this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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maybe this is weird of me but i have nothing but contempt for people who regularly order doordash/grubhub. Something about paying some servant over an app to go buy your treats for you pisses me off
I do self-criticism constantly because I’m trapped in a Maoist cult where comrades (white terrorists) criticize me mercilessly for having a fascist credit card (VISA Silver Signature Rewards). They won’t let me order vegan pizza anymore because the phone is fascist and “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app” is “bad vibes”
They’re making me walk to the pizza place and use cash. I wish I had never gotten tricked into Communism
The techbro types like this sure, but it provides a valuable service not just to disabled people but also to people who live in food deserts without transport, have kids and can't deal with cooking, or just want to occasionally be lazy for a night etc etc. The concept of food delivery isn't itself exploitative in isolation.
Just tip your fucking drivers properly and treat them like human beings (I know treating hospitality staff like humans is alien to most Americans, but I can hope).
God damn, we need a real society and not doordash as a way to keep old people fed.
I hadn't even considered that. Does meals on wheels still exist? It was a life line for a lot of elders decades ago and things have just gotten worst.
Getting food delivered can be a normal thing for disabled or elderly people but leave it to capitalism to give us the worst possible version of it with extra exploitation
Yeah exactly, that's my opinion on it too
And it's fucking expensive! Old people and disabled people are often poor, restaurant food already isn't cheap, and delivery fees sometimes double the price. I hate this fucking country.
Same.
People also like to bring up disability as a reason for these services to exist. And I'd be perfectly fine with grocery and food delivery on this scale if it was just for the disabled and elderly. But as a person with a physical disability, I'm going to call bullshit and be real for a second, 90+% of the people using these food slave apps are just lazy bastards with no disability preventing them from cooking for themselves.
food delivery wouldn't even be that bad in a world not dominated by capitalism. but car infrastructure combined with fast food combined with profit seeking at every level, sucks all potential out of it
Yeah pretty much. Imagine a communist centralised and planned distribution system for stuff like this. Would be cool.
India has chai wallahs and the food guys who deliver meals from home or restaurants and apparently have just an absurdly sophisticated logistics sysem run by what's somewhere between a union and a guild.
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One of the guiding principles of Soviet city planning was laying out districts so you didn't need this. Most factories and workplaces had canteens on site, and all those terrible terrible brutalist apartments that somehow only exist in winter were built with schools, groceries, transit links, gyms, theaters and restaurants withing easy walking distance. "Fifteen minute cities" except real, not some neoliberal public private bullshit. Idk if it always worked or how well it worked, but that was the goal of a lot of city planning. They wanted people to have everything they would need within like a square km or something.
At least you're honest lol. I actually admire the honestly.
i've worked as a driver and server, and people who order food a lot (or eat out a lot) give me bad vibes for the reason in your last sentence. assuming they aren't doing so out of necessity
but i try to step back from the vibe because ultimately we all live in a system where we're inundated by fine-tuned psychiatrist-designed corporate manipulations from every fucking angle, all pushing and pulling and twisting to try and get us to spend more and work more. like when it comes down to it consumers as a class aren't really people with agency.
i guess what i'm saying is i feel that distaste due to having to serve white boaters (and associating most users of the service with that demographic) but i think a principled material analysis is more useful.
"Eating out" a lot would make sense from a sustainability perspective due to the scale wouldn't it? I know in the US it's pretty expensive generally, but if there were some sort of cafeteria style thing it should be less than making your own food in terms of cost, labor and resources right?
I guess I'm kinda thinking about the street food scenes that a lot of countries have (which have a few other issues), and have some sort of middle-ground betwen them.
Yeah division of labor and economy of scale could actually be leaned into a lot harder in an economy without profit and exploitation, all while avoiding many of the negative experiences and connotations we have under capitalism.
Like there's nothing inherently demeaning or problematic about cleaning houses or serving food, it's just that our current system relies on the existence of an underclass of people effectively forced into the jobs and paid less than the cost of their social reproduction. And the otherization that takes place to create and reinforce that class, as well as a result of its existence, is dehumanizing.
But I really wouldn't mind working at like a pizzeria or cleaning service if the jobs didn't entail poverty and dehumanization.
Well it helps if you feel like you aren't alienated from your labor as well. "Making pizzas so the boss makes a dime and cuts me a paycheck" is a lot different than "I make pizzas cause they are tasty and people like eating them"
yeah exactly, making and serving food that people like is a blast, working in a chill environment with friends is a blast
just sucks working for a small business tyrant with a massive truck and vacation home, while you can't afford rent or healthcare and have odd hours that oscillate unpredictably between too few and too many
Idk have you considered disabled/neurodiverse people who either cant or struggle to cook for themselves or even theoretically can but just have executive dysfunction? Thats me btw as my other posts here indicate.
Team!
In principle it should be fine. America is car hell, lunch breaks are short if you even get them, often you flat out don't have time to go get a meal, or are extrmely limited in your options.
If the delivery workers were properly compensated, the cars were company issue, the company paid for the gas, they got regular hours, etc etc it wouldn't be worse than any other capitalist job, albeit more dangerous because driving.
But this is capitalism so fuck those workers, it's all hyper-exploitative gig economy shit.
But some, maybe a lot, of workers are put in a position where having someone bring food to them can be really helpful.
Idk if this is even part of cultural memory anymore but there was a time when many if not most factories, office buildings, and other places that employeed a lot of people in the us had cafeterias where workers ate. Like on site, in the building. You just go down to the ground floor and there's a cafeteria with freshly made food. Maybe good, maybe bad, but it was there. That shit all disapeared when the auto-cannibalism started in the 80s.
Now people have to go downstairs, go to their car, drive to a store, order, wait for their food, drive back to work. If you're not near food places you may not have enough time to eat, or even to get food at all and you're stuck with whatever you can bring from home. And as much as people try to trivialize it making food that tastes good at home requires skill, it takes time, and you need to have enough spoons to do it every day.