Autism and Employment (another PennSilverTaco thread)!

There are have been a lot of deliveries lately (normal food orders) where instead of the usual instructions to either leave it at the front door and take a picture or hand it to the customer, I am expected to call the customer and arrange a drop off location. 99% of the time in these cases, the customer doesn’t respond to calls or texts; I do not feel like waiting around, so I just click “handed to customer” or “arranged dropoff point” and leave.

 

The worst case scenario would be last February when a behind-the-times, technologically challenged older man thought I was a porch pirate stealing the very package I was delivering, and didn’t even know what DoorDash was!

That was the only Walmart delivery I’ve ever made that went even remotely bad, but while normal food deliveries let you just take a picture and send it to the customer as confirmation, Walmart makes you scan every single item at both the pickup and drop off which is just time consuming!

 

@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@Taco critter

I keep forgetting to share this...

Ring doorbells and other wireless doorbell cameras are really starting to both annoy me and creep me out; I bought my parents one (a Ring) for their 30th wedding anniversary back in 2018 and they love the thing. I’d say more than half of the residences I deliver to, from tiny shitboxes all the way up to upscale condos and townhouses, and even mansions, have them; I think they are great thing to have for safety and security, but they can lead to potential confrontations; A perfect example would be a teenage daughter living in an upscale McMansion with her parents who decides to order through DoorDash without telling mom or dad, and an understandably protective father at work who has a directly link to the Ring doorbell with his phone...

This is exactly what happened to me in either February or March of this year...

A teenage girl was home alone and ordered DoorDash, and I delivered it without incident but engaged the girl in conversation about the house, specifically the fact that pretty much every house in the neighborhood had a standby generator. This girl told me that the whole neighborhood lost power a few times or more a winter or whenever there was a strong storm; I was about to leave when a stern-sounding male voice came over the Ring doorbell and asked “Can I help you?”

Luckily, I didn’t have to say a thing because the girl stepped and told her dad that she’d ordered DoorDash and I was the delivery driver; We said goodbye and I left without incident. To date, that is the only time I’ve encountered a suspicious homeowner wirelessly through a Ring doorbell or similar device!

 

I’ve ranted about ghost kitchens before; Just last Wednesday, a couple hours before I got blindsided by a non-COVID fever and ended up staying home for four damn days, I got two separate orders that appeared to be from separate but adjacent restaurants. The first one was at a place called Anthony’s Coal-Fired Pizza, and I picked up that order without incident.

I had gotten two orders as a bundle and clicked on it because the total payout was respectable; The GPS had me going back out onto the main road and seemingly driving next door, but I should have looked closer...

I wasted all that time driving back out to the main road, only to end at the same location as the pizza place’s botched location. No mention whatsoever was made of the pizza place, so I figured it was in one of the other two restaurants; I went into the Corner Bakery and it wasn’t theirs, and then I tried to drop the order but this was one of those ones that wouldn’t let me. I realized it was the same pizza place; I calmly but firmly gave the girls working the pickup counter a piece of my mind and they said it wasn’t their problem. I gave the place a bad review for confusing pickup instructions...

 

@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@Taco critter

Ended up getting free Mexican food yesterday; The customer is a manager at another restaurant and his wife absentmindedly had the food delivered to that address instead of their house. Turns out that the customer lives like 45 minutes away; He called me up and told me I could keep both the food and the delivery fee! After confirming with the owner of the restaurant that the food was paid for, I stopped by the first customer’s place of employee on my way to the second customer so I could Mark it delivered; I had the Mexican food for lunch today!

 

Hell yeah! And besides, who doesn't love free tacos...?

 

So, as I’ve said before there is a place in Warrington called Slack’s Steak and Hoagie Shack that I refuse to pick up orders at because the owner is an absolute douchebag about Dashers having their warm bags on them; I have picked up at a lot of restaurants, and this is the only one that gives a shit. I’d say that two tenths of fellow dashers I encounter in the field actually use the provided warm bag or any bag for that matter. I have a huge one I got on Amazon that I haven’t used in a while.

Another place with a quirky requirement is a pizza place in Warminster called Santucci’s; They don’t require Dashers to have a warm bag, but they insist on seeing your phone as proof that you are supposed to be picking up an order under a specific name. They are very aggressive about this, and that’s what rubs me the wrong way. It can also be a pain in the ass making a left turn out of their parking lot, so unless it’s an order well over my required minimum of $7, I don’t think I’m gonna pick up there anymore!

I refuse to pick up at Slack’s ever again…

 

@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@Taco critter

This happened last week and I keep forgetting to mention it; I got a delivery request from the GameStop in Warminster for a staggering $13.50! I readily accepted it, but I should have known it was too good to be true...

