Memes @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Want some so bad but not willing to trade organs for it

143 comments

It's kinda like comparing universal healthcare to individual payer for-profit insurance. One rewards everyone as a universal system with consistency (at least in theory) and the other rewards only rich people.
- Right. One's a business and one's a service the government provides.
  
  The government provides
  Except USPS is completely self funded, and does NOT use any of your tax dollars.
- That's why they oppose universal healthcare here in the US -- they wan't access to special treatment.
  What they don't realize is they can still have Mommy's Super Special Boy(tm) access, since even in a system of universal healthcare, there's still a demand for private practice.
  So really, it just boils down to them hating poor people and other marginalized groups
  
  Also universal healthcare can afford specialized equipment because the amount of people they would service is higher than the profit driven hospital
  Rather than the current system of specialized equipment still having to make profit so treatment costs increase
- I would argue that a postal service is not structured the same way as an on demand service like uber.
  A postal courier who arrives at your door, picks up an important document, and takes it straight to the recipient will cost about the same.
  When you write a letter or send a parcel you first take it to a designated pick up point. It is then picked up at an allocated time along with all the other letters and parcels, and at best it is going to arrive the next day having been through a huge sorting routing system at the post depot.
  Apples and oranges.
  Also fuck uber eats and the gig economy.
  
  You can actually just put the letter in your mailbox. You don't have to take it to a dropoff.
  If you're willing to drop it off, they also do same day for $4 for packages under 5 lbs inside a local region. They'll pick it up and drop it off just about anywhere in the country next day for basically the same cost.
  Your point stands, but the USPS is a logistical wonder.
  
  Idk, I got a care package in the mail with a cake inside, seems like they can both deliver food lol. 🤷
  Also the cake is delicious, and yeah fuck the gig economy.
  
  I’m an Uber driver and it’s a godsend of flexibility and decent, consistent income for me but I’d be so much happier with a collectively-owned alternative that charges less and passes more of the ride fare onto the drivers.
- Except you would be very upset if your Uber eats took 3-5 days to arrive, as a postal system does. The cost is because it's an entirely different product, an on-demand courier system. It's closer to comparing universal healthcare with having a doctor on retainer (if such a thing exists).

I don't understand why so many people can't just go get their own damn food. Uber eats hasn't been around long enough for you all to have forgotten what you did before, has it? How did you survive back then?
- Once a month I get home from work so tired that nothing in the world will convince me not to go home, order a pizza and wait for it while laying on the couch. I deserve that and I will do it, no matter how much "back in the days" you people throw at me, I'm busy and tired
  
  You could always order the food when you're leaving work, then pick it up on your way home.
  
  Why use Uber eats why not just call the place directly and have them deliver it? Uber eats takes a large chunk of their profits or they over charge you.
  
  If you'd said anything other than pizza I'd give you slack, but you're a damn fool wasting money doordashing/ubering pizza. Order from them directly, it's cheaper and the restaurant gets bigger profits.
  
  Thanks to COVID and work from home and smartphones and Teams/Zoom, I've gone from an hour commute each way to a constant stream of meetings, texts, emails, IMs, etc. that must be addressed immediately, from 8am to 6pm. I don't think the "back in my day" folks fully understand how much more people are asked to do now. I once obliterated an older colleague when he complained that youngs these days don't put in half the hours he used to. I was like "Um, you used to go to the print office and wait four hours for prints to come out, take them back to the office, proof them, then take the documents to the courthouse and file them in person. In the same time, I'm responding to 100 emails, reviewing 20 documents ON MY PHONE, conducting 3 conference calls, listening to 2 coworkers' breakdowns, and drafting, reviewing, printing, proofing, and submitting the documents you used to sit and wait for." To his credit, he said I was right and I never had a problem with him again.
  All of which is a long way of saying that, sometimes, more often than I would like, I can't just "go to the restaurant" because of time or because I'm no longer commuting. For all their problems, the apps mean that I'm eating fewer frozen pizzas and more poke bowls and salads.
- I just tossed a coin out the window at the nearest child and told them to fetch me the plumpest turkey in the butcher's window.
  
  ugh, we used to have a REAL country
- Everyone survived. We all survived before the internet too. But the world changes. If I'm injured or disabled it's a great option. If I'm sick, maybe I don't want to expose everyone to what I have.
  There are a lot of valid reasons to use it beyond "lazy".
- Except for people without cars and the walk to restaurants is dangerous. Except for invalids. Except for people who work at companies with rules about not leaving your post. Except for people quaranteening. Except for....except for....except for....
  
  I just have no idea what life was like in the before time. All these poor souls
- I'm curious, do businesses not do their own deliveries anymore? I personally never stopped just ordering directly from the place I'm eating from. Couldn't tell you how common uber eats and others are in my area, I just know I don't use them.
  
