Postmates NYC treats their deliverymen like trash | Hacker News Reader

Postmates NYC treats their deliverymen like trash

peterk.co

91 pointsjohndoze23 comments

The headline is significantly linkbaity. Courier job applicant was told to arrive 5-10 mins early for interview, arrived 4 mins early and was unapologetically told to go to the next session in 30 mins.

I don't know where you are from, but 4 minutes early iisn't a 'late arrival'.

I didn't use the phrase "late arrival". I just pointed out that the OP arrived after he was told to arrive.

I took insult to the way I was treated after the fact, rather than the fact that I was locked out.

The linked article does not indicate that the applicant was told to arrive 5-10 minutes early, and it explicitly says that they were to reschedule for another day, not the next session in 30 minutes.

The linked article absolutely shows that the applicant was told to arrive 5-10 minutes early, in this image embedded in the article: http://peterk.co/content/images/2014/Jul/email.png

"Late arrivals will not be admitted, be sure to arrive 5-10 minutes early."

Indeed; thank you for pointing that out.

I agree with you to an extent. However, the flyer says the session starts at 6:00PM, not 5:50 or 5:55PM. Generally speaking, when someone says to arrive at a particular event 5-10 minutes early, it is simply so that everyone can be seated and things can get going at the prescribed time, 6:00PM, not that the participants should disregard the stated start time of the event. Plus, if the story that the company representative was rude is true, then that is not cool for the exact reason that the participant specified. The company theoretically lives and dies by its couriers, so frustrating them (perhaps it is a little harsh to say they treat their couriers like trash) right out of the gate is not exactly a good growth strategy.

> The company theoretically lives and dies by its couriers, so frustrating them (perhaps it is a little harsh to say they treat their couriers like trash) right out of the gate is not exactly a good growth strategy.

That depends on whether they're constrained by supply (couriers) or demand (customers). If they're demand-constrained, I think it makes sense to be very selective about which couriers they take on to ensure their customers have a great experience, and choosing which couriers to accept based on how early they arrive for their job interview seems like an excellent metric to use to attempt to differentiate between applicants you otherwise know very little about.

> "That depends on whether they're constrained by supply (couriers) or demand (customers)."

Treating someone decently and with respect is not a supply/demand equation. Your sentence is why everyone hates us. Are you rude to your waiter because he's on the short end of the supply/demand stick?

> "and choosing which couriers to accept based on how early they arrive for their job interview seems like an excellent metric"

No, not it doesn't. This is cargo cult hiring, no different than hiring programmers based on how well they can reason why manhole covers are round, or why one lightbulb is warmer than the next.

You can determine who is an effective courier and who isn't by having them deliver things. Just like you can determine who is an effective programmer and who isn't by having them write code.

This sort of "hiring by proxy signal even though the primary signal is perfectly testable" is endemic in our industry, and apparently isn't limited to hiring devs.

Tell people what you expect of them, and expect that of them. To do otherwise is shitty mind games no better than the classic Monty Python sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP0sqRMzkwo&feature=kp

> "an excellent metric to use to attempt to differentiate between applicants you otherwise know very little about."

... and we arrive at the core of tech industry idiocy. "We don't have enough information to make a good decision" is answered by "Let's concoct logical-sounding but completely unverified proxy signals to make the decision instead of collecting more information".

> You can determine who is an effective courier and who isn't by having them deliver things.

I agree with your post, but I have to point out that his first job was delivering himself to the presentation on time. Given zero other information, I'd take the guy who showed up pretty early over the guy who barely made it.

But as you said, that's not really enough information.

> "I agree with your post, but I have to point out that his first job was delivering himself to the presentation on time."

Yes, and he did. I'd agree also that given no other information I'd take the guy who was earlier, but that seems on the verge of "how many pieces of flair are you wearing" territory. If you expect people to be early, tell people to be early.

"The orientation begins at 6pm, late arrivals will not be accepted, but early arrivals (within reason) given additional consideration. We are after all a delivery service that aims to beat customer expectations."

