Autism and Employment (another PennSilverTaco thread)!

The very last time I picked up an order from that pizza place in Peddler’s Village, it took me to a mansion that looked like the Corleone Compound, in a poorly lit neighborhood, full of mansions, in the middle of nowhere, that in itself also strongly resembled the Corleone Compound!

 

I refuse to deliver to or within New Hope anymore; The last time I believe I actually made a delivery in New Hope was the day I hit 100K miles in my truck (July 2019). Occasionally, you might get lucky and delivery to a well laid out subdivision, but in New Hope it's almost always getting delivered to an apartment with no public and/or off-street parking, or a reincarnation of Vito Corleone's compound in a sprawling, poorly lit neighborhood in the middle of nowhere!

 

Yes

But only on weekends, and even then I end up cancelling my dash because something more worthwhile comes up like hanging out with friends...

I think I'm gonna go back to "only during the holidays when the truck is decorated" like I originally promised myself!

I am, however, going to try Uber Eats tonight just for grins to see if they attempt to send me into Philly...

 

Why does New Hope suck for DoorDash?

• It is a tightly-packed town that was built before people had automobiles.
• It is a glorified tourist trap that is chronically overcrowded.
• Free public parking is nonexistent*.
• People are monumental dickheads if you park in their reserved spaces**, even if the spot is very poorly marked and/or you are incredibly nice and apologetic.

As I said above, you might get lucky and make a delivery into one of the subdivisions like Riverwoods, where an old friend of mine used to live, and which was in easy walking distance of downtown New Hope. Most of the time, however, deliveries in New Hope are either going to apartments with nonexistent parking or to hard-to-find Corleone-style mansions in the middle of nowhere...

*The same is true of Doylestown, but there is much more parking to go around and the parking rate is marginally cheaper than in New Hope; If you are willing to walk a good distance from your vehicle, the multistory parking garage down the hill past the courthouse is always open to the public!

**Again, the same is true of Doylestown; I have gotten into more confrontations with people over reserved parking than I care to mention, always because the space was poorly marked or I only intended to leave my truck there for a few minutes and the rightful owner of the space showed up unexpectedly. Fortunately, I know a lot of people in Doylestown including two of the three parking enforcement guys, so I'm able to get away with things in Doylestown that I can't get away with in the other quaint little Boroughs of Bucks County...

 

So, going back to last night, I had my cousin on Bluetooth and I realized I was being directed to Hart's Tavern in Peddler's Village...

I cancelled the order, turned around in the parking lot of the Giggleberry Fair, and started driving back in the direction of Doylestown; All the while, I was still talking to my cousin on the Taco's Bluetooth system...

At some point, while I was still on the phone with my cousin, an order came in from a restaurant I'd never heard of. I initially accepted it, but then cancelled it after realizing the restaurant was in Lambertville; For those of you don't know, Lambertville is just across the bridge from New Hope, in New Jersey. Lambertville is generally nowhere near as congested as New Hope is, but it comes pretty close sometimes.

My cousin had to take a call from work, so we hung up; No sooner had we done this, then I started getting hammered with orders from both New Hope and Lambertville!

 

I must have gotten more than a half dozen orders from New Hope and Lambertville as I was driving back towards Buckingham Township from Peddler's Village! A lot of these orders were in excess of twelve dollars too! One of them, if I remember correctly, was for $18.14! I have NEVER gotten a payout that big from DoorDash (though one time, a customer gave me a $20 cash tipout)…

Maybe I should have turned back around and gone to New Hope, but it's always very hit or miss; There's a very good chance that the orders would have dried up after one or two deliveries...

 

Last night seemed to be unusually busy in the New Hope/Lambertville area, and I probably would have made a lot more than the $24 I made from three orders in the Doylestown area in just under an hour and a half; However, to me the extra pay wasn't worth the aggravation of contending with the lack of parking in New Hope!

 

Last night's orders were less aggravating than usual, because I was more than halfway between Doylestown and New Hope...

What really pisses me off is when I'm in Doylestown, and orders from restaurants in New Hope start coming; The problem is that these are generally during moderately busy times at best, and the payout for accepting these orders is only marginally higher than the ones in Doylestown, if not exactly the same! However, the key difference is that I'd have to drive all the way out to New Hope before I got paid; I don't kept paid for driving from Doylestown to New Hope!

My truck is more than ten years old and exactly 90 miles away from hitting 109K as of this post; The depreciation on my truck has more or less stabilized, and I could care less about accruing miles or the loss of resale value that comes with it! What annoys me in this case is the cost of gas, and the wear and tear on items like tires...

The tires are actually the biggest thing, because the only thing my truck generally needs is an oil change! It's a Tacoma, for crying out loud!

 

I seriously think that DoorDash was so short on drivers last night that they tried to lure me to New Hope!

 

I decided to try DoorDash in Bryn Athyn this evening; Biggest mistake ever! I picked up from this burger place in Southampton, and the ordered ending up going to an apartment complex with a Philadelphia address; Luckily, it was not in the city of Philadelphia. I actually chatted with the customer, and he agreed with me that it was bullshit I had signed up to deliver in Bucks County and wound up making a delivery into Philly!

From now on, I'm only delivering in the Doylestown area!

 

Seriously? Who’s going to be ordering food at 1:30 to 2:30 in the morning? And what’s more, what restaurant will be open that late?!?!



I do know of a pizza place in Doylestown Borough that stays open until 3am on Saturdays to serve drinks before they Uber home, but this pizza place has its own delivery drivers (albeit that go home at 9pm) and doesn’t work with DoorDash as far as I know.

 

I also tried doing an “early shift” once, but got exactly ZERO orders...

 

WTF Uber?

 

I’ve made 422 deliveries since July 15th, 2019!

 

I did Uber Eats fairly regularly from December 2018 to July 2019 and made 144 trips...

 

As big of a pain in the ass as driving for DoorDash can be at times, I do credit them with keeping money in my bank account during my roughly two months of unemployment last summer!

 

I’m only doing it on weekends; Plus doing DoorDash means I don’t have to help out around the house...

 

What’s wrong? Once I start making more money at my real job, I’ll stop DoorDash; I gave up on Uber Eats six months ago because they would have me pick up orders in the suburbs and then send me into Philly with those orders!

 

@Taco critter

Now DoorDash is telling me I have to pay taxes because I earned more $600 between January and December 2019!

 

Yup! Obviously I'm gonna have to do it this year because it's the law, but I refuse to work a job where I'm an independent contractor! I refuse to be taxed as both employee and employer! My job at Navmar, all the tax stuff is taken care of and I just fill out some forms...

The same thing happened at the detail shop; Accountants deal with all the tax stuff that I'm too lazy to do, and I just fill out some forms and file the returns...

My boss at the bar initially wanted to put me on as an independent contractor, but I protested this after hearing some stories from another guy who was "independently contracted". The likelihood of a hefty tax return diminishes when you are an "independent contractor" and you often end up owing more money to the government. I believe I had to fill out a 10-99 once during my time at Puck, but I didn't end up owing more money to the government. I am officially going on hiatus from DoorDash until I know how this is going to effect me. Thankfully, I have made less than $250 from DoorDash between January 6th and and January 19th. If I end up being in the hole to the government when I file my taxes this year, I'm done with DoorDash!