"Choose your hours" As a PhD student, that's such a huge trap. It's a morbid joke in grad school that "You have the freedom to work any 80 hours you want each week."

In the netherlands, deliveroo workers sued deliveroo for requiring them to become independent contractors, which takes them away from a lot of worker's rights we have here. The judge decided that deliveroo is not allowed to do this, and then they just quit doing business in the entire country lmao

We stopped using delivery apps. It’s so expensive. I thought food prices eating out skyrocketed. Except we started actually going to restaurants and it’s like $30 cheaper.

I drove for door dash for awhile. Most reviews and people were great, however here are some negative reviews that I got: 2* My cold stone ice cream was melted when I ordered from 25 minutes away from my home 1* The store didn't have the drink that I wanted 1* Food not delivered (the store they ordered from was closed and I had to call and cancel their order) 1* I called to inform the person the machine was down and asked what they wanted instead, I gave that to them and then they gave me a bad rating because it wasn't what they originally wanted When you factor in wear and tear on a vehicle, the inconsistencies in tipping, waiting around a restaurant because the order isn't ready, app mistakes causing a picked up order to be requested over and over it made it no longer worth it. When factoring in those items, I was making less than $8/hr

Big Food Apps: "We are barely making a profit!" Also Big Food Apps: "Here is $184 million so that we don't have to give our employees health insurance."

Maybe we should focus on the fact that US tipping culture has incentivised places to pay a lower wage for the food service workers.

Safety is huge. It taught me poor driving habits to make the unreasonable delivery times to not get negative ratings and it could have cost me my life in a huge crash

Aside from freshman year in college, I've stubbornly never once gotten food delivered. If it's close enough for delivery, it's close enough for me to go there myself.

As a european hearing People say "make sure you tip" is so weird. no, make sure workers are paid a living Wage. The employer needs to pay his employees not the customer.

I'm so sick of hearing someone referring to a person's 2-5th jobs as "side hustles". If you need multiple "side hustles" to live they are JOBS.

Still can’t get over the order I placed last week. The delivery guy didn’t show up and vanished off the map. After two hours I contact support and ask them what’s going on. They call the delivery guy and tell me that “They can’t seem to reach him, it’s odd that he vanished en route, this has never happened before.” I say that I really hope he’s ok and they should definitely check on him in a bit, to which they reply asking how I’d like my refund. I tell them, then reiterate that I hope they can get in touch with the driver and I hope nothing happened to him. They tell me that the restaurant still delivers, so I can reorder, and this behavior is not up to their usual high standards. I tell them, yup, I’ll order again, but also, they have a driver missing. And they ask me to positively rate the interaction and to have a nice day.

Got my first delivery job at Domino's in 2003. When Katrina hit in 2004 and gas prices soared, Domino's starting charging $0.99 or $1.99 as a delivery fee. It was a "temporary" fee while they adjusted to the price increase of gas. Temporary....

“Can’t spell Millennial without three massive L’s” Yeah. I felt that.

Despite the $40 cost for delivering a $12 meal before tip, somehow the apps manage to not turn a profit. Instead of paying lobbyists, perhaps they should keep that money.

This is why I stopped using delivery apps 3 years ago and instead started calling the restaurants for pick-up orders. Not only do the restaurants I like makes a better margins and can stay in business, but also it takes me less time to drive to the restaurant, grab my food and come back home than it takes with the delivery app. So I encourage my restaurant, pay less, have hot food, eat earlier and all it cost me was a 15-20 minutes drive.

I delivered for Uber Eats for a couple months when I found myself between jobs. In those two months, I put a couple thousand miles on my car, hundreds of gallons of gas into the tank, and made just enough to cover the gas and an occasional meal. The only good thing was the "set your own hours" aspect of it, as that provided me enough time to go get another real job. I now work fewer hours, make much more, and only have to drive my car to and from work. Should things go wrong, and I find myself out of work again, I think I'll consider a life of crime rather than go back to delivering.

Ah yes, delivery apps, where a $17 dish somehow rounds to $46.53 at the checkout window every single time

I worked at a local pizza place right before the pandemic as a paid delivery driver. At one point someone walked in asking to pick up a DoorDash order, the owner explained they had not signed up for DoorDash and told them to leave. The owner then went on the app and saw that they were indeed listed but also that the app contained the trademarked logo and images of the menu that the owners held the copyright for. They steal whatever they can and keep getting away with it.

The right thing with the "enshittification cycle" is to abandon ship immediately when the rates go up and the service goes down.

