7 Things I Learned About the World From DoorDashing For 7 Days

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As I mentioned last week, for now at least, I ran out of time to ramp my writing up to something profitable enough to do full time. This Substack nets me less than a thousand dollars a month — not even enough to make both of our car payments — and I needed a stopgap to pay down some things that are overdue.

Because we do own businesses that require time, effort, and attention, and because we have 7 kids at home, I needed flexibility. I couldn’t just get a normal 9-5, even if I hadn’t essentially suicided my career by being a highly-cancellable culture warrior for the past decade or two. I stopped climbing the career ladder somewhere around 2013. Now I’m a gray-haired (if still fairly young) grandfather trying to re-insert myself in an already competitive workforce, with no idea what kind of jobs to even look for if I could fit one into my life.

So I went with gig work. I chose food delivery, in this city of a thousand restaurants. On paper, it looks like a good deal. I’ve spent about 40 hours doing deliveries for DoorDash and Uber Eats, and I’ve brought in a little over $800 in that time.

But that’s 1099 income. It will be taxed at a higher rate. I’ve spent half of what I’ve taken in on fuel. My tires are taking a beating, and I’ll need a full synthetic oil change again soon. I’ve driven over 800 miles in 7 days. And I’m absolutely exhausted. Late nights, early mornings, trying to find the best times to maximize my earnings.

But I’ve had a ton of fun, and I’ve learned a bunch, so I’m not sorry I’ve done it.

Will it work out long term? I don’t think so. Is it worth doing if you need to supplement your income? Yes, I think it can be, but circumstances vary.

In the 7 days I’ve been doing this, I’ve figured out (or remembered) some things that I want to share that I think are useful information for anyone.

#7 - Hard Work Is Good For You

It’s not like I don’t know this. I put in nearly a decade at highly physical jobs, starting with being part of a crew that regularly mowed a big parish cemetery on a hill when I was 15. I’ve worked in a hardware store, hauling 100-pound bags of cement, stocking shelves, sharpening chainsaw chains, mixing paint, mopping floors, the works. I worked in a lumber yard, keeping all the piles stocked and sorted and organized in the summer heat. I worked construction, carrying heavy supplies, mixing buckets of stucco, and climbing scaffolding with them. I spent a whole summer putting pumps in water wells in Idaho, and let me tell you, those suckers are deep up in the mountains, the pumps are heavy, and pulling hundreds of feet of flex pipe by hand or wrenching 10 foot segments of galvanized together as a hoist drops them 1500 feet into the ground will get you in fighting shape very quickly.

Those are just a few of the jobs I did that had me physically exhausted at the end of every day.

But I’ve been riding a desk for 20 years, and I’ve expanded to fill that role!

This job is easier than the ones I did when I was young, inasmuch as I spend a good portion of the time sitting behind the steering wheel, but in five and a half hours today I got in 4,000 steps. I’m in and out of the car every few minutes, up and down stairs, running around apartment complexes, and always moving.

My mood has drastically improved. I’m getting far more exercise than I expected. I don’t even need to get on the treadmill, because I’m doing the same amount of work at work. In fact, after a long plateau, I’m finally losing weight again.

When I’m driving, the old evening urge to have a drink or three and unwind pretty much goes away, and when I am at home or out to dinner I now have less alcohol when I have it at all.

I feel energized and happy more often than not. I go to bed tired enough to fall asleep quickly. In fact, I could go to sleep right now if I just let myself lie down.

My problems haven’t gone away, but I feel better overall, and that’s not nothing. I did not expect to feel this way because of this job.

I’m pleasantly surprised at the effect.

#6 - People Have a Surprising Amount of Disposable Income

I have never used DoorDash or Uber Eats in my life.

I don’t get a lot of takeout anyway, but I won’t pay for the convenience fee when I can just go pick it up myself. I’m kind of a cheap bastard.

But every day, I marvel at the number of orders that come in, one after another. I’m hardly the only driver on the road. There are tons of us. I almost never have to wait for long before something comes across the transom, and I’m heading to pick up coffee, fast food, a salad, a pizza, tacos, or some kind of delicious-smelling breakfast.

And honestly, I’m glad. It makes work for people like me. And I hope it means that people are doing better than I am. I don’t have extra cash to burn right now, but I’m grateful that others do. Many of these people are working in offices, or taking care of new babies (I know, because they always ask me not to ring the doorbell and wake the little sleepers), or are shut ins of some kind who can’t go get food or groceries themselves.

At a time when everything is becoming ridiculously expensive, I’d much rather see a bunch of folks doing OK.

#5 - Working For Yourself Is Still Best If You Can Swing It

I have never played well with others.

I prefer to work alone most of the time.

I hate meetings. I especially hate meetings that could have been an email.

I love being able to control how much I can earn based on how hard I’m willing to work. It’s demoralizing to be in a job where you know that no matter how much extra effort you put in, your paycheck is going to be the same.

When I get in the car and hit, “Dash Now,” I am my own boss. I don’t have any meetings. I can listen to whatever I want. I decide which areas to work. I decide which orders to take. I manage my own customer service procedures. I handle the way I interact with the vendors. I choose the hours I want, and I can have as many of them as I have time and energy for.

Being in the driver’s seat both literally and figuratively feels fantastic. Knowing that busting my butt to hit the numbers I set is totally on me is incredibly motivating. Going above and beyond and hitting a standard of excellence that earns an extra tip from a customer is satisfying.

The pay is less than I’m used to, but better than expected. I average right around $20/hour (and sometimes more), which is better than I’d get working in retail or for a restaurant. It’s less than I’d get as a full-time office employee, but I’m not looking to start a new career filling out the cover sheets on TPS reports. I’m looking to fill in the gaps in income that writing can’t cover at the moment until writing can.

