Gig Workers Have Nowhere to Pee (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Gig Workers Have Nowhere to Pee (2020)

vice.com

67 pointstype042 comments

> Uber and DoorDash said they do not have any specific rules about bathroom access. Grubhub, Seamless, and Instacart did not respond.

Can anyone familiar with policy making in gig economy companies explain why the spokesperson wasn’t told to say, “We think it’s not okay. Going forward, the first offense for a restaurant that denies bathroom access to a driver will be a 24 hour ban from our platform.”

Courage is contagious. Why not take a stand?

GrubHub and DoorDash are adversarial extractive operations, and it is not in the best interest of any restaurant to deliver through them. They already squeeze all or most of the profit out of anything they pickup and deliver.

Sadly, many restaurants don’t have a choice, in these days of COVID-19. They work with GrubHub and DoorDash at zero profit or even a loss, or they go completely out of business. Those are the only two options.

So, it’s no wonder that the restaurants wouldn’t want to provide bathroom facilities for the drivers.

Uber is just as bad (or worse), but they’re in a slightly different line of business, unless you’re talking about UberEats.

> Sadly, many restaurants don’t have a choice, in these days of COVID-19. They work with GrubHub and DoorDash at zero profit or even a loss, or they go completely out of business. Those are the only two options.

Is that true? Are restaurants charged separately from grubhub's breakdowns of the fees? They also say the restarant can charge more than their normal menu price if they choose.

Grain of salt and all, but a year or so ago a local deli owner said caviar charged 17% of the bill as a fee.

What would be courageous is Uber and DoorDash treating their drivers as employees, and not exploiting them through creative financial accounting processes (including, historically, using customer tips to offset the fees they owed to the drivers).

> Can anyone familiar with policy making in gig economy companies explain why the spokesperson wasn’t told to say, “We think it’s not okay. Going forward, the first offense for a restaurant that denies bathroom access to a driver will be a 24 hour ban from our platform.”

> Courage is contagious. Why not take a stand?

This seems a bit like suggesting to use a band-aid to re-attach a severed limb. Gig economy firms thrive on exploitation. The lower the exploitative wages, the higher the parasitic economic rent they can extract.

My point is, this is a problem with the system.

If you think peeing is the only thing tainting the gig economy world, I'm afraid much exploitation has been successfully hidden from you due to your privileged position as a knowledge worker... or you've somehow been able to stay blissfully unaware (doubtful)... or you're ok with this level of exploitation - in which case, please please go make some new friends, try finding a therapist, and/or come join your local DSA chapter and join/set up a union with colleagues.

Edit, I loved this take:

"What I want is to see Uber’s technology become a protocol. Same with Airbnb, same with Postmates, same with other companies in the gig and sharing economies. Same with lots of other important technology companies, while we’re at it. Obviously this can’t happen overnight, but if the technology is useful enough to provide real value, then it’s too useful to be subjugated to the whims of profit forever. I would love to see these technology platforms either fully decentralised, or centralised in such a way that the entity running it is not-for-profit and, ideally, accountable to all stakeholders. The actual mechanisms for making this work are beyond the scope of this post, but I want to throw this idea out there and get people thinking about it, because it’s the only way of making the future work for all of us.

I suspect — and feel free to call me naive, but I don’t think I’m wrong— that the majority of people working on Uber’s technology would prefer to build a system whose social impact they could be proud of. Based on my admittedly limited sample size of people I know in the tech industry, I feel like lots of people working at companies like Uber are there because they want to solve interesting technical challenges and deploy useful innovations in the world. I believe that if given the choice, most would prefer to build a system that makes the world a fairer and more equitable place. The problem is that this choice is, for the most part, withheld from them, and whatever individual intentions they may have are inevitably co-opted by the capitalist structure in which they make their living. By working together to counteract these prevailing systematic forces, though, they may be able to open up a space in which to envision alternatives."

Source: https://medium.com/@dellsystem/dont-put-your-faith-in-uber-7...

To make things worse, gyms are shutdown. They were a reliable 24/7 location if the driver had membership.

There needs to be infrastructure for true public restrooms in urban areas.

Uber et al needs to make mandatory access to its drivers a condition of doing business with the food service.

No joke, I kept a downtown SF gym membership mainly for the restroom access. There's also one restaurant I know of that still operates esssentially a public restroom in the core.

Otherwise Starbucks has become the national public restroom, which their president commented on in print a while back:

Starbucks: No Purchase Needed To Use The Restroom

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/11/610337214...