The door dash dude talking about an Orphanage was hilarious. Gotta love when the jokes write themselves. It feels like the "app for everything" era has made very few things better and just made an alternative to an already, usually better, system. You can thank a lot of food prices being jacked up around urban areas on these apps. Not just inflation.

Instead of telling people who order food "You need to tip more", we should tell companies "You need to pay your workers more".

I work at Circle K. Tons of Uber and Lyft drivers come in for gas. So many of them have zero idea that they should be saving their gas reciepts for when they file taxes, because many of them seem pretty unaware that they even need to file taxes, much less that they can deduct expenses related to their car. These apps should be required to educate their drivers on these things. I know its just one in a huge list of disgusting abuses by these companies, but it just really upsets me.

One problem not addressed in this video is the restaurant owners themselves. When they sign up for these delivery services, they get a huge boost in the amount of customers they have. Very few restaurants hire more cooks. It gets to the point where the people eating in the restaurant wait longer because they are being bumped back for the delivery orders. No such thing as free money.

John Oliver has quickly become an American national treasure. His shows are incredibly eye opening. Keep up the great work and looking forward to future episodes of "Last Week Tonight"

"We have replaced the tyranny of the boss with the tyranny of the algorithm" is an amazing summation of the issue from Prayag

"Mafia margins" - best phrase ever to describe this highway robbery.

Next time I’ll order directly from the restaurant and go pick it up. I know not everyone has that option but I do and anyone else who is able - we should take the extra time and effort to support the restaurant business directly 🙏🏻. As far as the drivers…I don’t know the solution but I hope all these honest hardworking people find a better company to work for. Thank you for this information.

I had my roommate lock all of the food delivery apps so I stopped using them. I’m seeing $20+ in fees and delivery costs for orders as low as $30. If I want takeout, I’ll just go to the restaurant.

One thing this segment left out was the phenomenon of “ghost kitchens”. These exist as a single storefront in the real world, but operate as potentially dozens of fake restaurants on a food delivery app, all of which have the same address and often the same food items too. The effect of this is a single ghost kitchen taking up huge amounts of space on these apps and artificially outcompeting locally owned restaurants.

Numbers being yelled at you with Human Squidward is my favorite show. I simply cannot get enough of it.

Goodness, I've not watched LWT in a very long time and forgot how good the snark (and information) is. And the writers and directing of the segment, seriously amazing job y'all. Keep it up.

John Oliver is the closest we will ever get to a genuine hero

I was an Uber driver for 2 years in Los Angeles and did thousands of rides. I moved to a small town and got a job at a local pizza place doing deliveries and made way more money for less hours of work. I also drove about 20,000 miles less doing pizza delivery. These gig apps don't care about their workers.

Imagine if your job paid you $30/hr for three years and then suddenly paid you $8/hr. That's the gig economy right now.

I never tip in the app, I always hand them the money in person. Never gonna forget when I asked a guy if they even get the tip from the app and he just gave a tight smile and said "half the time no".

Most of the time in Denver I get below minimum wage with Uber and DoorDash once you factor in gas. Something about them wanting you to drive 30 minutes and 10 miles across town for a few dollars feels like it should be illegal.

Tipping is a ridiculous model for paying workers. No worker should depend on a different individual's decision making every moment they're working on what their compensation should or will just plain be.

That Orphanage Side Hustle tangent had me ROLLING

at some point there could be a major collapse. many delivery apps in europe went under when regulations were tightened, like forcing the companies to classify their drivers as full employees.

As someone who used to work for one of these companies for a few years, I'm looking forward to this.

Really feels like the answer is to not use these sites… I can’t believe these companies aren’t profiting at this point. We paid $30 in fees last night on a $60 order before tip… if they’re squeezing fees from consumers and half of the profits from restaurants how on earth are they not profitable. If this much isn’t enough they shouldn’t exist.

When I worked at a restaurant, we hated the food apps because the delivery guys got in trouble if an order was late, but we'd get in trouble if the order was wrong. So if we were in the weeds and running late on orders they'd just grab a random order off the shelf and knowingly deliver the wrong one.

He truly deserves to win the Primetime Emmy's annually. He is a master at what he does; entertaining, educating and enlightening.

I live in new york and I always make sure I tip 20% (or more, in inclement weather) and every time, the tip button is BELOW the confirm order button, so I have to scroll past it to tip 20%, and it's usually pre-set to 10-15%

My parents were frustrated by Doordash arriving late and with the wrong order until I finally convinced them to drive the 5 minutes to pick it up. Then they stopped arguing when dinner came late, saved money, and got what they ordered.

