‘It’s a very easy job to lose’
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Five days a week, Ryan Hartson scours the picked-over aisles of Mariano’s Fresh Market in Chicago to fill grocery delivery orders for Instacart. He clocks in for his shift exactly on the hour — if he’s even five minutes late, he’ll receive a “reliability incident.” Within four minutes he must accept any incoming orders. Any longer and he’ll be kicked off the shift and risk getting an incident. Three incidents in a week and he’s at risk of termination.
“It’s a very easy job to lose,” Hartson said.
To avoid missing orders, Hartson schedules his bathroom visits — after four hours of work, the app notifies him that he has earned a 10-minute paid break. Meanwhile, Instacart managers use the app to see if he’s running behind on his orders. The app also tracks Hartson’s customer communications, automatically searching for specific terms to ensure he’s using Instacart’s preferred script. If he doesn’t, his metrics will take another hit.
Metrics define the experience of Instacart’s part-time workforce. Measured weekly for employees such as Harston is the number of reliability incidents; the number of seconds it takes to pick each item; and the percentage of customers with whom they correspond. Some former and current employees say 5% to 20% of shoppers in a store can be fired weekly.
Even in the data-driven tech world, Instacart stands out for its metrics-oriented culture, interviews with more than 30 current and former employees as well as documents and recordings reviewed by the Times reveal. This drive toward productivity helps Instacart’s profit margins, a vital step for a startup that recorded its first-ever monthly profit in April, as the coronavirus pandemic heightened demand for grocery delivery.
Instacart says it has eased enforcement of certain metrics during the pandemic, but shoppers say company policies often ignore the realities of the job, leaving them in constant fear of termination over things out of their control.
And, on an unrelated note...Obamacare:
Instacart relies on a combination of in-store hourly employees and contractors; in-store shoppers pick groceries, while contractors can choose to pick and deliver or just deliver. In-store employees receive minimum wage and work a maximum of 29 hours a week — just under the 30-hour cutoff to qualify for employee health care.
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What is so hard about showing upon time. FFS be 15 minutes early and play social media on your phone.
@Loki said in ‘It’s a very easy job to lose’:
What is so hard about showing upon time. FFS be 15 minutes early and play social media on your phone.
In my entire career, I was never late for work.
Never.
Yeah, I had some instances where the alarm didn't go off, and I showed up later than I wanted to, but never later than I needed to start a case - on time.
#adultingisntthathard
#planaheadI take it back...there were a handful of times when I wasn't available to start a case on time, because I was still in the OR doing ANOTHER case.
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I agree that showing up on time should be easy and not a problem.
"If you are early, you are on time.
If you show up on time, you are late.
If you show up late, you are really late."But with teh above story, I am glad that I have always had a job that relied on my performance over the course of the whole job. I do not think I would do very well on jobs where i would be judged on a thousand small "metrics", and if you miss one, it starts to "snowball"
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I admit it. I can be late sometimes. Nah, I can be a couple of minutes late, a lot.
And I'm not good looking.
But I'm A) extremely reliable (missed four days work in 34 years, B) extremely rugged (I led my section in OT for over twenty years, and C) I wasn't half bad at what I did.
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I admit it. I can be late sometimes. Nah, I can be a couple of minutes late, a lot.
And I'm not good looking.
But I'm A) extremely reliable (missed four days work in 34 years, B) extremely rugged (I led my section in OT for over twenty years, and C) I wasn't half bad at what I did.
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That job sounds awful. If you monitor your people all the time, clearly demonstrating that you don't trust your employees even to take reasonable bathroom breaks, what kind of loyalty or professionalism do you expect to receive in return?
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That job sounds awful. If you monitor your people all the time, clearly demonstrating that you don't trust your employees even to take reasonable bathroom breaks, what kind of loyalty or professionalism do you expect to receive in return?
@Doctor-Phibes said in ‘It’s a very easy job to lose’:
That job sounds awful. If you monitor your people all the time, clearly demonstrating that you don't trust your employees even to take reasonable bathroom breaks, what kind of loyalty or professionalism do you expect to receive in return?
They don’t. These are employers who decided to rely on sensors and algorithms.
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George was never late and never missed a day?
Asshole! Making the rest of us look bad!
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George was never late and never missed a day?
Asshole! Making the rest of us look bad!
@LuFins-Dad said in ‘It’s a very easy job to lose’:
George was never late and never missed a day?
That's right.
I always planned on being at work 20 min early. When I worked in the city, the weather and traffic were an issue. On the days when I was running the OR, I'd show up 35 minutes early. That way, I could get a cup of coffee, have a smoke and see the schedule. So, "late" for me was "later than I want to be" but never late to start working.
When the kids were little, I took about 4 sick days due to transmitted illnesses (that was from 1980 through 1988). But from 1989 to 2016, no sick days.
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Jerk! Making the rest of us look bad!
@LuFins-Dad said in ‘It’s a very easy job to lose’:
Jerk! Making the rest of us look bad!
Traffic going downtown in the 1980s wasn't that bad - if you left home at 6:00. Private practice was much easier - it was a 12 minute drive.
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We have flexi-time where I work, but you're supposed to be in by 9am. Typically people start between 7.30 and 8.00.
I was once told off by my former boss for getting in late (at 8.15). Tosser.
