If you add the time that I’m sitting there looking for tasks, then who knows how long. . . . It might be three hours for every hour that I’m billing, but I don’t know that I can really count . . . I mean, I’m sitting there looking for tasks while I’m doing a crossword puzzle or having lunch or whatever. Unless I’m misunderstanding the whole thing, one of the biggest problems with the app is: in order to see tasks that are available, you have to hit the refresh button, and it’s not self-refreshing. . . . Unless I’m missing some setting that will allow me to enjoy my life, you have to keep clicking. . . . So I spend a lot of time going like this: “click” crossword, crossword, crossword, “click,” crossword, crossword, crossword, “click.”
The thirty-minute response requirement is only for TaskRabbits—clients are not held to the same requirement. This is especially problematic for Strugglers who need to schedule tasks around odd jobs, or who rely on the service for living expenses and can’t afford to hold space in their schedule for work that may not materialize. Rebecca, thirty-four, told me,
So, I’m quick. My average [response rate] is three minutes. But basically, if you don’t respond within thirty minutes, they’re pissed. I don’t know what they do to your stuff, but it drops. But you don’t have to accept. Here’s the thing: I will respond with a chat right away. Rarely do I just accept. I always want to ask first, “Exactly what time do you need me?” There’s always something I need to ask before I accept it, and I’ll write that. I’ll be very quick with my response—three minutes, two, one. And then I don’t hear back from the client for a really long time. And I’m like, “I really need to put this in my schedule. I’m not just floating around waiting at your beck and call. I have things to do. This is marginal. This is not my life. You are not my life. Let’s just figure this shit out so I can put you in your two- or three-hour block.” But no, they don’t just get back to you.
Rebecca’s solution so far has been to implement a personal policy in which she allows clients a three- to four-hour window to respond to her. If she doesn’t hear back by then, she calls TaskRabbit. “I’m like, ‘Hey, this isn’t right, you know. I had to respond right away. How come they’re not obligated to? Just cancel it because I don’t want to do it anymore.’”
Further complicating this on-duty versus off-duty calculus is that the algorithm is particularly opaque. Workers know what will remove them from the search results, but they don’t know what makes them appear. As a result, it may take several days of full availability before a Tasker becomes visible in the search results. Once their profile becomes visible, work may arrive in spurts. Natasha, twenty-eight, said,
Ever since I got the elite status, it has helped in a way. But I think their algorithms are really unfair, because if you decline maybe two or three tasks, they will deny you the opportunity to get more tasks. For example, if my TaskRabbit app is off for a few days, when I come back I won’t get jobs for two or three days. Unless I start doing the available tasks, and if I start becoming active again, for whatever reason the algorithms pick up that I’m active. And then it starts swarming me with jobs, so I’m just really overwhelmed. And I’m afraid to say no to some stuff, because if I do, in a way they penalize you.
Similarly, Rebecca, thirty-four, observed,
I hate to say it, but sometimes this new way, it can be a little bit easier, but I hate that you can’t be picky. I hate that about it. I hate that I turn on the thing, and it’s like, “Am I going to get hired to do something fun, like an event, or fold underwear and move heavy boxes? I hate . . . that it feels like, once you’ve been hired, even though you can chat and ask questions before you accept, if you don’t accept you kind of get penalized a little bit. Not hugely—it’s not like you’ve accepted and forfeited. But if you decline after you’ve been picked up, your rating or whatever goes down, and then you’re not featured as much. And then you’re not chosen as much. It messes with the algorithm or whatever, and people aren’t seeing you unless you accept every single thing that’s thrown at you. And I don’t like that. I mean in times of desperation, when you’re like, “Shit, I’ve just got to work every day and make money,” it does work in your favor. Because you pretty much turn it on and you’re going to get hired to do something. But it’s just like . . . it would be nice if on the phone, I could just be like, “I’m available tomorrow, but only to do this particular thing. I really don’t want to do packing and shipping tomorrow.” But you can’t. It’s either all on or all off.