These companies work really hard to maintain the illusion that delivery workers are success stories following the "work hard to get ahead in life" model by spending a little extra time on the side to boost their income, as opposed to being desperate and exploited and probably making less than minimum wage after accounting for buying and maintaining their equipment.

In Connecticut I got into Ubereats because for a subscription cost of just $5 a month I got free delivery on all orders, no service charge, and 15% off the base price of all restaurant orders. It was incredible while it lasted. I quit when they charged to $10 a month for no discount and "free delivery" but with a big service fee.

True! I was diagnosed with ALS in Aug and I am not able to drive. It make it easier giving my wife a break. I have to admit, I didn't realize how much it hurt restaurants

In the late 90s I was a sushi delivery guy in the Carroll gardens in Brooklyn . I made approximately $500 a night on a good night and the restaurant paid me something like $100 a week . I did well because I spoke the language and knew the neighborhood as I had grown up there . The owner of the restaurant was responsible for my safety and I was responsible for getting their food to the customers intact and on time there were responsibilities that interlocked the food delivery Aps have bypassed the responsibilities section and just moved on to taking everyone’s money

I work for a food delivery app and it would be nice if the app itself paid us more. Tips are great but the person buying the food should not be the main bread winner of my job. But I am always incredibly thankful when I get big tips. And one thing left out is that there are a lot of really bad drivers out there that do steal food, eat the food or are creepy during the delivery. Those people really ruin things for the rest of us because then you do get clients that dont tip because of the prior delivery person doing something bad.

I live in a small city and 9/10 times order for pick up and pick up the food myself. I'd rather support a local restaurant directly than an exploitative gig economy job.

I get paid $2 by door dash to deliver food, no matter how long the restaurant takes or how much is ordered. So many people don't tip, or tip appropriately for what I'm doing to save them time and frustration. I get less than $20 normally for shopping orders, including those with 30+ items. I'm sure most people wouldn't think $5 is appropriate for them to take 30+ minutes to do something for someone else.

"... as spaced out as a 9th-grader's essay trying to meet the page limit." This might be my favorite simile ever!!

Nice, just woke up for work. Time to get depressed by John Oliver.

See if your city/town has a local courier service! I have been a bike messenger since I started college and local companies pay far better (however tip is still main source of income for riders) but the cost for delivery is often cheaper and mostly going to your rider/driver. It’s great, keeps money local, and gets distracted cars off the road!

The Sophie Choice joke...😂

I am always amazed at John Oliver's ability to sustain a high level of sustained incredulity throughout his broadcast. THAT is a gift.

Can confirm: I managed a dive bar in Manhattan that was constantly being listed on food delivery apps as a "restaurant" with a fake menu of items we didn't have. It was a cash-mostly, bud-light-and-fireball type joint that maybe could bust out wings or fries some of the time, if items were in stock. I would get angry people calling or even walking in about orders I'd never heard of, on apps we didn't use, for items we didn't sell, and all I could offer them in apology was a beer or a shot. It was the kind of joint that didn't even answer the phone when it was busy or loud. Corner dive, blatantly not a restaurant, and yet...

the little grin John makes when the running horse joke pops up is priceless.

another thing to mention, is working for food delivery long term, your car will absolutely break down faster. and you now just have to pay for the repairs

During the pandemic, I suggested we have some food delivered and my husband decided to go out and get it instead. He felt it a great reason to get out of the house and got the money where it needed to be. We concentrated on local eateries that we had always frequented and felt we were helping to preserve the local economy. This episode only verified we chose correctly.

"Get a real job" is what a lot of people told me during my time as a driver and as long as society has that mindset nothing will change.

numbers being yelled at you by human squidward is my fav show on tv

24:00 ''i get where that value-ation comes from'' i was so ready for a cheeky starting to zoom towards the 'jewels' and 'wand' of the stallion right as the clip where changed XD

As a DoorDash "Dasher" (their word not mine) on a bicycle. I have discovered those ordering food from the richest neighborhoods or the most expensive condos are the worst tippers. They often choose not to tip at all. While the people with the lowest means have always been the best at tipping, often tipping in the app and giving a few dollars in cash.

How can they not be profitable yet be able to spend millions lobbying? I don't get it.