The most egregious example that doesn't have a restroom is the downtown Market St. McD. Tourists literally ask for one every 10 minutes there, get told no, then it quickly dawns on them they have a serious problem to deal with.

The infrastructure can easily be created by not outlawing pay toilets. As a bonus, and unlike what you see with free toilets, those tend to be kept clean.

Pay toilets have to be the most capitalist dystopian thing I've ever heard of. I apologize for the strong response, and don't mean it to reflect on you as a person at all, but the idea of charging someone for something that is literally part of the biological definition of life is kind of shocking.

They should treat it like the Supreme Court recently treated homeless people camping on the sidewalk. They have a biological need for somewhere to sleep; if the city cannot provide enough places for them to sleep, they must allow them to camp on the sidewalk. In this case, if there are not enough public restrooms, public businesses (i.e. open to the public, not publicly traded) must allow non-customers to use their restroom.

It seems crazy to me that a) we know everyone needs to use the bathroom, b) there are no requirements for access to restrooms (beyond ADA stuff), c) urinating or defecating in public is illegal. I don't find it crazy that urinating or defecating in public is illegal; I find it crazy that we've put ourselves in a spot where it is possible to be put in a position where there is no legal means for you to carry out a biologically required task.

These poor drivers are just getting caught in the crossfire of the class war between restaurant owners and delivery companies, and are being deprived of human dignity as a result.

I think there's also an unintentional sexist effect here. The article keeps talking about people peeing in Gatorade bottles. I'm a male, so I could be wrong here, but that doesn't seem like a viable option for women. Women have another needs for the bathroom as well. I can't imagine putting in or changing a tampon in the car is an easy or pleasant experience.

And lastly, do you really want your food delivery driver to be making a choice about whether they want to pay $1 to use the bathroom where they can wash their hands, or just peeing in a bottle and going around with dirty hands? I would strongly prefer that wasn't a choice they considered. I will happily pay another $0.25 or whatever that goes to the restaurant to cover paying for the water, toilet paper and soap they use to remain hygienic.

Being willing to pay $.25 to support your drivers paper and water usage is the way to frame it for restaurants.

>Pay toilets have to be the most capitalist dystopian thing I've ever heard of. I apologize for the strong response, and don't mean it to reflect on you as a person at all, but the idea of charging someone for something that is literally part of the biological definition of life is kind of shocking.

You also, and for the same reason, object to selling food, right?

A lot of workers have nowhere to pee, for example bus drivers. Often they avoid drinking water for this reason, allowing themselves to be chronically dehydrated.

At least for government employees, if not all non-office workers, government should simply mandate to that any building open to the public must allow use of its bathrooms.

This is actually a result of the opioid crisis more than anything. If you leave your bathrooms open then you'll get a lot of people using then to use drugs. And a lot of them will overdose in those bathrooms (which is a serious problem for staff).

This problem was so bad that a lot of places installed blue lighting to make it difficult to see veins to use for injections.

So the story goes.

A few years ago I was doing granite work. On installs, if the customer's plumbing wasn't hooked up, we'd have to find a bush somewhere...or so I thought.

One day, I was digging around in the back of the truck looking for some acetone and grabbed out a bottle of some yellowish brown liquid. Suddenly, head installer starts freaking out a bit going on 'no no don't touch that.' After a moment or two it dawned on all of us what it was...

So after hastily tossing the bottle aside and a round of 'what the fucks!!?' from everybody, our coworker explained how he was worried about using the bushes in case some came up and filmed it and put it on youtube.

Yeah...peeing locations can definitely be an issue at work in general.

in finance people joke about the 'broker's bottle', which is what the sales people use under the desk if clients and markets both require their non-stop attention.

i mean, it's just a joke, nobody really has these in an air-conditioned office, and these desk workers are generally still pretty well taken care of, all things considered. by the time one is 5 years in, one should be able to go 12 hours without ever leaving their chair, it's just part of the on-the-job training.

It makes sense, especially if workers are on a project in a residential area. I've heard of drunk people being threatened with the sex offender list when they were caught urinating on a bush after dark. People might take drastic steps if strange men are urinating in the lawn adjacent to where their kids are playing.

True enough. Though, any jobsite we were on lacking indoor plumbing also typically didn't usually have children actively living in them when we were there working.

But I do see the point.

I live in a vibrant residential Chicago neighborhood where developers are constantly tearing down old houses and building new ones. The largest two demographics here are small children and Polish speaking construction workers.

