My dad drives for Uber Eats as well as Skip the Dishes (a Canadian gig work food delivery app). He gets paid more per hour on Skip but the app will not allow him to work as much as he wants, it forces him to sign up for 3-4 hour shifts a week ahead of time. Sometimes Skip will only give him 1-2 shifts in a week (8 hours total work), which is simply not enough money to get by.

So he uses Uber Eats to pick up the slack. The app lets him go online and go offline any time he wants — no shifts, no scheduling ahead. He’s also completely free to reject as many orders as he wants until he gets ones that offer a bigger tip. Skip, on the other hand, penalizes his earnings if he falls below 80% moving average accept rate (over the last 10 orders).

If Uber were forced to employ all of their drivers full- or part-time, he would lose all of the flexibility he now enjoys. He’d have scheduled shifts and have to clock in and clock out at specific times on specific days. He’d likely also lose the ability to reject orders entirely.

I can tell you right now, he would hate that. So would many other gig workers, who take full advantage of the flexibility to be able to look after their families and otherwise live their lives. Compare that with the chaos that is the life of a retail worker stuck with an automated shift scheduling system and zero start/stop time consistency and zero flexibility.