INEPT COMPUTER

Notes from Approximately 12 Days of App-based Food and Beverage Delivery in Marquette, MI

(Apropos of nothing, here is an image of a dog in a hotel room.)

Dog mushing is done for the year, and I’m waiting for summer projects to begin, so I thought I’d give food delivery a try. I research the most popular app in my area and sign up. I’m told there will be a background check and I’ll know more in a couple days, but once I scan in my driver’s license, I’m approved within minutes. Just like that, I’m a taco taxi.

During one of my first deliveries, a toddler just keeps saying goodbye to me. He’s adorable and so proud of his newfound language. He says it about six times and I can’t help but beam. Easily the best part of my week so far. Maybe I can do this.

Then, I’m on my way to Meijer (our grocery store), and I get a call from DoorDash asking if I’m willing to commit to delivering the order I’m on my way to get. I mean, of course I am. What else would I do? Look, DoorDash says, If you’re willing to commit to delivering this order, and you actually deliver it, we’re going to add three dollars to your fee. Okay, I say. Thank you.

Pretty soon, I come to understand that I’m picking up Fireball for the world’s most annoying drunk woman. I mean, probably drunk. I say this because she calls and is yelling at me on the phone and Meijer is so busy. Her order consists of a 10 pack of airline bottles; that’s it.¹ People are strange.

It doesn’t seem complicated, but this woman has called me multiple times while I’m at Meijer. It’s distracting me from just finding her order and checking out. She’s insisting I drive DIRECTLY TO HER HOUSE and that I DO NOT BRING ANY OTHER ORDERS ANYWHERE FIRST. She paid a $2.99 surcharge so the Fireball would COME DIRECTLY and she doesn’t understand how I could go anywhere else first. She sounds like she’s gone over the edge, but this is, I think, a fair point.² Look, she’s going to give me ANOTHER THREE DOLLARS ADDED TO THE TIP but she wants her Fireball directly. This is ridiculous, she says. I make no promises because, really, what can I do? The app tells me where to go, when.

School was called off for snow. I bring a little boy 4 chicken McNuggets and an orange drink, and he hands me a $20 bill (in addition to their payment and tip). He looks about six years old. I find his older brother on the porch, hold up the twenty, and say, “Is this okay?” The brother shrugs.

I finally bring the lady her Fireball. I did not go directly to her house, and she knows that because she can track me on the app, but she still seems happy to see me. She’s maybe 72-years-old but I still need to scan her ID because the app won’t let me mark the order as delivered without seeing an ID. She looks like my friend’s step mom. Well-coiffed, pants suit, papery skin. She doesn’t act at all drunk, at least in my experience of drunks, and her tone is warmly polite—not at all the raving monster she was on the phone. When she’s not mean, her Texas drawl is sweet.

Someone just sent me to Walgreens for a mini hairbrush and four cans of sugar free Red Bull. We all do this life differently!

Many of the liquor buyers are so apologetic to me, as if worried about me judging. This guy wearing a tee shirt and a towel wrapped around his waist—is it a towel? It’s thinner, like some kind of big white shirt or small table cloth. Daytime. He’s watching a show with his kid. Or he was sleeping while his little kid watched a show. He didn’t hear me knock, and I had to come into the entryway and knock harder. He apologizes profusely. I give him his bottle, tell him it’s all good. I mean, what kind of a conversation can we have? Is this the worst day of his year or just another weekend? I can’t say.

The woman who I now think of as The Fireball just ordered 10 more mini bottles and called to see how quickly I can get there. I tell her that this time I can come directly.

I’m not here to judge. If your two-item order consists of K-Y personal lubricant and goldfish crackers, go for it! But I’d be lying If I said that I’m not sometimes curious. Just in that way that one wonders how other people manage to get through this life. I’m mainly looking for tips. How do people survive their days.

I just don’t have much negative judgement left in me. Marital separation leaves me humbled. It’s more like I look at people with their partners and kids and I admire them, no matter their surroundings or the particulars of the orders. They’re together. They’re doing it, these little families. I’m rooting for them.

The Fireball calls me from her personal phone (not through the app). She wants to make sure this is my number. How did she get my number? I don’t understand. Did the app give her my personal phone number? How on Earth is this a safe or useful model? I’m not too worried about it for myself, but I would think a lot of women would be harassed, potentially, by weird dudes they meet as they deliver things. What kind of app gives out phone numbers of their customer service reps??? Was this just a glitch?

I like verifying the food is present by smell—proud of my own newfound skill. The app wants us to verify that food is present, but the bags are sealed, so there’s no way of looking at the food. Sometimes, it’s pretty easy. I can smell that garlic naan in there. I gotchu, B Dubs lemon pepper fries. I have no idea how people who can’t smell well verify the presence of foods without opening the bag. Do they ask restaurant staff, or do they shake the bags? When the foods are cold or bland, I usually check a box that I was unable to verify. Maybe some people do that every time.

Applebees always requires a wait, and they have these colorful drinks. The leftover swill at the bottom looks so tempting right now, but I manage to hold off.