& there goes their kidneys

Pretty sure there are usually for places for bus drivers to pee at layover points. I believe the CTA even constructs toilets or deploys portapotties for this purpose, if there is no amenable business or institution (for example, https://www.google.com/maps/@41.924152,-87.8020309,3a,75y,23... sure looks like a toilet). Now, it's possible that COVID has affected some of these agreements (e.g. if the institution is a museum or something that is temporarily closed) and of course some of the bus routes are long and sometimes drivers must have to go in the middle.

One partial solution to the problem would be introducing the style of public toilet you see in Amsterdam.[1] They amount to little more than a sewer grate with a privacy shield. There's no real need for cleaning these other than how you'd clean the street already, and it's a better alternative than pissing in a bush.

Of course it leaves the problem unresolved for women, and I'm unsure how you'd go about tackling that.

[1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNPlqgm_lXc/UZ7-2rB3arI/AAAAAAAANY...

Unfortunately these are all being removed and I find it super sad :(

a friend of mine recently moved. there’s a shed in the backyard that’s not included in the rental. inside the shed is a bucket with a toilet seat on it. apparently their landlord is somehow connected to a local produce delivery business, and provides the location for drivers to relieve themselves.

i’m not sure why they didn’t just build a composting toilet, or rent a portapotty. this doesn’t seem like a great solution, and i wonder if it’s legal.

despite how gross and disgusting it is, consider that even this shows way more empathy and concern for the basic human needs of workers than the large gig apps have been able to express.

Damn I never gave this a thought, maybe partner restaurants or pickup spots can accommodate them?

I want to live in a society with plentiful, clean, public restrooms and comfortable bus stops.

How can this happen?

By giving the most desperate people in our society some dignity, and better places to hang out than in bus stops and public restrooms.

Worked in gas station, tons of people stop just to use restrooms.

When I used to commute a long distance to work, I had 3 strategic restroom locations along my route - a Target, a gas station, and a catholic church.

In all the long-distance traveling my wife and I have done over the past twenty years here in the US, we quickly got into the habit of locating every McDonalds and Starbucks anywhere close to the route we would be taking. They have traditionally had the best quality bathrooms, and we didn’t mind buying some food or drink while we were there.

The problem came when Starbucks started opening “stores” inside of Target. Those were really hard to detect in the app, and Target bathrooms are not nearly so nice.

Worked at grocery stores and gas stations. A lot of people stopped just to use the restroom.

We also had homeless people use restrooms to bathe, and drug addicts use the bathroom as a place to quickly take a hit. Also had people defecate on the floor, write messages on the wall with feces, etc. Because of this, multiple places I worked didn't provide restroom access to the public. It sucks for people who simply and respectfully use the restroom. But at the same time (in one specific location at least), it was a matter of having to clean up fecal matter or drug paraphernalia or not letting the public use the restroom. My sub-living-wage job simply didn't pay me enough to put up with that crap.

That being said, if you let 'customers' use your restroom, you should let gig workers do the same. They aren't your direct customer, but show them a modicum of respect and dignity.

The local Safeway near me has one of the most repulsive bathrooms for this reason. There's no reason that you can't respectfully clean up your mess if you've made one.

This is one of those things in Europe that in my anecdotal experience works better: pay toilets. For some reason all the bathrooms I had to pay for in England, Germany and Belgium were clean. The larger ones at Christmas Markets even had bathroom attendants, so any problems or cleanup were immediately addeseed.

It's unfortunately the base level of civility has fallen to the point where you can't just walk in most public places and use a restroom any more. Definitely one of those cases of a few people ruining it for everyone else.

Pay toilets were common in the US up until the 70s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets...

If someone proposed pay toilets in my town vocal citizens who have never done a thing for the homeless except express “compassion” from afar would be up in arms because of how unfair that would be to the homeless; as if the presence of pay toilets would somehow be more unfair to the homeless who are already various levels of creative in dealing with the problem. So the status quo remains because we haven’t solved homelessness.

Yeah it's called slactivism - if you can send thoughts and prayers and do a little social media virtue signaling well job done and you didn't have to leave the house.

For a long time this sort of worked for both sides as the bathroom foot traffic would often buy some small item in the store and most items sold at gas stations have a hefty markup. Buying a Coke for $3 might net as much profit for the gas station as buying $30 of gas. Besides, the gas station can never tell if you're going to buy gas and just want to pee first.

Since the pandemic, a lot of gas stations summarily closed their bathrooms - even to customers. It sucks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com