How hard is that?

I'm a firm believer in communicating expectations. Not communicating your expectations and then expecting it is unreasonable, and rationalizing your own lack of communication into some twisted character-judge logic is just arrogance.

Thanks, good points, I agree that it's disrespectful not to communicate the actual expectations.

If I were a delivery company then I might decide that I didn't want to hire the people that merely show up on time, or even the people that show up a few minutes early. I want the people who go out of their way to show up a lot, lot earlier than they're expected to.

Even if that wasn't true, though, I suspect that I would not be interested in hiring the guy who didn't show up early the second time.

It depends on your understanding of the invitation. I agree that this is contentious, but I could see how Postmates would argue that the invitation only incidentally states that the orientation begins at 6:00pm. The time you are requested to arrive is 5-10 minutes before that.

This isn't about the forces of the courier market (although I'm sure there's a fascinating market in NYC). This is about breeding a culture where participants in that culture have a sense of punctuality that supersedes all else. I wouldn't have been much more surprised if showing up too early would have gotten the author turned away. It's easy to show up 45 minutes early to something if you blow out everything leading up to that appointment, which you can do because you see it as a one-off. Being on time for every appointment you make takes more diligence. It takes cutting people (even yourself) off from an arguably more interesting diversion.

I wouldn't lose much sleep over this story; the author describes another courier who's been in this situation before. He clearly failed and was given a second chance. This isn't one of those "fail once and you're banished for life" kinds of things. Postmates will probably keep slamming the door in these people's faces until they show up 5-10 minutes early (ie they learn the lesson Postmates is trying to teach).

Or, you know, they find another job, where this kind of nitpicking isn't normal.

This reminds me of Van Halen and their "no brown M&M's clause"

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232420

To sum it up, Van Halen would put in their contracts that they are to be served M&M's with no brown ones present. If they found that there was indeed brown ones, they would not play because they felt the gig was not paying attention to detail.

Seems to me that if you are applying for a job that basically is all about time (delivery in 30 mins) then it is a great litmus test to not let people who are late to the orientation have a job. These people obviously did not care enough for the job interview- It stands to reason they likely wont care to be extra fast once/if hired.

They weren't late, though? If they wanted people to show up 5-10 minutes early, make the training at 5:50 or 5:55. Don't say 6 and really mean earlier.

Exactly. "Early" is generally understood to mean before the "time in question" -- the time that serves as the frame of reference when an engagement will occur.

Asking participants to arrive early would, at least to me, strike as a caveat to those who might otherwise arrive late -- but not at the "time in question".

On time is on time, which is AT the stated time. Not before, not after.

That story would be more of an analogy if Van Halen then checked if you also removed the red M&Ms too, since red is kind of close to brown.

I may be weird in this way, but if you want me somewhere at 6pm, tell me 6pm. If you want me there at 5:50pm, tell me 5:50pm. But if you want me there at 5:50pm, don't tell me 6pm.

Well, if it's a courier service that hopes to distinguish itself by being unerringly on-time...I guess this is a good way to enforce such a mentality from the get-go. Kind of like Van Halen being a stickler about brown M&M's, except that showing up on-time for the interview is directly related to the services at hand.

(If the OP arrived at 5:55, then unless he knocked on the dot, he was technically later than the "5-10 minutes early" notice. OTOH, it seems to be a common convention that when a time is set, i.e. 6:00PM, that is the actual drop-dead time)

This is unfortunate, but I have to wonder why 557.png (the image of the phone in this post) was last edited by Photoshop. :tinfoil:

  $ extract downloads/557.png 
  Keywords for file downloads/557.png:
  mimetype - image/png
  image dimensions - 1170x869
  produced by software - Adobe ImageReady
  comment - 
  created by software - Adobe Photoshop CS6 Macintosh
  mimetype - image/png
  video dimensions - 1170x869
  pixel aspect ratio - 1/1

Perhaps to crop and compress it for the web?

Here's the original. I didn't like the way it looked.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10272371/image.jpeg

Reply on news.ycombinator.com