DoorDash Confidential with Charlie (another PennSilverTaco thread)!

Let me tell y’all about the time I accidentally “broke into” a closed McDonald’s on New Year’s Eve in 2018...

I got a request from someone named Gino from this McDonald’s on Route 309 in the Line Lexington area, where Bucks County and Montgomery County straddle each other. I arrived at the McDonald’s and found the building strangely dark and the parking lot strangely empty. However, there were lights on in the restaurant so I parked the truck and walked to the main entrance. The front door was unlocked and opened, and I walked inside. There was nobody inside, but there were enough lights on inside that it had not yet occurred to me that the place was closed. I went to the men’s restroom to see if anybody was in there, and that’s about the time the alarm system went off. Not wanting to get caught inside, I bolted out of the place and made a beeline for my Tacoma. I cancelled Gino’s order and immediately got a request from the Popeye’s Chicken around the corner, so off I went.

The Popeyes appeared open, with lights on and employees inside, but I found the doors to be locked. I knocked on the door, but the employees ignored me. Two orders from closed fast food joints?!?!

My theory was that the idiots running the respective restaurants had forgotten to shut off the app on their ends, allowing customers to place “phantom orders” from places they believed to be open. Pissed, I started mindlessly driving back in the direction of the McDonald’s hoping I’ll get an order from another place that’s actually open.

As I approach the McDonald’s, I can see that there’s a police Tahoe parked out front. I decide to stop, and that’s when I see an older RAV4. The owner of the RAV4 tells me he is also an Uber Eats driver who got a request from “Gino”, and that the cop arrived about the same time as him, saying he’d received a call from dispatch about the burglar alarm at the restaurant going off. The cop was currently clearing the McDonald’s. When the cop came back out, I explained to him that I was an Uber Eats driver and that I was the one who set off the alarm. We all had a good laugh, and about this time the general manager of the McDonald’s pulled up to lock the place up.

I ended up throwing in the towel and driving home, because by then it was pouring rain and I wanted to spend the last couple hours of 2018 with my family.

 

So my absolute biggest complaint about Uber Eats is that there is no “limitation zone”. With Doordash, if you arrange to deliver in Doylestown, there’s more than a 98% chance that you will not be going more than 5 or 6 miles outside of Doylestown Borough. Uber Eats lets people who live in Philadelphia order from restaurants in the suburbs. Even if you stay in the suburbs, the “hot zones” are spread quite far. One time, I was doing Uber Eats in Montgomery County (I believe in the Blue Bell area). I got an order from some mom and pop health food place in the middle of nowhere, already quite far from my location when I got the order, and it ended up going to a customer another 20 minutes away from the goddamn health food place!

 

For example, one time I got an order at a Jersey Mike’s Subs in Horsham, which is a good half hour from Philly under ideal conditions! Uber Eats does not tell you where you where the order is going until you’ve picked up the food. You can turn down the order, and this does not give you a bad customer review, but doing this after initiating the delivery puts your account “on notice” with Uber.

Being the inexperienced rookie Uber driver I was at the time, I took the Jersey Mikes order into the city.

On the what may have been not only the same trip but the same order as well, I ended up in a part of Philly that was “borderline”. As such, I was really nervous about stopping for longer than I needed and was going faster than I probably should have. The address came up quickly and I pulled to the side of the road. There was snow on the ground, and a RWD pickup with Michelin all-seasons is not the best choice for these conditions. I underestimated how slippery it would be, and almost rear-ended a parked Mitsubishi Outlander when I tried to brake in the snow...

 

I'll trade ya. Def get MPG murdered on the commute home everyday. Mornings I do pretty well because the streets are pretty quiet still.

 

Having avoided clobbering what was probably the nicest vehicle on that street (a shiny blue late model Mitsubishi Outlander), I got out of the truck and went across the street to the house matching the address. The house was actually a small church that had been turned into a house, and while it was habitable, it was in rather dilapidated condition (not that this surprised me). It gave the appearance that it was presently occupied, but that nobody was home. There were lights on inside in the back, but the only outside light on was next to a side door in the back. I knocked on the door (no doorbell if I remember correctly) and there was no answer. I both called and texted the customer, and got nothing. I was too afraid of getting mugged and/or shot if I knocked on that back door, so I left it on the front porch with the note to both Uber and the customer that I’d been unable to reach the customer and had left the food at the front door.

I immediately ran back across the street to my truck, got in, locked the door, started the engine, and buried the accelerator...

I still got paid for that order and my customer service ratings were not affected!

 

Stick shift?

 

Nope. Just big heavy tires and a fair amount of weight.

 

While I think the DCSB is one of the three best looking cab/bed configurations, I think the bed is damn near useless...