  A lot of places have, yeah. They viewed the delivery staff as a fixed cost, and thought the services would mean they only paid a fee per delivery, making it a net savings.
  Hard to blame them, since that's what they were told, and it sounds reasonable on the surface.
- I felt a better question is why so many people with transportation don't get their own food.
  I am fine with driving anywhere so I think in the past 7 years we only had delivery once. But we try to cook mostly at home nowadays
  
  So, a few use cases, but it tends to boil down to convenience.
  Some people work from home, and don't have time to go get food, nor cook anything significant between meetings, and they're just tired of cold sandwiches and microwave soup.
  Spending however long traveling to and from the restaurant isn't always a valuable use of time compared to whatever else you were doing.
  If I'm playing games alone or with friends, I'd rather do that than drive around for half an hour.
  If you've got kids, loading and unloading them into the car can be a chore.
  Or just plain "comfy, don't wanna leave".
  Delivery is a convenience that people like. Companies switching to a service with more fees that drive the cost up so high is annoying.
- I became further radicalized by the indignation of the petty bourgeoisie getting whipped into a frenzy because their sub minimum wage delivery drivers didn't jump through hoops enthusiastically enough for them.
  Anything short of the delivery driver beating you with the food while calling you a useless lazy slob is exemplary service as far as I'm concerned.
- I got delivery from the restaurant. They do not do deliveries anymore. To ignore the fact that the landscape has changed significantly and just blame the people ordering is to miss a majority of the picture. Turns out life has nuance.
- Apparently some people love getting their food held hostage for more tips, and not knowing if someone finger banged their food.
- Thought about doing Uber eats/grubhub one time when I had a meeting early in the morning, and I was out of coffee and breakfast items. Went to order my food. Food cost was 6.50, total bill was 20.50, and then it asked for a tip.
  Fuck that. I went hungry.
- Especially city dwellers. There must be easily a dozen takeaways within half a mile of your house.
- Before that I ordered online from the restaurant. Before that by calling them.

Fuck Doordash, fuck Uber Eats, fuck Skip the Dishes. These greedy motherfuckerswant me to pay a delivery fee, a "convinience fee", AND up charge me on my food, and act like triple dipping into my pocket isn't a fucking crime. Then they have the gall to tell me that waiting an hour and a half for my food while my driver sits in a random-ass parking lot to receive luke-warm food is acceptable delivery time and service and ask for a fucking tip.
And worse, no one wins! The restaurants hate it because they're paying fees out the ass and receiving hate for the delivery services failures, the driver's hate it because they're not being given a fair wage, and the end consumer hates it because they're paying literally 1.5x the cost of already inflating food prices! The only winner is corporate of whatever company you're using, all to save you a, what, 10-15 minute drive?
Fuck em', I will hop in my car and go pick up my food every single day of the week. I'm never too lazy to tell a bullshit service like those to go fuck itself.
- As a former driver I agree. I always feel bad about the tip thing but gas is so expensive and the apps pay like shit despite charging so many fees. And knowing that restaurants also pay a fee meaning the apps get MORE money is even more infuriating.
- Fuck the whole thing, and especially the tipping bit. You want a trip, read the subreddit /r/doordash, (back when I was on reddit that is). Some greedy ass MFs live in there swapping stories about how they'll gladly turn down jobs because the tip wasn't high enough.
  Like what, am I supposed to tip you 30% just to have my food delivered? Fuck that. Tipping is supposed to be a thank you on top of it, not a bribe to convince you to do your job. Tipping should come after everything where I can decide how well you did. There are horror stories where they've texted asking for a higher tip and worse yet holding onto the food demanding a higher tip or the people don't get their food.
  You're exactly right, I just get my ass in the car and go get it now. It had a purpose during covid, but now they can go pound sand. Last time I did it was exactly the same as yours, I watched my food get assigned to a driver who sat for a parking lot for 10 minutes before deciding he should go pick up my order (which was fast food, and ready immediately, and sitting there getting cold).
  
  Those people are doing that to make money, if I see a trip that's 20-30 minutes total of driving but only get $4-5 for it, I'm declining it. If you think that makes me greedy, then I'm glad you've had such a privileged life.
- I wonder if there could exist a solution for services like these, but decentralized, as to cut out the greedy middleman as much as possible. I mean, lemmy sort of is the application of this concept. Sure, there's still costs with running servers etc., but the protocol regulates much of the interaction.
  
