Imagine Luxury

You’re providing a luxury service at a bottom-wage price. This is the most galling element: Having hot food delivered on a whim is ostensibly one of the most upper-class things imaginable. It’s entirely a luxury service, but people treat it like it should be a “deal,” or at a rock-bottom price with absolutely perfect service each and every time.
Luke Gardner "I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare" The Atlantic

With all due respect, Mr. Gardner lacks imagination. When I was younger, and living, I might add, in greater Chicagoland, having hot food delivered on a whim was quite common, so long as one had a taste for pizza or Chinese. These were the foods that could charge enough to make delivery worthwhile, yet didn't charge so much that people expected a better experience than eating at home could provide.

It was most certainly a discretionary service, in that you didn't need to have the food delivered. Going to a place that didn't deliver (or one that charged extra for the service) and either eating there or taking it home yourself was an option for the slightly more frugal. But it wasn't a luxury. It wasn't something that demonstrated a certain level of wealth, sophistication and/or status for people who engaged in it, unless their peer group was quite impoverished or visiting from a third-world nation.

The fact if the matter is that people who are willing to drive food from a restaurant to a home in return for a bottom-wage are thick on the ground, for any number of reasons. And that is why the wages are so low. That, and most, if not all, of the people who use GrubHub, or have their packages delivered by Amazon are not themselves "upper-class." The upper class have better ways of obtaining hot food on a whim and more secure ways of having things delivered to them. The people whom Amazon Flex and Grub Hub are serving are looking for absolutely perfect services at rock-bottom prices because absolutely perfect service helps them to feel better about themselves and rock-bottom prices are all they can afford without worrying about their finances.

One a recent trip to New York State, a heat wave was settling in just before we were preparing to leave. The nearest retail outlet to our hotel was a Walmart, so I hopped over there to buy a handkerchief to stuff in a pocket and mop the sweat from my face when the Sun came for me. I found a packet six thin squares of cloth for the "rock-bottom" price of three dollars. As I pulled one out of the package and looked at it, I realized how desperately cheap it was. The napkins that the airline handed out to be used with dinner were miles better than this. I would gladly have taken one halfway-decent handkerchief for that same three dollars. But six, I recalled, is more than one. And so I had six nearly-worthless handkerchiefs, rather than one useful one. Because the ability to buy six handkerchiefs (certainly more than anyone needs at one time) helped Walmart customers to feel better about themselves and fifty cents apiece spared them from worrying about their finances. And thin cotton, assembled by people for whom American poverty would be considered a luxury, is inexpensive. Enough so that there's a margin to be had at six for three dollars. Because there is always more where that came from.

And that's the thing about Amazon Flex or Grub Hub drivers. There are always more where they came from. If The Atlantic's Alana Semuels never gets behind the wheel of a car again in the service of delivering packages for Amazon, Amazon will never miss her. There are thousand other people waiting for the work. And because it doesn't take any particular preexisting skill or acumen, most of them are likely competent enough that it doesn't matter to Amazon which ones they pick. My father told me that the only way one makes good money working for someone else is to do something that other people can't do, or something that other people won't do. Gig-economy courier satisfies neither of those.

And that's why the pay is so low, and the expectations are so high. Someone else is willing to claim that they can do that work both better and cheaper, and they're willing to take the risk that they can somehow make that work, because they don't have any better options. And while the services of the desperately poor may be a luxury good in that they're a discretionary purchase, they haven't been the mark of true luxury for some time.