As a former Uber driver, I can say it is one of the most stressful and high intensity jobs imaginable. Not only does 70% of your income come from tips, so if people don’t you literally make almost nothing, In order to even have a CHANCE of making minimum wage you cannot stop even for a second during your work day, no lunch, no drinks, no phone calls nothing as you get no stipend for being clocked in whatsoever, you only get money for making deliveries themselves. You need to be 100% focused driving and delivery orders as fast as you can. Not to mention gas will literally eat over half of your money just by itself. You are so painfully aware that every wasted second is lost money it becomes depressing. Traffic jams, long elevators, people slow to answer doors, all cost you and you are, like I said, *painfully* aware of that fact. Every single one is infuriating as you are literally watching your money tick away with time. And we havent even gotten to the worst part. When you are offered a job you have TEN SECONDS to decide whether to accept it, and sometimes, you will literally end up with a job that costs more in gas to deliver than you actually make from the delivery itself and that’s assuming you get a GOOD TIP. If you get a bad tip you’ll literally lose money. Most people don’t order large amounts of food so the tips are tiny even if they are large % wise. You can literally get assigned a job where it will take 40 minutes to pick up and deliver the food and you’ll make 5$ TOTAL. 40 minutes for 5$ and remember it probably cost more than 5$ in gas. You have no idea how much you will make for a drive in advance as the only number the app gives you is the “potential earnings” which includes what Uber pays you PLUS what they think you *should* get in tips. But it’s literally always MUCH less than what Uber says you will because people don’t tip. If I drove for an hour and received no tips and only made what Uber gave me as a delivery fee I would make literally 10$ TOTAL before gas if I’m LUCKY. And remember, at least half of that is going to gas. It needs serious regulation as right it’s practically equivalent to a sweat shop.

Tried it once. Thank you to the driver who took a photo of my house and dropped off nothing. Thank you for forcing me to spend another hour demanding my money back instead of the credits. I dont need to spend $45 everytime i want to order food. Now i have zero desire to use delivery apps. Im lucky.

My husband spent a few months as a delivery driver for DoorDash and lemme tell you I’m SO GLAD he’s not doing it anymore. The drivers get really screwed on pay, often offered only 2-3$ per delivery and only more if the customer tips. Most deliveries weren’t even worth the gas it took to make them. I avoid using these apps now, it ends up being twice as expensive and knowing the driver and restaurant aren’t even getting most of that money just completely turns me off from using the service.

I am a Doordash driver and they recently cut the pay in my area from a minimum of $5 a delivery to just $2. It went from being just enough to make a living to now I am questioning whether or not I can continue. It often costs me more for gas and time than I get from the delivery, leaving me to rely on tips. Which on many orders I do not get, I have driven orders over 20 miles from the restaurant (which I must commute miles to get to) for fewer than $8 (and then I have to drive back, totaling almost 50 miles and over an hour of time). And on DD, if you don't constantly accept orders you become less likely to get more orders so you have to take the low paying ones hoping to get more better offers. It is also true that ratings are a hugely stressful part of the job.

It's only when he brought it up again at the end, that I realized by looking closely at his eyes, he isn't lying :)

Literally listening to this while dashing.

John forgot to cover that delivery drivers also have to pay for their own gas, oil changes and maintenance on their vehicle. That eats up a majority of tips. Plus! You have to pay taxes at the end of the year.

I owned a bagel store during the pandemic and a couple years after, sold it last year. About a month after I bought the store I ended our relationship with grubhub and Uber eats for the exact reasons John describes in this. People complained, but it wasn't worth. Thank you John Oliver for this.

Tony Xu almost in the same breath says the workers value their time more but have side doordash as a side hustle.

Praised be John Oliver

I’m so glad that John said the Devil plays a better fiddle than Johnny because I’ve said this for YEARS!

2:06 "I'm like Miss Piggy the way I'm hittin' that green. Even now, I'm about as high as a giraffe's arsehole and as spaced out as a ninth grader's essay trying to meet the page limit." This is really high quality writing. Especially that last one. Respect. Now on with the program.

If the need arises I still call a restaurant, speak to a person and pay the delivery guy in cash which works well every time, as it always has.

We should incentivise actually getting up to get our own food after purchasing from a restaurant. You can blame restaurants for not paying workers, but once they raise those wages the same customers will complain that menu prices are too high. That’s just the way this goes. Restaurants will simply raise menu prices and then people will still complain. We really should just be eating out less and cooking more in general.

"The tyranny of the algorithm" is spot on. I work as an Uber driver and am highly rated - a super-high rating over thousands of trips. But at the odd times a passenger gives me a bad review, Uber never checks on me to hear my side. Instead, I get a message threatening to block me from the ap. Drivers are not seen nor supported by Uber.

As a gig worker, thank you for covering this... so much needs to change.

The thing thats missed in this conversation is Disabled people. A lot of disabled people, myself included, use these services because it raises my quality of life. I can have resturant quality food with out all the pain of having to leave the house. I mean physical actual sharp pain.