If I’m getting another automatic Tacoma, may as well be DCLB since that’s the only configuration not available in manual...

 

Good luck finding one for sale. They're unicorns that get snapped up instantly around here. That's why I have a DCSB.

 

A stick shift DCSB or any DCLB?

 

In UT, either. But DCLBs were few and far between, and the ones I did find got scooped up in hours.

 

So you’re saying DCSBs are fairly common?

 

Totally. Not quite as bad as socal, but def one of the more common platforms. If I remember right, like 80-85% of tacomas made are DCSB configuration.

 

So in SoCal, you're saying the region is inundated with DCSBs? That's because 90% of people buying trucks don't actually need a truck, and thus don't need a real bed!

 

Also, I would recommend against doing Uber Eats. As I said, their system is very unrefined and they will send you all over the place.

One of the few times I purposely drove into the city just to try it out, I ended up having to take an emergency bathroom break. In Philly, unlike the suburbs, public bathrooms are far and few between. I stopped at the most common first choice for a public bathroom, the venerable gas station. There was a sign on a door staring me in the face as soon as I walked into the convenience store saying "NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS." The jerk behind the counter would not violate this policy no matter how nicely I asked him.

The gas station was located on the the corner of Henry Avenue and Walnut Lane, and there was a cheese steak place called "Chubby's" next door. I ran next door to Chubby's and asked if I could use the bathroom. The woman behind the counter had a lot of nerve, saying not just that I had to buy something in order to use the bathroom, but that I had to make a minimum $5 purchase to use the bathroom. I was floored, but I kept my cool and kept telling her it was an emergency. The bitch was unsympathetic and I was done being nice. I stormed out, slamming the door behind me. There had been a guy sitting at a stool at the counter, and I initially assumed he was a customer. Based on what he ended up saying to me, I'm assuming he was the owner. If you took one look at this guy, you would understand how the restaurant got the name "Chubby's"...

Anyway, so I yank the door open and storm out, and as I'm storming out, the owner anticipates what I'm about to do. He starts saying "NO! NO! NO!" I slam the door anyway, or at least I almost slam it. The owner leapt from his stool and grabbed the door before it could slam, then started following me across the parking lot swearing at me. I just ignored him and continued walking back to my truck, which still parked in the gas station parking lot. The owner of Chubby's gave up about halfway across the parking lot and yelled at me "Go shit in a bush for all I care, asshole!" before going back inside.

I got in the Tacoma and drove to a bank around the corner, where a cop who happened to be there gladly pointed me to the bathroom.

Needless to say, that was the very last time I made food deliveries in Philly, for two reasons...

1. As stated before, public restrooms are far and few between.
2. City folks are a completely different animal compared to suburban folks

My theory is that unless you are a hot chick and/or have a kid with a bathroom emergency, most of these unsympathetic business owners will either make you buy something first or not let you use the bathroom at all. Like I said, I have not driven into Philly to do Uber Eats since then, and I've NEVER done Doordash in the city. I feel kinda bad for almost slamming the guy's door, but everyone I've told that story (including numerous friends and family, and the aforementioned Philly cop at the bank) believes that the guy should have just let me use the bathroom...

 

I now also refuse to make pickups at Wendy's, Starbucks, and McDonald's, regardless of where they are located. What some Dashers might not know is that in order to have "full integration", Doordash gets 30% of the restaurant's profits on every order made through Doordash. A red MasterCard is provided to every Dasher, and when a restaurant doesn't want to share profits with Doordash, the Dasher must use the provided debit card to pay for the order. Nothing is charged to the Dasher, but the system makes little sense to me because it's just a means to an end; With restaurants that don't want to split the profits, Doordash is essentially paying for the order through the delivery person and then charging the customer that amount so they don't have to pay anything. When a restaurant agrees to give up 30% of their profits on meals ordered through Doordash, the food is paid for online by Doordash (and then charged to the customer, obviously), and all the Dasher has to do is pick up the order.

With independent, family-owned restaurants, I can fully understand not wanting to share 30% of the profits with Doordash. The only thing that really annoys me about having to use the Red Card is that I actually have to wait in line to get the food, which slows me down, and this doesn't happen that often.

What pisses me off are the orders where you not only have to use the Red Card, but you have to place the order yourself! Unlike Joe's Diner or Marco's Pizza (both made up names), which rely on every penny they can get and could be severely impacted by sharing 30% of their profits, places like McDonald's and Starbucks are huge multi-billion dollar companies with restaurants all over the world! It confounds me why McDonald's and Starbucks, as well as Wendy's, insist on doing things this way. What's strange is that McDonald's also works with Uber Eats, and when picking up food from them with Uber Eats, you don't have to place the order yourself or pay for it.