Some workers simply mark themselves as “off duty,” but doing so for too long can be problematic. Taskers are expected to remain active on the platform—if they go too long without doing a task, they can be deactivated or “removed from the community,” as happened to Will, a thirty-eight-year-old actor.
It’s the most ridiculous thing ever. So I had been working for two years on and off, and I didn’t hear anything about . . . I got a random email saying, “If you don’t book a task within the next thirty days, we’re going to deactivate you.” I called them and I said, “I’m an actor. I haven’t turned my app on because I’m on tour and I’m in Austin, Texas, and I can’t really . . .” And then the lady was like, “Oh, well, we’re in Austin, Texas.” And I’m like, “No, I’m acting. Like, dude, . . . I have a tour. I have two shows today, and then I want to sleep and eat at some point. So I’m not going to put together someone’s Ikea furniture when I have no way to . . . No. Just telling you that I’m going to be away. I’m not going to be back until January.” And she said, “Oh, yeah, okay, not a problem.”
And then sure enough, I come back in January, and I think nothing about TaskRabbit—because it’s great when you don’t have to think about it—and I’m deactivated. And I called them and [a customer service rep] says, “Oh yeah, it’s not a problem. We see that you’ve been a TaskRabbit, but you’ve been deactivated. So in order for you to become a member, you have to go to this community training program.” I said, “Excuse me?” And she said, “Well, you know, you’ve been away from TaskRabbit, so you need to, you need to,” what’s the word that she used? It was some horrible corporatelike PR term that was really insulting. Rehabilitate’s not it . . . Reorientation.
Will argued repeatedly with the customer service representative before eventually asking to be transferred to someone else.
I was like, “Listen, man, I’m happy to work for you guys. I like working for you guys. I like helping customers. I like spreading the good word of TaskRabbit, as it were. I just flat-out refuse to go to a second meeting for two hours where you’re not gonna pay me and you’re not even gonna tell me something good out of it. The nature of my business as an actor is that I’m gone for a spate of time. And I was told when I became a TaskRabbit that that’s exactly the kind of person you cater to. Why is this happening now?” And he said, “No, you know what? You’re right. Don’t worry about it. We’ll make you reactivated. Just, you know, if you decide that you wanna go on tour or anything, or you book another job, just let us know.” I said, “Well, as a point of fact, I did . . .” So, I don’t know. We’ll see. I mean, I leave on Monday to go do another job upstate, to go do a show.
Even though TaskRabbit markets itself as offering flexibility—“Taskers set their own hourly rates for work, set their own schedules, and determine their own work areas”—there’s apparently a limit to how much flexibility workers are allowed to have. The limit also applies to workers who aren’t hired for a period of time, even through no fault of their own. For example, Sarah, twenty-nine, explained, “I haven’t had any jobs in two months, over two months. And if you are not working for three months and they just deactivate you. . . . I’ve told them, ‘When you guys said I am not active, [it’s actually that] I am not getting any jobs. Because I have my availability on for two weeks straight.’ And they were not very helpful. They were just like, ‘Oh well, you know, update your schedule.’”
Finally, the issue of time away from work is not limited just to time off the clock but also ap
plies to the opportunity to take breaks during the work itself. Most full-time workers, or nonminimum-wage workers, don’t think twice about taking a bathroom, cigarette, or even lunch break during their workday. But sharing economy workers, in a throwback to the nineteenth and early twentieth century, don’t always have the same flexibility.
As late as 1890, many stores had at best a single hard bench for workers to sit on during breaks—assuming they even had breaks. Most shopgirls ate their lunches standing up, and many of the best stores had no employee bathrooms: “Workers were encouraged to take care of personal maintenance matters before leaving home in the morning; it was ‘their business.’” Mary Gay Humphreys, a reformer and journalist who focused on the plight of working girls, “regularly escorted small parades of girls to her apartment house to ‘use facilities.’”50
Sharing economy workers, too, are encouraged to address personal maintenance outside of work obligations. Kitchensurfing chefs were required to wash their hands when they arrived at a client’s home, and were cautioned against using the bathroom until after they’d cooked, in order to maintain a hygienic image. Damla, thirty-eight, a Kitchensurfing marketplace chef who occasionally worked as part of the Kitchensurfing Tonight program, explained that Kitchensurfing staff suggested that chefs “just try to not use the bathroom. Because they’re only there, I think, a half hour at a time. So it’s possible to not go for a half hour.”