I've been doing delivery full-time for 3 years now, and while you can make good money doing it 40-60% of my income is tips. If I don't get tipped, even in California with our predatory prop, I can LOSE MONEY on an order. They pay can vary 30%, and since we're not paid hourly if I haven't had an order in an hour that's one hour of my life wasted and gone.

I'm a millennial and since 2012, when I first found out that delivery apps were exploitative, I have never used them again. Instead I face my worst fears every weekend and call a restaurant to order. And I'm proud of that! 😊

This isn’t even getting into the prevalence of fake restaurants, aka ghost kitchens, on these apps. What appear to be local different local restaurants are often just a single kitchen to pumps out the same food under different names. These tend to crowd out actual local restaurants. They’ve also proven difficult for the FDA to track down and regulate for food safety. Eddy Burback had a good video on these for those interested

"Spaced out like a ninth graders paper tryna make the page limit" 😂😂😂😂

😂😂😂 I have had that argument about "Devil Went Down to Georgia" my ENTIRE life!!!!😂😂😂

I stopped using these apps because they make a $12 meal cost me $20 not including tip. You can tell me “I’m getting a deal” but that doesn’t make it true

One of the most important segments ever in this show 👏🏽 PLEASE do a follow up on 1) how all corporations are using this model to elude labor law 2) how corporations are using tipping culture as wages

Ive been working for Jeff Bezos AKA Amazon and I’ve been doing fine for the last three years as an independent contractor providing my own vehicle until last week that I hit a deer. Party is over. Thank God nothing happened to me or anyone except for the deer. The damage is about 5K. I only have liability in my insurance policy. So there goes the net profit for the year. You can’t be doing these jobs with a car that’s worth more than 7k unless you have full coverage. Lots of ppl hating on the gig economy but I actually like it. Im such a careful driver but the deer came out of nowhere. I’ve driven 200k miles in the last three years with no problems till last Saturday 😢

Prop 22 didn't just pass because of lobbying. It passed because AB5 was a really badly constructed bill that threatened every freelancer's business - which is why 100 exemptions were carved out leaving Uber room to sue for denying equal protection. Nearly everyone hated that bill.

I am grateful for "Last Week Tonight" for bringing this sad situation to the attention of the public.

You missed an EXTREME safety concern. I ordered a soup from a local Italian restaurant but got an incorrect soup. The soup we received was Lobster Bisque. We called the restaurant and they stated the soup we ordered isn't on their menu and Doordash ordered the lobster bisque. After calling Doordash it turned out they had the incorrect menu and instead of dropping the soup or calling they substituted the soup we ordered with lobster bisque. First, automated substitutions should never happen but why would you substitute with a shellfish dish?! What if I was allergic to shellfish? If they made that mistake with shellfish what is to stop them from doing that with peanuts? Maybe this has been fixed in the last two years but the fact it ever happened is insane.

I remember going to order Uber Eats one time and the app said "it appears it's raining, be sure to tip your driver well." So I sent them a message saying that if the app knows when it's raining and is capable of reminding customers to tip well, then it's also capable of increasing a driver's wages at those times as well. Tipping culture is disgusting

As a delivery driver for DoorDash for necessity, I have to confess that's frustrating and humiliating. Why? Simple, frustrating because if you know how to basic accounting you'll realize that is a SCAM. YES! Take all the expenses (not only gas but insurance, health, taxes) you incurred and it left you peanuts and not the 17/20 $the hour plus the idle hours don't work and stay in the car and you're working for less than minimum wage. And this is humiliating. Finally asking for tips when there's no way to improve the service (depends on app, traffic and restaurant) is literally feeling a total looser. Finally you feel a partner in the scam when you know how much Costs people. This can be transferred to Uber eats and others. For those in the taxi business the issue is similar but not the place here.

"Numbers Being Yelled at You with Human Squidward" is totally what this show is called in another universe. 😂

After realizing how obnoxious the fees were for the apps, I’ve made it a point to do takeout orders through the restaurants own website, or over the phone. My regular pizza order from my local place was about $7 cheaper this way, plus they offered loyalty rewards and coupons that way.

I shattered my leg really severely last year, I needed surgery and both before and after the operation I had to spend 23 hrs a day horizontal and with my leg elevated. I live with my mother because rent here is atrocious but she still works and I can’t expect her to do my meal planning for me so delivery was really a life saver for me. My rule of thumb however is to figure out what you want first and then check to see if food places in the area have their own websites or call in to ask if they do delivery. It’s a bit more effort but in the long run it saves you money

Paying for medical care out of your own pocket should be perfectly fine but because of how screwed up the system is people just instantly think of it as a bad thing.