this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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You have no idea how helpful DoorDash/Ubereats is for people with health issues and no support network. I'm not going to share any of my details but I'd be in a much worse situation if I couldn't rely on DoorDash for meals.
ya... I don't agree with a corporation being the solution to that at all..
neighbours exist. communities used to help each other, until corporations got involved and made us not be communities anymore.
most neighbours will help, if you ask. I'd rather see communities helping each other, even paying neighbours rather then some shit company, that's screwing you and the employees over.
I really don’t mean to be disrespectful but it sounds like you’ve been lucky enough to never have anything like this happen to you. I’m glad for you, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. But please realize you’re talking about an idealistic view that doesn’t match, at least my own, reality.
I know DoorDash is expensive, I’m fine paying the prices and tipping the drivers extra well. The service is useful and important to me. And taking care of the drivers with tips and them taking care of me with service IS my community. I love those people that bring me food and it means the world to me that I can get the food I need, when I need it, with such little friction. (Which btw, is not pizza and Chinese food. I WISH I could eat those things 😭) That’s well worth the extra costs I’m paying. Plus I get to support local businesses that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to patronize.
If you have issues with DoorDash or gig economy type stuff, I’d urge you to think about legislation or unionization type things that would help and evangelize for those, rather than taking it out on the patrons and drivers.
Yes, before the invention of DoorDash people with health challenges just died. No one could order food and have it delivered by cabs or the restaurant. Not like pizza places did delivery at all let alone base their whole business model around it. Really just a good thing such Uber and Dash companies came along to be super valuable middlemen charging a fee to everyone involved.
Pizza every day isn’t great.
And those other contexts were not as pervasive as DoorDash has become.
I worked delivering food when I was young, all food was able to be delivered way back. It was not just pizza and very common, DoorDash and the like have just gaslit everyone into thinking they are needed. I remember the small town I lived in even had a program to pay for cabs to get groceries for people with limited mobility (this was in the 90's). We have abandoned working systems like meals on wheels in favor of for profit middlemen.
DoorDash supplanting meals on wheels is terrible. I don’t mean to argue otherwise.
I think awareness of the options was really low, though. And that’s probally what I’m speaking to. And I expect my ignorance was shared. I see your point though. And I can see how I was speaking from ignorance there.
While maybe more people are aware of a way to deliver food and basic supplies in the era of DoorDash, I never really meant to defend them. It just made sense to me that the pervasiveness of DoorDash is improving access. But it’s definitely not improving affordability. Not at all, holy shit.
That is the truly insidious part, people did know and use delivery often back in the day. It was in movies (remember the Chinese take out boxes all the time, those where delivered), it was promoted in every grocery store and was many a young persons first job. But like all things its gone in a weird way, now no one seems to deliver anything out side of being a contractor for an app. Our charities have changed in a similar way, less on the ground help (when I was 12 I helped a version of meals on wheels that had over 6 active vans in a city of 30,000) and more on remote support and fundraising. Not saying they are not trying to do good work, but what people expect in their community now is kinda depressing in its tiny underwhelming way.
Your right it is driving costs up, and also not always improving access outside of major cites. Here is a personal example; I used to be able to get food delivered at my house in a small rural town (1400 people) from the nearest city (25 min drive away). It was more money since you had to pay for the extra distance, and the delivery people did not like it (it cut down on tips spending 50+ min driving for one call) but it was possible. Now I don't have that option, the Dashes/Ubers/Justeats just don't even try. It might be that no one would take that job, it might be they never thought of it. Oh and we have as a town had to fund and support a local handibus non profit to deliver things to or drive to appointments people with mobility issues (for whatever the reason is).
Chinese and pizza were the only places you could be sure would deliver. Grocery deliveries, outside of charities that were not well known, were expensive enough to make doordash look like a charity.
Now if you go back a century or so, you might be able to phone the local General store and have little Jimmy bring a box of stuff for you, but little Jimmy is in the home now, and those times have been long gone before either of us were born.
Really? I used to order subs as a child often. Guess it depends where you where. Here in Canada things are spaced out when not in city's and maybe that made delivery more common?
Point is still that places like DoorDash and the like are not positives for communities overall and the extra costs while paying less to drivers is causing real harm.