Either way, I’m still my own boss, and the feeling of control that comes with that is liberating.

#4 - Social Media is Worse For You Than You Realize

Most of the friends I have in real life — I rarely see them, alas, such is the way of things these days — are not on social media.

But I have no real-life friends whose main business is content creation of any kind, so that’s not entirely surprising.

Some of the online friends I have, though, have been saying for a while that social media is, in essence, the Palantír — the magical crystal ball from Lord of the Rings that ages the body and poisons the mind of Walter Bishop Denethor of Gondor by showing him the great evils transpiring across Middle Earth.

All bad news, all the time, is a killer.

I’ve been working from home for 11 years. I use social media not just to share what I write (and receive feedback) but to socialize and discuss. I have no water cooler to chat around. I go online to interact with colleagues and friends around the world.

But while I’m driving and delivering orders, I have almost no time for social media at all. Occasionally, if an order is taking a while, I’ll pop open X/Twitter on my phone because of long habit. The funny thing is, now when I do it, I immediately want to recoil and put it away.

Sweet fancy Moses is it an awful, contentious place filled with some of the worst things (and people) humanity has to offer.

Social media concentrates all the negativity in the world into an algorithmic “feed” that literally feeds you that same negativity. It attracts trolls and other malcontents.

Don’t get me wrong, it has real value, but it also masterfully prompts outrage, encourages people to be nasty to one another, and confuses activity and achievement, persuading users that just talking about items of concern online is tantamount to addressing those issues.

Have you ever taken a break from alcohol for a week and then had a drink? It hits you much harder after even a brief period of abstinence. Social media feels very much the same way, and you can feel its dark taint much more potently once you’re away from it for a while.

Getting offline has decidedly improved my mood and made me feel less fatalistic about the state of the world. I hope that when life returns to normal, I remember to take it in small doses.

#3 - Being in the Real World, Doing Real Things, Interacting With Real People, Is a Balm

To follow on #4, my social media-saturated life has left me feeling increasingly misanthropic over the past few years. It’s not just that needless stupidity and a non-stop onslaught of bad news seem to be on the rise, it’s that toxic forms of entitlement, irresponsibility, conspiracy theorism, and degeneracy are as well.

This week on Twitter there was a story circulating about a New Jersey father who made his adorable 6 year old son run at a full sprint on the treadmill because he was “too fat,” leading him to fall on his face several times and sustain injuries so severe that he actually later died from the trauma.

I can’t even bring myself to watch the video, but it’s everywhere. It makes me feel sick. But it’s just one of countless awful things I see every day that make me hate the malice and evil that permeates the human race to the extent that I begin to hate the human race itself.

I forget, sometimes, that there is goodness in the world.

I am an introverted extrovert. I have spent years preferring to stay home, avoid needless socializing, and keep only to a very small group of family and friends I actually like. But this job doesn’t give me that option, so I have to switch into a different state of mind. And that’s been incredibly good for me.

I’m actually really good with people. And this has given me an occasion to dust off those people skills, left in the storage closet for far too long, and put them to good use.

When I’m out delivering food, I make it a point to “be the light I want to see in the world.” I try to bring positivity, politeness, and courtesy with me to every interaction. And I often find that I receive the same thing in return. I try to smile at everyone I run into and be magnanimous to all (well, except for the people who won’t let me merge. For them, I have only loud curses I won’t repeat here).

I know that restaurant workers bust their rear ends every day doing an often thankless job. I love going into their workplaces and being seen as a kindred spirit. I love treating them like human beings deserving of respect — not just disposable servants who can be safely bossed around, bitched about, or ignored — and see them light up and offer the same energy right back to me.

I still think the world is in trouble, but it’s good to be reminded that the kindness of strangers does still exist.

#2 - It Feels Exactly Like a Video Game, But You Get Paid To Play

I’ve always enjoyed video games with in-game job boards. You look at the board, pick a job you think you can handle for as many in-game credits as you can get, and go out and perform the side mission.

You get paid instantly in many cases, and when you do, you take those credits and go update your ship or buy a new gun or improve the saddle on your horse.

For example, here’s a screenshot of the job board from the space game known as Everspace 2:

And here’s the actual DoorDash driver screen when a job comes in

You can even “unlock achievements”

#1 It’s Actually a Lot of Fun

I was dreading the soul-crushing reality of going back to work, especially in the service industry, but for all the reasons stated above, this job is surprisingly enjoyable.

In fact, I’m kind of bummed to realize that the cost/benefit ratio probably isn’t favorable enough to keep doing it. It puts a lot of wear and tear on my not-inexpensive (and not fuel efficient) Jeep. Half of what I make goes back to gas. Some days I really struggle to make my numbers, or wind up in bad neighborhoods full of fentanyl zombies picking up at fast food places barricaded like Fort Knox.

But I love my time on the road. I love the pace, the hustle, the get-me-out-of-my head momentum of the thing. I love seeing new places, interacting with different people, exploring neighborhoods and parts of the city I’d never otherwise see, listening to whatever I want, or just having time alone to think. It’s still work, and I’m still plenty tired at the end of the day (hence the lack of writing here this past week), but it’s the kind of work I actually look forward to doing.

I’m sure the shine will wear off after a while, but for now, it’s been a great change of pace to break up long-entrenched habits that have set in over the 11 years I’ve been working from home. Sometimes I get stuck in a rut when I come to my desk expecting to make magic happen, but when I’m out doing deliveries, I have a purpose and a timeline and I know exactly what I need to do. It’s the exact opposite of staring at a blank screen, trying to will the right words to come. Or getting sucked into the same old black hole of distractions.

If you’re looking to pick up some extra cash and you live in a decently populous area and have a reasonably reliable car, it’s worth giving it a shot.