You'd be surprised how prevalent that attitude is, the people with good paying jobs doing it for "extra cash on the side" say they don't care about the pay rate or unionizing or anything and so the going rate for these little delivery contracts is super low.

They advertise that you'll make well over minimum wage when in reality you'll hardly ever even meet min wage. They could easily guarantee a min wage, which should be no problem if the drivers are all really making so much money, but they obviously don't.

People say "well the drivers shouldn't do it then, they should get different jobs. if it doesn't pay and they keep doing it they're stupid", and then go on to order food from the app and tip $0.50 bc "hey, I only spent $5, that's 10%!"

Drivers are essentially depending on tips to live just like a waiter. They might take home $4/hr from the app. So every time you order you have the chance to make it right for the driver and pay them for doing their job by giving a decent cash tip. IMO $3 is the absolute minimum, $5 is normal. If your reaction to that is "whoa that's way too much what did they do to deserve that?" you're a cheap bastard.

Sorry for the rant, I just did this job for a while and got treated like dog shit by the customers and the companies for efficiently and politely indulging their every whim on demand at any hour, and it makes me sick to hear people who aren't starving living in their cars depending on work like this to survive talking about it in abstract terms like they have any idea. We really should have a period of compulsory food service work for every teenager in this country, seriously.