night-correc...

*Airbnb leaves out taxes in their "totals", which can skew the true total by a significant amount

I'm more forgiving about taxes being left out, only because it's an equal percentage for each listing. If I have a map of 10 listings, and they're all N% less than they should be -- I can still somewhat easily compare them, as they are all equally wrong.

There might be edge cases to my thinking, as if you map view listings along a jurisdictional boundary, there may be taxes in one city and not another.

This is awesome! Thank you so much for doing this :)

I think if you specify your dates and length of stay you can search by the total cost but I agree its certainly frustrating and for short trips makes the service annoying and nearly useless/cost prohibitive.

Overall, I think its better to have the cleaning fee separate, otherwise you penalize people who stay long and don't get cleaning service during their stay.

The cleaning fees charged by hosts are not optional. You cannot opt out of them. If Airbnb wanted to empower users, they could permit enabling/disabling those fees while querying.

>I think if you specify your dates and length of stay you can search by the total cost but I agree its certainly frustrating and for short trips makes the service annoying and nearly useless/cost prohibitive.

Unfortunately, they leave out taxes in these "totals", so you're not quite getting the full picture in the search results.

>Oh, and if you want to book via mobile app, they charge more for that.

Source?

This wasn't from an article or written source, it is from personal experience. I took the exact same listing, guest count, and dates, and got different prices in my browser vs Airbnb iOS app. I checked a 2nd listing, same story. This was about a year ago; I have not checked recently if it's still the case.

The challenge with very specific filters with Airbnb is that you will get a lot fewer results. The prices are not exactly standardized since the host's set them.

Without dates, you cannot see the true price because prices fluctuate between dates and ranges. If set the dates, and number of guests, you can see the total price and breakdown on the search page. The search page price doesn't include the taxes (I guess it's a common practice in the US), but you can see it on the listing page. The prices should be the same on mobile and web unless you search different days and the prices have fluctuated or there is a caching issue.

Airbnb is the ultimate scam in my book. No better than booking.com.

i've ordered from them pre-pandemic and they use just about every dark pattern and asshole design in the book. amazing really.

I've done part-time work for one delivery service. For certain pick-up locations, they instruct the deliverers to not give the receipt to the customer.

It just depends on the store. Not all stores have markups above the store price.

just depends on the terms of the contract they have with each store. Markup is likely shared.

From my understanding, the prices are set by the store, which can be corroborated by the DoorDash/Uber Eats models. It's impossible for Instacart to handle the prices for all these stores, so they unload that responsibility to the individual stores. The store probably forgets to drop the price, or will mark up volatile prices so they won't have to do weekly updates. I can bet you that you can also find some items that are under priced.

Fine print in app says Instacart sets the price

Which goes against what has been said here: https://youtu.be/YOKqAIMh-iA?t=1538 I'll admit both answers can be correct (retailers send the prices for instacart to baseline off of). They have historically marked up the product with their better grocers (who in turn give them a %3 discount to offset credit card processing).

My understanding is that the prices are set by Instacart, based on estimates on what they've seen the store charge in the past, plus some markup for price change risk, and probably some amount of profit/cost of maintaining the pricing data and product catalog.

That is what Shipt does, membership fee + flat fee. I interviewed with them and while I can't share a lot of what I learned out of respect, the engineering team really seemed to drill into me that Shipt is not a shady service. I ended up accepting a position local to me but when I enter the job market again I plan on reaching out to the recruiter I was working with last time.

Our local Kroger affiliate, QFC, offers grocery delivery via Instacart. The pricing appears to match the in-store pricing. A delivery fee is layered on top.

I wonder if some stores form partnerships, while others don't and Instacart does what they want there.

100% this. I made a pretty large costco order with instacart yesterday and expected to pay 15% in fees and tip, but when the order came I saw the store receipt and they overcharged me on almost every single item. The instacart order total was 35% more than what was spent at the store. The total lack of transparency is infuriating and I very much feel cheated.

That's why I buy from the stores that are "Everyday Store Prices". Stores like Costco have a markup but the app clearly says "Higher than in-store prices". It's kinda hidden https://www.instacart.com/help/section/200758534

> I know, slightly off-topic, but I wish instacart didn't mark up the price of each item.

Amazon India does this as well from my observation (one way is to look for 1 star reviews complaining about the fact) and I'm not even sure it is legal to do so given price-control via MRPs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_retail_price

They (or sellers?) go to the extent of blacking-out MRPs from product images [0], though it might be that they might not want to keep updating the images for every price change (changes don't happen often, if ever).

I caught them once and was offered ~$3 refund on an item with MRP of ~$6 which was sold at ~$9.

[0] https://www.amazon.in/Kelloggs-Muesli-Fruit-Nut-750/dp/B07CZ...

Instacart needs to fix basically everything, it is in the name but they fail pretty hard at even being a cart and the web app is slow due to client side javascript. Looks like they are competing with AirBnB in how broken their web apps are. Hell some items exist, but are shadowed and in accessible presumably due to id and class collisions.

honest question: is server side processing generally preferred? if so, why has there been much more evolution on the JS front than on the Node/Django/RoR front?

Instacarts web 11/7ths SPA is slow through their own ineptness. Instacart has failed in that no one should be talking about their site.

Huge evolution in the php world in the last few years.

Javascript as a language went through big changes. Older killer patterns like jQuery were not needed. Browsers started taking a gig of memory and offers more client side power.

This sounds exciting but without UBI and UHC (housing and health) it just feels like a half measure. Engaging in necessary skilled labor is the ideal (liberal arts and sciences) - the next best is un-skilled necessary labor (grocery delivery lives here) and after that skilled un-necessary labor (eg visual and audible/musical arts skills crafts games) and finally that leaves us with un-skilled in-necessary labor (Vices live here). If we have universal mutual aid as a guiding principal it would let people move towards where they need and want to be as their lower level maslavian needs would be apriori.

The reality as well is that many necessary forms of labor can be fulfilled by unskilled labor if we try (Automation lives here).

Can you give me some examples of skilled liberal arts labor that is in demand? I've always heard a liberal arts degree was a bad investment.

Yeah, who pays for that? You burden half the population with 50 hour work weeks to pay for the other half to sit on their ass? You call liberal arts "necessary"? No, farming and trucking is necessary. Blue collar labor is necessary. White collar labor is a luxury.

I would go further. If no one is willing to pay for it, it isn't labor, it's a hobby/leisure.

Oh wow, 250,000 new employees? That’s a lot of benefits and overhead this is going to cost them.

> That’s a lot of benefits and overhead this is going to cost them.

There are no benefits. It's independent labor

Are you positive about that?

I would’ve thought the U.S. government would crack down on a tech company pulling a stunt like that?

> Last month, some Instagram shoppers went on strike.

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