  The company (Uber, Instacart, etc) is basically:
  An app for drivers/shoppers.
  An app for consumers.
  The servers to facilitate communication.
  A subcontracted call center in India for support and customer service.
  A third-party payroll processor.
  A handful of administrative people and techs to keep it running. Plus some shareholders to take the money.
  So not counting drivers and contracted services, it's practically a small business. Seems easy enough to emulate.
- maybe just cook a few times a week yourself

Socialized system vs capitalized system: The capitalist comes in and uses their venture capital to undercut the socialized system so that people stop using it. Once the socialized system loses interest and funding or are otherwise out of the picture, they they jack their prices up way higher than the original and because they're the only game in town, they get to keep those record profits in effective perpetuity.
- This is just about efficiency. Postal (including UPS / FedEx) can plan the route ahead, stack parcels with as little space as possible, and deliver hundreds of packages in a day. UberEats doesn't know when will order show up, doesnt know when will order be ready, it can deliver maybe 2 - 3 orders in a row, the route planning is just in time.
  Tell me how is this only explainable by socialized system.
  
  You literally explained why that's the case in your comment, how do you not see it???
- I don't recall any socialized courier or food delivery services.
  
  Republicans helped the couriers prevent USPS from competing. The 2006 law they passed mandated that USPS had to pre-cover healthcare and retirements for the next 75 years, which no other organization does, and has put USPS in financial trouble.
  
  Could you imagine? Food delivery apps nationalized then delivered through the USPS?
  
  You can order food through the mail. You need to plan your meals a little that's all.
- Are you trying to imply UPS/FedEx is a socialized system?
  
  USPS is you fucking moron.

Delivery guy here! Don't forget that the driver only gets $5 out of those $30. So fuck uber. And I take my bike when I want to eat, obviously.
- Usually it's 3$ of those 30$
  
  Wait is it only delivery or delivery plus food in those 30 dolars?

And yet the postal worker probably gets paid more despite you paying that much for uber eats.
- unions
- Not only do they make way more per hour worked but they also get healthcare, paid sick leave, and a retirement plan. A gig worker is precariously teetering on the edge of disaster with no recourse if they are unable to meet their required daily deliveries to pay for living expenses.
  
  USPS workers are paid very well, even beyond the 100k mark.

Of that $30.50, the person delivering the food got $3 and the person making the food got $2.

Not only that but they're also inflating the actual meal prices. I've noticed that the same item at the same place costs different when I go in. They also don't care if it's ann Uber order and you're gonna get a half assed attempt
- Yeah, it's way higher because they take a big chunk of the meal cost too.
  Plus there's all the shady "takeaways" that are just somebody's house. I'm sure some of them are very nice, but I'm not playing rat shit roulette...
- That's because they charge the restaurant as well, so the restaurant puts a higher cost on the food to cover it.

Yeah, no difference whatsoever between those services...
- What you don't want your food cold and stale and delivered in a week and a half?

It's a combination of economy of scale and flexibility around time. The USPS sorts massive volumes of mail and packages, then delivers by the truck load. With food delivery, you get a piping hot meal delivered by a dedicated driver. That said, still overpriced by the companies.

Public vs private
- If this was alway true UPS and FedEx wouldn't exist
  
  Ups and fedex still frequently use USPS for last mile in many areas. USPS has a mandate to serve and maintain infrastructure in the whole US, and the corporations use that. So does Amazon of course.

It’s because of the greedy USPS unions. You are paying for their inflated salaries (which just stuff the pockets of their union leaders), theirs golden pensions, and Cadillac health cares. If we could just privatize it, the market will push the prices down because of competition.
/s btw
- Don't forget wasteful government intervention limiting what the USPS can charge, and making it so it can take days for packages to make the trek across the continent, without even having the decency to amass stupendous profit margins.

While I don't think Uber eats is worth it, and I love the USPS, there's a major difference between the two: time. No one is having the USPS delivery their lunch.
- Kept hot by friction doing 100 miles a minute.

I love watching people realize private courier services are expensive. It's kinda gross watching them throw tantrums when they realize they can't afford it.

And that's why I don't use doordash, maybe if I was rich but, when you were counting every dollar, you can get your ass up.
These days I don't even have pizza delivered to me, I will get up and get that shit.
The only time I have had it delivered lately, for a few times when I was too sick to get up and make my own soup so I just ordered some pasta from Domino's instead. App makes it so easy
- The AC is out in my car and I live in AZ so I'm pretty happy to pay for convenience for a month or two lol. I can't deny it's a useful service I just wish the drivers and restaurants benefited the most instead of the scummy middleman

And this is why I cook my own food. It's absurd to throw away money for some asshole corporation who doesn't give a shit about you. It's cheaper and healthier to just cook for yourself anyway.
- I'm not saying ubereats' rates aren't outrageous, but if you make a certain amount of money and are busy, it's still worth the time saving. There are enough of those people to keep it going. Plus the ridiculous rate incentivized consumers towards their subscription model. But yeah I barely eat out or order in these days and definitely more healthy.
  