It’s true that Kitchensurfing Tonight chefs are in a client’s home for only thirty minutes. But a full shift is four hours, which includes cooking for up to four clients and half an hour for commuting between each gig. Chefs who are unable to hold their urine for a four-hour shift often turn to coffee shops or ask favors of staff in the buildings where they cook. For instance, Francesco, twenty-nine, tried to befriend building doormen, turning them into modern bathroom benefactors. Even so, the tight time frame for Kitchensurfing Tonight gigs sometimes leaves workers with few options.
“The worst part is a couple of times when I’ve had to pee between bookings, and it has been a mess because I do stick by the policy,” Joe, twenty-six, explained. “So I have to sort of find some place that’s open. Or if it’s night, I’ll just pee in an alley, if it’s available, because I can, and it’s there, and nobody [notices]—especially in downtown. In midtown, obviously, that’s impossible, because there’s just too many people. So sometimes it’s a little exciting running around trying to find a place to pee.” Joe could ask to use the bathroom after cooking, but he’s reluctant to do so and risk losing the opportunity for a tip. “There’s always a possibility that they might tip me; it does happen occasionally,” he explained. “And I always worry that if I use the bathroom at that last minute, then [I’ve lost] the opportunity that they might have taken to tip me.”
As with many aspects of the sharing economy, one’s bathroom difficulties (or lack thereof) are often correlated with status. Airbnb hosts don’t tend to have bathroom issues, even when they’re sharing with a guest: “Usually, I just talk to the guest and tell them that [my girlfriend] needs to leave early and will be using the bathroom at blank time, and it’s not an issue,” said Daniel, thirty-one, an Airbnb host. Other workers, who often find themselves on the go—such as TaskRabbits and Uber drivers—tend to have makeshift bathroom arrangements, spending a portion of their day scouting out new bathroom locations. Sarah, twenty-nine, a TaskRabbit, told me about her strategies: “Well, any Starbucks. But also you learn how to get to the bathrooms in the hotels like the Waldorf and the Plaza. And the Waldorf has—you have your own vanity inside the stalls, and it’s kind of ridiculous.” Larry, fifty-four, an Uber/Lyft driver, explained, “I have an app on my phone, a McDonald’s app. A lot of them are open twenty-four hours, and they’re pretty reliable. Because a lot of places, like Dunkin Donuts, they don’t even have bathrooms. A lot of restaurants, fast food joints, they don’t all have bathrooms. But McDonalds is probably the most reliable.”
One strategy mentioned by several workers was to maintain a membership to a gym with multiple locations. But Donald, the deactivated Tasker introduced in the opening vignette, suggested that using a gym bathroom might be one of the reasons why he was removed from TaskRabbit:
One day I had to do twelve deliveries, starting downtown and going all the way up [to the Upper West Side]. . . . I stopped at New York Sports Club to go to the bathroom. They may know I did that. They may say, “Well, why did you stop at the gym?” And I’ll say, “I went to the bathroom.” But yeah, I could see that. . . . You could go into Starbucks. but you could be waiting on line in Starbucks for ten minutes to go pee. So I’m not sure if the bathroom counts as part of your job if you’re in the middle of doing it. I didn’t really get to that point.
Bathroom breaks are not just a matter of convenience and hygiene. Not relieving one’s bladder when needed can lead to health issues, to say nothing of a feeling of extreme discomfort. But just as sharing economy workers are on their own for health care, payroll taxes, transportation between gigs, and sick/vacation leave, they’re also financially responsible for any workplace injuries.
As noted in this chapter, American workers have a history of fighting for better pay, shorter hours, and improved workplace conditions. But the 1935 Wagner Act—which established the National Labor Relations Board and gave employees the right to form and join unions and engage in collective bargaining—and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act and subsequent amendments in 1966 have long been hailed as having changed the world of work for the better. Yet, for all of these improvements, just eighty years later, sharing economy workers—classified as independent contractors—find themselves without any of these protections. And yet, this is only the start of the workplace troubles that gig economy workers often experience. Like their colleagues in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, sharing economy workers may also encounter unsafe workplaces and on-the-job injuries for which they have no recourse.
