I've seen this story before...
Before I did Uber Eats, I did multiple stints at call centers. Always had great quality, but never could keep up with the call time expectations. Always too nice, too considerate... good qualities for a counselor but poor qualities for a person answering phones. And I couldn't type fast enough. Couldn't manage longer than 6 months, which was higher than average. After taking biz classes at college (and an org psych course) I worked out the system: managers were using "investor expectations" as rationale for aggressive cost cutting, which required making the call handling experience as efficient and mechanical as possible. In practice only 5% of hires could meet the requirements to stay on the job past probation, but this in itself meant cut costs because nobody could stick around long enough to organize, and the people who could make the numbers easily were all full of themselves (as is common of quick-witted people) and unwilling/disbelieving in collective bargaining anyway.
I recently saw an article about how Uber has hired gamification experts to redesign their app. Already the experience for Uber Eats customers is a kind of game: when a online driver drives through your area, you receive notice from Uber. You hurry to be the first to file a request, before other fortunate persons of affluence can get their attention before you. If you are quick enough, savvy enough, and lucky enough, your order is accepted. You watch as your driver moseys on over to your house/condo/shanty/studio loft/wherever, entertaining yourself with their clueless antics as they stumble around local roads and heavy traffic, earnestly struggling to your door. When they arrive, you get the "delivery experience": a unique person you've never seen before, anxious to make a good impression so you will rate them highly and grant them a life-saving tip. Customers literally think of us as NPCs in a casual game, like the Hunger Games.
Uber's ultimate goal is to effectively decimate the taxi industry wholesale by making it all game at which no one expects, nor should expect, to make more than a couple dollars here and there. Obscure the risk of doing this work (it is enormous) and make it a recreational activity, a means for yuppies and wealthy college students to acquire extra spending money for mall excursions. A lot of posters here have talked at length about, and defended, their view of this work as such here already. It will not be long before Uber effectively enables customers and restaurants to rate drivers by their physical qualities (I think their new ratings system is intended to achieve this, while creating high turnover by instituting "performance metrics" like at the call centers). A cheap, powerless, flippant and most of all attractive driver base is exactly what Uber execs have in mind right now, and they mean to achieve it as soon as practical.
After seeing that loathsome video of the Trump-esque Uber exec having it out with that one driver who made good on Uber's pledge to be heard, my worst fears about Uber are confirmed. The company is still run by psychopaths who thought the parable of the Good Samaritan had it wrong. Personally I think I'm just gonna try to get some more education with the money I'm making at this, because once the economy goes south people will be piling into this app faster than you can say "saturation" and that will be the end of rideshare/delivery as we know it, and with it my last remaining opportunity for a livable income.