The only other GameStop order I ever got was for $5.25 at the Warrington location back in February 2021; $5 was my minimum for accepting a delivery back then and I only turned it down because I was driving right past Star Lawnmower, they were closing soon, and I wanted to look at snowblowers. I have no idea where that order was going, but at just over five bucks I'm guessing it was local. I've gotten tips that push the final payout past $15 for local food deliveries before, so I thought this was a really generous gamer. WRONG!

I went to the Warminster GameStop location, and picked up the order, and when I confirmed the pickup that's when I realized these video games were going into Philly! I would have to drive 17 miles one way, a significant amount of it on the turnpike, in the pouring rain; On top of that, it was going into Philly...

I refuse to drive into the city anymore because it's getting so dangerous!



My response upon seeing where the GameStop order was "Holy shit!" and the clerk was like "Oh, you don't want it?"

I said "Not if it's going into Philly" and he totally understood; However, at this point, I couldn't simply unassign the order...



I had to call DoorDash support and ended up waiting more than five minutes before some foreign woman who didn't speak very good English answered; I explained the situation and she unassigned the order; I am NEVER going to accept a GameStop order again! NEVER!

 

So it has been a while since I've posted here or even gone on a Dash...

For starters, the last time I Dashed was less than a week before my fender bender on Route 663; Between my day job, car shows, and my new girlfriend I have not had time to Dash. Once car show season is over in about October, I will start doing it again to supplement my income and put some money away.

 

I finally got my friend and fellow Aspie, Doug, signed up as a Dasher; He drives a 2011 Nissan Altima 3.5SR, which gets considerably better gas mileage than my Tacoma despite having a larger displacement engine with two more cylinders...

Anyway, I bought Doug the complete DoorDash magnetic sign kit for his car as a late Christmas/Hanukkah present earlier this year (his dad is Jewish and his mom is Christian, so they celebrate both holidays), and went out of my way to get him set up on the DoorDash app after a few hiccups; Now, he's making good money doing DoorDash!

Doug has had minimal issues while doing DoorDash (I don't even think he's been doing it for more than a month and a half yet), but yesterday a customer cancelled an order after he'd already dropped it off. DoorDash took back the $7.50 Doug made for that delivery, and Doug promptly texted me asking what he should do; I'd never encountered such an issue in all my time doing DoorDash, and told Doug I believed the customer was trying to run a scam and get free food. I told Doug he should contact Dasher support and complain, and he did; DoorDash said it was a glitch on their end, that a lot of other Dashers had complained, and that he would be getting the money within a day...

Here's hoping!

 

I miss the daily dashing blog

 

I'm gonna be coming back, but keep in mind that gas was still fairly cheap when I last did it; I'm gonna have to do a couple of dry runs to see if doing DoorDash in a truck that gets poor gas mileage is economically feasible with gas at nearly four dollars a gallon...

 

I'm back!

 

That's the idea, but how the hell do I keep ice cream cold when it's almost winter and I've got the heat on...?

 

Only been on the road an hour and I've already made almost thirty bucks!

 

I got four orders last night and accepted three of them, for a total of $38.50 in under two hours; The one I declined was for a laughable $2.25 at some pizza place...

 

Now, I still keep my Uber Eats account open as an extra means of making money, but I only delivered for Uber twice last year...

Compared to DoorDash, Uber Eats is flawed, because in my opinion they use the same rules for Uber Eats drivers that they use for regular Uber drivers (passenger); Examples...

1. You must take a picture of your vehicle's insurance card everytime it expires (Which for me is every six months; With DoorDash it's one and done, as I've been doing DoorDash on and off since July 2019 and have never had to show proof of insurance on my truck since that initial first time); For driving people I can understand the need to constant proof of insurance, but for delivering food...?!?!
   