4
Workplace Troubles
Emma, twenty-six, is so petite—barely a hundred pounds—that she brings to mind thoughts of Tinker Bell. So when this college graduate tells me that she’s done a number of moving and other manual labor jobs as a TaskRabbit, I assume I’ve heard her incorrectly. Then she starts talking about pain.
“I’ve actually had back issues; I’m not kidding,” she says, catching the look of surprise on my face. “Yeah, I’ve had back issues for a while; the first time I did it, I had back issues, and more recently I did again, a couple of weeks ago. And I go to the doctor, and they’re like, ‘Is there anything different that you’re doing?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m cleaning people’s houses,’ And they’re like, ‘Yes, that’s probably it.’”
As an hourly contract worker who relies on positive reviews, Emma has to be careful about how she asks for breaks. Although retail workers may be able slow down at times under the assumption that a boss can observe only so many workers at a time, a TaskRabbit who does cleaning tasks is often the only worker on-site and may find herself under the watchful eye of a client. “There’s been a few times where I’ve had to hint to the clients—like, ‘Oh man, my back really hurts,’” she says. “I’ve actually said these things, and they just don’t know what I’m trying to say here. They’re just like, ‘Oh, well, you’re doing a great job.’”
TaskRabbit offers workers less anonymity than a traditional cleaning or moving service might. A disgruntled client of Merry Maids may post a negative review on Yelp, but that review will be listed under the name of a corporation, not an individual. Potential clients may assume that they’ll get a different cleaner. But with TaskRabbit, Emma is hired directly. The reviews are about her work and personal attitude. As a result, she has to be careful about how she presents issues like discomfort on the job. “[I say,] ‘Hey, I’m really in pain,’ but kind of in a friendly way. You know, kind of hinting, ‘Hey, I need a break. I can use some water,’” she said. “But nothing. It really depends on the client. Sometimes
they’ve been great. Sometimes they’ve offered me tea or water or whatever. They never have offered [to let] me to sit down. Sometimes it’s not a big deal. But with cleaning, it can be really exhausting, especially if you’re doing this day after day, back-to-back.”
It’s not unusual for workers, especially housecleaners, to work without consuming food during their work hours. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich details not being allowed to eat, drink, or even chew gum while cleaning a house. In a month of working, only one cleaning client, noticing that she was sweating, offered her a glass of water, which she gratefully accepted, “flouting the rule against the ingestion of anything while inside a house.”1
In detailing her month spent as a cleaner for a national cleaning chain, Ehrenreich describes the experience of her colleagues as a “world of pain—managed by Excedrin and Advil, compensated for with cigarettes and, in one or two cases and then only on the weekends, with booze.”2 Scrubbing floors on hands and knees, strapping themselves into heavy backpack-style vacuums, and engaging in repetitive motions for hours a day gave her colleagues bad backs and aggravated their arthritis and previous injuries. Emma’s work for TaskRabbit, too, became a world managed by painkillers. “I’m active, I’m young, I generally don’t have health issues, so it is kind of ridiculous,” she said. “I take painkillers. I’ve been to see a chiropractor. I went to see my regular doctor; they didn’t help me out very much. . . . It was bad—I couldn’t sleep sometimes from the pain.”
Emma’s pain is similar to what Ehrenreich wrote about, but whereas Ehrenreich’s colleagues were hourly employees, covered by workers’ compensation policies, Emma is an independent contractor. She is not eligible for workers’ compensation, paid sick leave, or health insurance. If she is injured on the job, she has no recourse. Her only option was to quit cleaning, a decision that she made reluctantly. “It made the most money, so that’s why I had this inner conflict; but I was like, ‘Is this really worth it?’” she said. “So it’s really frustrating, but yeah, I took it off and I started doing some exercise, and my back sort of got to somewhat normal now.”
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