Best of 2021 | The Plight of the Delivery Worker
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
In the last few years, New York City’s delivery workers have become a key part of the food industry’s infrastructure, allowing restaurants to do business with customers who are too stressed to leave their desks, or too cautious to leave their homes. But a spate of violent attacks and bike thefts has shown that the people delivering your Grubhub and Seamless orders are deeply vulnerable. Why are these essential workers being exploited by apps and abandoned by the police, forced to band together just to get by?
Guest: Josh Dzieza, an investigations editor and feature writer at The Verge covering technology, business, and climate change.
We’re re-running some of our favorite episodes from the past year. This episode originally aired in September of 2021.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.7 | Hey, everyone. Today's show was supposed to be about Omicron. We were going to talk about what makes |
| 0:06.4 | this wave different, Biden's upcoming speech about it, and what you can do to keep yourself healthy. |
| 0:12.8 | But then the wave hit us. We are all fine, but there's a lot of PCR testing going on where we are. |
| 0:20.2 | And since we were already scheduled to take a little bit of a break over the holiday, |
| 0:24.2 | we decided to take that break one day early. |
| 0:27.7 | That means today's show is a rerun about some of the folks who've helped us the most during the pandemic. |
| 0:33.6 | Delivery workers. |
| 0:35.4 | This episode aired right after massive summer storms revealed just how dedicated |
| 0:40.6 | these folks are, unperturbed by Gale Force winds or flash flooding. Listening now, it's impossible |
| 0:47.3 | not to think about how privileged our team is to be able to take our little break, especially to take it |
| 0:53.2 | a little earlier than expected. |
| 0:55.5 | So if I've got one holiday wish, it's that all of you listening can give and receive that kind of gift to yourselves and the people around you. |
| 1:06.7 | One more thing. Make sure you stay tuned until the end of the show. We'll have an update on how the fight for delivery worker writes turned out. |
| 1:19.8 | When Hurricane Ida made landfall in New York, there was this one image I just couldn't get out of my head. It was video of a delivery guy. |
| 1:29.4 | He is trudging slowly through waist-high water, plastic takeout bag slung over his handlebars. |
| 1:36.7 | Some people saw this guy as stoic, out there doing his job, no matter what. |
| 1:42.9 | Other people saw him as tragic. |
| 1:45.9 | Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out, |
| 1:49.9 | Please do not be the person who orders delivery during a flash flood. |
| 1:54.5 | If it's too dangerous for you, it's too dangerous for them. |
| 1:59.7 | But the delivery workers themselves, they kind of shrugged their shoulders. |
| 2:06.0 | Yeah, they were, I mean, they were not surprised. |
... |
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