Chipotle and Red Robin are awesome to deal with as a Dasher. Chipotle not only doesn't require you to use the Red Card or place the order yourself, but 99% of the time the order is waiting there for the Dasher when they arrive. Red Robin is the same way, though they are more of a diner/bar than a fast food restaurant so the wait can be a bit longer. However, Red Robin gives everyone who orders food to go a complimentary cup of fresh fries "for the road". Cup fits neatly into center cupholder of Tacoma, Charlie has a free snack, Doordash gets good reviews from customers and delivery drivers alike; Everybody's happy!

Wendy's isn't horrible to deal with at all because they encourage Dashers to use the drive-thru. However, on more than one occasion, a specific Wendy's location will not have the drink or the sauce the customer ordered, and I'll have to substitute something. Every customer this has happened to has been very understanding, but I'm still paranoid that it makes me look bad. I assumed that because Wendy's encouraged use of the drive-thru, McDonald's was the same way. One time, I used the drive-thru of the old and really small Mickey D's in New Britain, and I kinda got bitched at for not going inside to place the order. Fuck that! You're making me place the order, so what makes me any different than a customer in a vehicle ordering food for themselves?!?! After that, I was done. I turn down every order from those three major chains now.

 

There's also the pizza place in the middle of nowhere (somewhere not far outside Doylestown) that I refuse to pick up from because they're super slow and waste my time. The one and only time I went there, I ended up walking out even though I'd "paid" for the order with the Red Card because they were taking their sweet time and seemingly ignoring me. If anything, I made the process easier for the next Dasher who chose to pick it up.

There's also a pizza place in Warwick Township that expected me to wait 25 minutes for an exclusive-to-them pizza. As soon as I heard the wait time, I cancelled the order and walked out. In the time I would have been waiting for that pizza, I got two more orders that made me more money than the single pizza delivery would have made.

 

And let's not forget the asshole in Doylestown Borough who took it personally when I unknowingly drove past his house while rushing to get a third order I'd just picked up, and then gave me a poor review that reduced my overall rating from 4.87 stars to 4.71 stars even after I apologized to him and explained the situation (and he seemed cool with it). I have memorized this particular customer's address, and if it comes up in an order again, I will decline it.

Seriously though, I ended up with two separate orders at the same independent pizzeria in Doylestown Borough, and then as I was walking out to the truck with those orders, I got an order from another mom-and-pop pizza place on Route 611, in Doylestown Township. Seeing nothing but dollar signs, I accepted it, and the Doordash app seemingly locked me out of the first customer's address. I was fairly new to Doordash at the time, couldn't figure out how to get back to the first customer's address, and assumed I had to go pick up the pizza at the place on 611 before I could make the other delivery. Like Uber, Doordash has a GPS tracker that allows customers to track their driver in real time. My first customer's house was literally within walking distance of the first pizza place, but I had no idea. The guy was watching me on his smartphone, and somehow got it into his head that I was either ripping him off or just doing my own thing. So, I drove maybe 10 minutes to the place on 611 and ended up waiting another 10 minutes or so for that order to be ready, and then I drove back to Doylestown Borough. On the way to the first customer's house, my phone started blowing up. The caller ID said it was from San Mateo, California. By this time, I knew that it was Doordash because they're based in the San Francisco area. By this time, I'd also had experience with Dasher Support, and was refusing to speak with them unless it was an absolute emergency because they outsource to India and none of the support people speak very good English. I believe I answered the phone once this time, but the Bluetooth in my truck was acting up so I hung up and ignored all future calls. After Doordash stopped calling me, the customer who ended up killing my ratings either texted me when I was a couple blocks from his house. I pulled over to the curb and explained to him what happened in a text. I also apologized profusely upon handing his pizza to him at the door.

I know this particular customer is the one who downrated me because I checked my rating between dropping off his pizza off and dropping the second order off. It went from 4.87 stars to 4.71 stars.

 

Also, one thing I've noticed that really pisses me off is that the people who are genuinely satisfied with your service tip you quite well, but don't bother to give you an actual review. This is not a big deal, but when you get the occasional disgruntled customer who gives you bad review or a rating of less than four stars, it really hits below the belt. My customer rating on Doordash is currently 4.61 stars.

 

Okay, so the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back with regards to Uber Eats was this past July when I went to a Cold Stone Creamery in North Wales and the order ended up being for someone in Philly. I obviously refused to do the order because (A) it was in Philly, and (B) it was ice cream and it would have melted on the drive into the city (even with the A/C cranked). For some reason, I still got paid, and then Uber put my account on “notice”. WTF?