2. Since COVID, you have to take a selfie of yourself wearing a mask everyday in order to go online; Luckily, if you log off and then go back online several times in a day, you do not have to do this; But, every new day you do have to do it. DoorDash does not require proof that you have a mask.
3. Uber Eats uses the same algorithm for assigning food delivery jobs that it does for regular drivers, which can have you picking up at a Jersey Mike's in Horsham and delivering that order to Philly (True story ).
4. This does not affect me in the slightest because my truck is a 2010 model with a clear title, but Uber will not allow Uber Eats drivers to deliver in a vehicle older than 1998, while DoorDash literally doesn't give a shit what year your vehicle is (I met a girl earlier this year who was delivering for DoorDash in a 1996 Buick Regal); As for the whole salvage title restriction, I can understand that for traditional Uber in the interest of passenger safety, but who gives a shit if a person is using a vehicle with a rebuilt/salvage title to deliver food?!?! As long as the vehicle is reliable and gets the food to the customer in a timely manner, who gives a shit?!?! I guarantee you that a pizza place wouldn't care if a driver's personal vehicle had a salvage title!
5. As stated in #3, Uber uses the same algorithm for all drivers rather than giving the Uber Eats drivers their own platform, and this makes "zones" too damn big; This in turn results in people from Philly ordering from restaurants in the suburbs.
6. Uber also requires all drivers to undergo a yearly background check, which itself is a good idea; What's obnoxious is that if you miss the grace period, your account is disabled until you give them permission to run the background check and it takes them like three days to run it. By comparison, if DoorDash runs a yearly background check they don't require you to sign off on it, and it is done so seamlessly that it doesn't affect your ability to continue Dashing.

 

If you go back far enough in this thread, you'll be able to read about my brief career with a dog walking service called "Wag!" that lasted a couple weeks. I had just lost my dog Mandy to a rare congenital kidney defect at barely a year old and was having serious dog withdrawal; I figured this was the perfect way to be with dogs and make some money in the process, but it ended up being way more trouble than it was worth.

For starters, I had to shell out $30 for a background check (I did get a free T-shirt and bandana); Uber and DoorDash DID NOT charge me for the background check. I ended up not even making back what I paid for the background check before I got fed up and called it quits.

My first assignment was a house out in Washington Crossing, directly across from the Delaware River, and it was on a busy road; The owner had given instructions on where to find the key and said there was a neighborhood nearby where I could walk her dog. I let myself into the house and was greeted by a friendly male Lab mix, but I found that I could not get the key out of the lock; This a nice, fairly large, and likely very expensive house, but it was built in the 1920s and the lock was temperamental as to be expected. I could not find the neighborhood mentioned by the owner and ended up putting this dog in my truck, then driving up the road to the national park to walk him; The walk went just fine, but there was still the issue of the key being jammed in the side door, thus leaving the house susceptible to anyone who might to rob it. Of course, the owner's actual number wasn't listed for "security reasons" and was spoofed; The "spoof" number didn't work, and I ended up spending like forty minutes on the phone with some Indian customer service lady who didn't speak good English before they were finally able to get in contact with the dog's owner and have her call me...



The woman was very nice and told me to just leave the key in the door, and that her neighbor would fix it later; If all the customers and their dogs on the Wag! app were like that lady and her dog, I would have stuck it out for a bit, but of course this is the real world and that wasn't the case...

 

The second last job I took through Wag! was another mixed breed owned by divorced woman who lived at a townhouse in Bensalem; At first, this seemed like a dream come true because it was in actual neighborhood where I could take the dog on a long walk without putting it in my truck and driving it somewhere...

Getting into the house using the coded lockbox was no issue, and the dog was in a crate in the dining room. The dog sniffed my hand and let me pet him while he was still in the crate, but as I made the mistake of not putting the leash on him before letting him out...



I would later find out that this dog was rescue who, much like my Porter, is standoffish with men he doesn't know well; The dog was not the least bit mean and did not bare his teeth or growl, but even in that small townhouse I could not catch him. I searched the kitchen for dog treats, found none, and ended up attempting to lure him to me with some Cinnamon Toast Crunch that I found in the pantry...

Unable to catch this dog, I finally called the owner and luckily the number actually worked; The woman said that I was the first male walker to walk her dog and that none of the female walkers had an issue; I couldn't get the dog back in his crate, so she told me not to worry about it and that ex-husband of all people would drop by and walk the dog. I still got paid, but it was after that job that I called it quits...

 

By early August, I thought I was done with Wag!, but probably two weeks after the incident with the lock at the house in Washington Crossing, I got a call from an unfamiliar number with an area code from somewhere in California and let it go to voicemail; It was a guy from Wag! who spoke perfect English and was clearly American, which in itself was surprising!

The guy wanted to talk about "an incident", which I assumed was the key getting stuck in the doorknob at the house in Washington Crossing; The guy had a bit of a hostile tone and I was utterly dumbfounded as to what the deal was since I'd left things on good terms with the owner.

I discussed the call with my mom and played the voicemail for her, and she thought it was possibly a scam; I didn't think so, and ultimately decided to call the guy back several hours later. I was a bit snippy with him because I was expecting a bureaucratic lecture, and he asked about my tone of voice, but it all ended up being fine; I still have no idea why they called me two weeks later, and that's the last time I was ever in contact with Wag! or the people who run it...