At Meijer, I’m hoping someone doesn’t get upset that I had to substitute their bone-in pork shoulder for a differently cut bone-in pork shoulder. I try to call and write a note. The thing is, the app wants me to just skip buying any meat since all three of the customer’s approved substitutions are unavailable. But I’m buying wine and charcoal and BBQ sauce. I know she’s going to want meat, so I take a leap and get the only vaguely suitable meat I can find. I hope this makes me more valuable than AI, at least til AI learns better…

I think a lot about The Fireball because she orders often, sometimes multiple times per day. It seems I have become her “preferred shopper.” Why the airline bottles? Is it so she can throw them away and no one sees? Is it so she can ration them out?

One day she calls me (appropriately through the app this time) demanding to know whether I can get there by 5:30 because she and her husband are going out of town. I tell her it will be close, but no guarantees. She REALLY needs me there before 5:30, she says. I get there at 5:29, but, as usual, there are no vehicles around, and there’s no sign of any husband present, just a sweet chunky dog.

We are expecting a huge blizzard, and I hope my power doesn’t go out. 1-2’ of snow in 24 hours and 40-50mph winds. This may be one of few times it’s of benefit to me that all I have for DoorDashing is a 4WD pickup truck. We had a smaller storm a couple days ago, and I did really well—the kid who handed me 20 dollars wasn’t the only cash tipper.

Just me, working through a blizzard so people can have their awful beer.

Within a few days of starting this, I’m no longer surprised how often Natty Ice and Natty Daddy lager go to the assisted living homes. Without fail, the customers are elder white ladies, sometimes in wheelchairs. Understandable because they don’t tend to have a lot of money, and these options are relatively affordable at $1.50 per mega can. I bring four cans to a softspoken woman with a small kitten. She’s like, “Be careful, she’s in heat.”

“Way too young to be going through this,” she says of the kitten in heat. Who I guess definitionally is now not a kitten.

This lithe little black cat. The tiniest thing. Be careful.³

Two iced Starbucks drinks to the 24/7/365 warming center where people go to come in from the street and have something to eat, etc. A note on the order says, “Meet me outside.”

What’s interesting about Tracy’s order is that she got Natural Ice, Natty Daddy, Mike’s Harder Lemonade, Steel Reserve Spiked Blue Razz, and a bottle of pink Moscato. This suggests a value of flavor as well as savings.

I text a friend about this and she simply says, “Beer should be beer.” Solid ad copy—just not for Tracy’s order. Tracy’s order is, “Beer should be cheap and smooth and sometimes brightly colored.”

Speaking of brightly colored, I liked these smoothies from MQT Nutrition.

From Petco, I’m asked to bring someone Thunder Ease Insanely Calming Spray. They’re paying me about $25, but I have to drive about 20 miles one way. I could decline this order but I don’t because I think there’s a stressed out dog that really needs, insanely needs, some calming. I take the order and when I get there I do not see any humans, but there’s a huge ambiguously bred dog barking wildly and scratching so hard at the door I worry for a second that the door will give way and this is how it will all end for me, succumbed to mauling, bag of insane calming spray in hand.

The app informs me that I need one more shopping rating to be a “pro” at getting Harold his Busch Lite.

The necessary rating has been elusive. I’ve done quite a few shopping deliveries by now, but most people don’t bother to rate me. Even when I’m swimming through hip deep snow with their Diet Dr. Pepper and EZ cheese.

Visible through the glass door of the apartment building is a man lying on the floor next to a pool of blood, his cane next to him. Possibly Harold but I can’t get through the door. I’m parting the door 1-2”, as far as I can, and calling to him, but he’s unresponsive. I just want to get in the building and help this person.

I call 911 and they are sending an ambulance. The man’s leg moves while I’m on the phone. He’s alive.

I end the 911 call so I can try to call Harold in hopes he’ll buzz me into the building. When I do, I can make out through the glass door that maybe the man on the floor is reaching for something—his phone? I can’t hear it ringing, so I don’t know—but Harold isn’t answering, and this man appears to be reaching for something.

The blood appears to have come from his head. He must’ve hit his head on the very hard floor (concrete under light carpet?).

The responders seem very slow to me. I’m standing there with four 30-can cases of Busch Lite stacked next to me in the entry. I call again and the man seems to be looking at something—again, maybe a phone. I’m now convinced the man is Harold and he was going to meet me for the beer and he fell. I’m very frustrated not to get into the building, but the man is starting to move more. He grasps his cane and is very slowly crawling away.

Does alcoholism look the same or does it look different? It’s bleeding together. With the college kids, I tell myself it’s a phase. Is it? The desperation. With kids, you hope it’s a phase. With Harold, it becomes harder to wave away. They all seem to apologize, like I said. Sorry for ordering booze in a blizzard, they say. What would be better? Shampoo? Gumdrops? One one level I’m agnostic, but MAYBE what they’re saying is that they wouldn’t order anything else in a blizzard; they are only ordering something they absolutely need.