  It doesn't even save you time. It often takes an hour to get your food and when you do, either stuff is missing because the driver stole from you or the food is all nasty, soggy and cold. Then you have to argue with their customer service who may or may not give you a refund depending on their mood and how much they hate their job that day.
  Nah, fuck that. We ought to encourage people to cook on their own more, and/or pay our neighbors to cook for us if we really can't for some reason. We don't need corporate garbage to feed ourselves.

I provision and ship the iPads we use for trainings at work. Today I shipped two identical boxes, one over 2000 miles to rural California, FedEx 2nd day which cost $8, the other about 1000 miles to a town in southern Saskatchewan. That one cost $45. I know customs is a pain, but that's a stark difference for whats ultimately a shorter journey with 100% fewer mountains between here and there
- Is that reflective of the fact that the largest cost in transportation in the industrial world is labor so less traffiked routes require more labor per package-mile? In this case, its like a 11x economy of scale to California. So maybe not.
  
  No it's just the cost of cross boarder. FedEx Express shipping for a small package with volume discounts costs $8 to go to an office or $14 to go to a residence, and I've yet to make a label for anywhere in the continental US that deviates from those values.

Why not start a Post Offic Eats? Flat rate for food delivery 😋
- AFAIK Post Office is not flat rate, it is function of source, destination, weight and size.

If you're spending 30 quid to get a takeaway delivered you're an idiot.
Most takeaways charge what, £2 at most for delivery? The meal itself is only around £20 if you're very very hungry.
You are getting utterly and completely ripped off, but if you're wealthy enough to throw that sort of money away so stupidly, who am I to stop you.
- Traveling from the states to the UK, you folks have insanely cheap food. Like, it's nuts. I was shocked how little I had to pay for eating in restaurants. I would be mad, but really it boils down to what you said, us American's are being ripped off and we're saying thank you. Going to a restaurant now costs minimum $50 it seems, if you want an appetizer brace for at least $80 (excluding fast food, but that's come up too). Delivery my "average" went up to 80-90 for fucking 2 meals and and appetizer to be delivered. Fuck that, I'm not paying those costs.
  Now our delivery services are crying asking why no one wants delivery as much as they did during covid.
  
  Luxury of not having monopoly is cheap food.

Employee
Independent Contractor

Now that's Uber Eats premium! When I order the driver grabs a soggy bag off the floor board of their 1983 Honda Horizon and throws it across my yard trying to hit the door. (may be exaggerated)

Your organs will grow back, don't worry. Unlimited organs!

What's next, riding the bus being cheaper than calling a taxi?

Every order comes with more organs though. You just have to think of the first one as an investment.

Wtf $30 for food delivery? It's like 10% of that here or usually free if you make big enough order
- Nah, it's an exaggeration. But they charge you 3 times. Once because the products are more expensive on the app. Secondly with the "service fee" which is like 3-4$ and third time with a delivery fee which is again 2-5$ depending on distance. For big orders the 2nd and 3rd things stay the same so it ends up mattering less. But the fact that every product is between .30 and 2$ more expensive... you usually end up paying between 10$ extra for a 15$ order and 30$ for a 80$ order. It's become a bit ridiculous, imo
  
  And you forgot restaurant tip and delivery tip
- In my neck of the (american) woods, it usually is "free delivery! No fees if your meal is $15 or more!" according to their ads, but then they artifically raise the menu prices in the app. A meal might cost you $12 with tax at a burger place near me, but on ubereats / doordash that same meal is $19 because they raised the menu price. That way when you go to pay, it says there was "no extra fee".

Not willing to trade organs for it
I think thats's only a payment option for Canadian Ubereats, iirc

Here in Costa Rica, a 1080p 144hz monitor in Amazon could cost $149, but adding the delivery fees and stuff it ends up on $239. Get me out of there pls

Are you trying to guilt me into tipping my postman?

One of these are paid by the hour (in some cases by the state or even federal government) and the other is just a poor person who gets paid by the order and only barely makes enough off that to afford gas for the next delivery.

The obvious difference is speed. You can ask Uber for food and get it within an hour of placing that order. I go down to UPS and mail myself a package and it'll take a few days.
- Well aren't you the lucky one, getting your food in under an hour.

Here in the UK Deliveroo is cheaper than mail and there's no chance you'll get your mail in 15 minutes. You'll be happy to get it the next day.
- In denmark a stamp is 2 dollars and it takes 5-7 days for delivery.
  Dont even get me started on packages
  
  You scammed The Nordic with your PostNord hustle. Especially the Swedes got thunder fucked by you.

$30.50 seems inaccurate. If you're tipping 20% then you ordered at least $150 worth of food lol.

don't worry its getting replaced by cute robots soon

Postal service is a service. Uber eats is a company.

The 3.5 miles is the problem. That's a 7 miles roundrtip.
If only housing units could be packed more. If only we could compare prices with other countries.
Edit: could I get some feedback for the downvotes please? If we want cheap delivery, don't we need densely packed cities?

143 comments