Dispatches from my last DoorDash shifts
Delivery work was hard enough before the pandemic. Now, it’s flat-out unsafe.
Around two weeks ago, I cancelled all of my upcoming DoorDash shifts. I had only managed to get my location updated from Southern California to Washington state a few weeks earlier after moving in September, and I’d hoped I could re-establish a steady income stream. But after working several shifts before and during spring break, I realized I couldn’t keep putting myself and my partner at risk.
I live in Thurston county, which hasn’t been too badly affected by COVID-19 yet. When Governor Jay Inslee first ordered all restaurants to suspend sit-down dining service, stores seemed to take all of his guidelines quite seriously. Some even implemented more harsh rules of their own. I had to pick up an order from Red Robin at one point, and the host told me that only one person could be in the lobby at a time.
Yet a week later, when I picked up another order from the same Red Robin, they weren’t enforcing this rule anymore. I had started recording radio diaries by then — here’s my voice memo from that order:
