We use Shipt regularly and it’s a bit different than the other delivery apps. I now have a collection of favorite shoppers. While jobs still go to the pool, these people have a first shot at my order. I’ve learned the general availability of my favorites and tend to place orders when I think there’s a high chance they’ll be available to shop the order.
While it’s still not me selecting an individual contractor, it’s not the randomness of other apps.
That's enshittification for your use of the service, and enshittification for the workers, too.
I don't worry about which USPS mail carrier delivers my mail -- I know it will be consistent and good enough. I happen to know who my usual carrier is, because I work from home and she likes to say hi to cats if they are in the front window. I also know the face of the usual UPS driver and the usual FedEx driver; they aren't here 6 days a week, but often enough that I recognize them.
In none of those cases do I expect a quality change based on the driver. I expect competence, and I get it so often that the exceptions really stand out.
From the Shipt workers' perspective, they now need to worry about customers discriminating among them rather than just getting the job done.
These Shipt people, though, have to interpret your preferences and essentially act as your agent as they decide what to pick from the store shelves on your behalf. Sometimes they make decisions that you probably would have made, sometimes less so; sometimes they’re confident that you understand each other, sometimes they’re nervous and want to hassle you about each of 10 different little decision points. When you find somebody I work well with, isn’t it a positive that you get to try to keep that relationship for future transactions? Isn’t this the same dynamic underpinning virtually every in-person service, from your hair cutting human to the tradies who do work on your house to the dry cleaner?
For that matter, doesn’t it create a perverse incentive if worker doesn’t believe that trying to understand my preferences will ever pay off? That it’s a one-off game rather than an iterated series of games, and effort to excel and bring human judgment to bear is wasted because there’s no way to reward it?
Doesn’t the enshittification tend to require as a prerequisite that a platform is successful at alienating service providers from service recipients (and from each other) like that?
The service provides a large pool of people that ensure the service is delivered. However, I have a preference for a certain group of people to provide that service. I tip well and consistently get service from my preferred shoppers. When they don’t take it, it falls to the general pool and is picked up quickly.
I personally just care that my groceries get shopped for me. Having someone who already knows my preference is just a small perk.
If anything shoud be a regulation, this feels like the one to add: platform opportunities must estimate and prominently display the estimated time to complete the task and the minimum payout after platform fees.
Remember, consumers are using platform apps like Uber because they don't trust the drivers on the other side.
Oh, I thought it was because "push button to summon car" is, like, super convenient.
I don’t understand where these complex theories about ride sharing apps come from.
People use Uber because it’s easy and it’s an app. Taxis did not have a universal app at the time.
If you talk to young Uber users, chances are they wouldn’t actually know how to call a traditional taxi if you asked. It’s either Uber or Lyft because those are the apps they’ve heard about.
Also, it’s common for drivers to work for both Uber and Lyft at different points, maybe the same time. There’s no real element of trust difference between the two options.
> Target… offered same-day delivery from local stores. Those deliveries were made by Shipt workers, who shopped for the items and drove them to customers’ doorsteps. Business was booming… and yet workers found that their paychecks had become… unpredictable. They were doing the same work they’d always done, yet their paychecks were often less than they expected.
Edit:
> On Facebook and Reddit, workers compared notes. Previously, they’d known what to expect from their pay because Shipt had a formula: It gave workers a base pay of $5 per delivery plus 7.5 percent of the total amount of the customer’s order through the app. That formula allowed workers to look at order amounts and choose jobs that were worth their time. But Shipt had changed the payment rules without alerting workers. When the company finally issued a press release about the change, it revealed only that the new pay algorithm paid workers based on “effort,” which included factors like the order amount, the estimated amount of time required for shopping, and the mileage driven.
Even convoluted ones, like commissions for sales, or shared tips, are covered by law. I do know this, as I know a number of salespeople and servers.
I suspect that the government needs to know what to tax, and obfuscated pay, means obfuscated taxes.
You're taxed on what you're paid. The government doesn't do a parallel calculation and tax you on that.
My experience is that governments are quite interested in where the money goes.
That is money that leaves the employer’s account and goes into the employee’s account (or government’s account for tax withholding).
I don’t see how this can be obfuscated.
Not my area of expertise. That's why I pay an accountant.