Two ambulances come, and I leave it to them. Harold has crawled out of sight around the corner. I tell the ambulance people his room number, though I suppose there will be a blood trail to follow.

DoorDash! I forgot all about it, but now it wants me, no it IMPLORES me, to return the 120 cans of Busch Lite. I have to schlep them back to Meijer, and I will receive my pay for the delivery plus $3.75 for the return.

The 12 minutes (?) during which I was calling for Harold and dealing with the ambulance—I forgot all about the app. When I get back to the app and the app demands the next thing from me (I cannot move forward with anything until I return the Busch Lite), I move into doing that thing, but with a new consciousness. Only now do I become aware that somehow I had become a robot. The 12 minutes during which I was trying to help Harold was a glitch where, according to the app, I, the robot, wasn’t performing properly.

I should have been either delivering or marking as undeliverable. Instead, I was trying to help the unresponsive man, and I was unresponsive. The stuck spinning pinwheel on a screen.

Back to orders. Someone wants eye drops in Negaunee. It’s far and it’s snowy, and the order only consists of one thing. But if someone wants eye drops that badly, they likely NEED eye drops, and I definitely want to get them their eye drops. It feels oddly like a privilege. I’m alive! I can bring this person something useful!

The blizzard has finally shut down Marquette. The app has stopped allowing deliveries. This should’ve happened much sooner.

Over the next two days, we break our 48-hour snowfall record with more than 36”. Some of the towns I deliver to have more.

By the time we’re back up and running a day or two later, the old Air Force base town of Gwinn has been slower to clear snow than Marquette and people are still snowed into their homes. The snow is so high that their house numbers are often impossible to see, giant berms everywhere. I have a man’s groceries, and he is on his porch, and I am in the street, but I cannot get to him because the snow between us is neck-deep, and no walkway has been cleared. I have to climb up onto the berm flatten myself as much as possible, and low-crawl the groceries to him. He seems to appreciate this, and I’m glad I wore the right clothing.

Mostly, people don’t notice me, and I think that’s ok. But I always notice them, so it’s this uneven relationship. Observer and observed. They will always mean more to me than I do to them, even though I’m providing a service.

But then I’m at a community theater production of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and I’m seated next to a Gen X seeming woman in a black dress with 3D flowers. She’s sharp and teaches in the theater department at the university. She asks me if I gave her bourbon yesterday. It takes me a few seconds to think through the phrasing and realize that of course I did. She’s not asking if I bought her a drink somewhere but if I was her delivery person. Right. I tell her I’ve given a lot of people booze lately and she says, “Really I just needed shredded cheese but I had to get the price up higher to meet the minimum⁴ for shopping, so a bottle of Maker’s was the easiest thing. My 6yo needs cheese for their tacos.”

There is a lot that is mind-numbing about this, but the driving and walking and moments of human connection get me through the days. It’s my own 10 pack of mini bottles of Fireball, I guess. Except it makes some money and it gets some people their eye drops, and I’m still an inept computer so I say Mi Shebeirach for Harold.

Late one night, I forget to give someone their drinks. I forget to give them their drinks and now I am already picking up another order and I realize it and… it’s too late. I’m sure they already reported it, and it will be a small strike against me (not a big deal because I have no strikes and reputational hits drop off after 100 orders anyhow), but after I deliver the other order, it still just bothers me. I contemplate giving the drinks to the next people to order. But, nah, I still can recall where the drinks are supposed to be, and I decide just to take my time and bring the drinks to the motel door where I had left the food. Because, I think, if I were in living in a motel and had splurged on some food delivery (or had ordered it because I couldn’t drive or had no vehicle), I would want my drinks with my food, not just a refund. I have to knock on the door to let them know their drinks are now there, and they open the door as far as the safety chain will allow. I can’t help but see it’s a couple with kids (I see kid toys/gear in the room), and it smells like weed, and they seem happy, if stoned. It’s 12:30 am, and I think, Hmm, it never occurred to me that people just up and get stoned once their kids are asleep, but I guess it’s a thing people do. They seem happy.

1. Some people refer to these small bottles as nips.

2. Over the next few days, I will encounter this again. Customers who insist they paid $2.99 for direct delivery, yet I was ordered to pick up and/or deliver other orders before they received their surcharged orders. This does seem like class action lawsuit material.

3. NOTE: My friend Alli said “cats are born preggo.” It’s true that she and I once ended up with 27 cats. We did get them all spayed and neutered, but it was a real production. We were like 18yo roommates and didn’t realize the brother and sister kittens we got could reproduce so young. It snowballed from there and took a while—and a helpful discount vet clinic—to get things under control.

NOTE on NOTE: I’ve learned recently that discount spay/neuter clinics are not always a great idea. Some “real” vet clinics protest local visits by mobile spay/neuter units not because they are against sterilization of animals but because the mobile units leave and the local vet clinics are left with the emergency aftercare of poorly done surgeries that they didn’t conduct. This is anecdotal, but I once had a dog spayed at a discount clinic, and then years later she got pregnant. It’s difficult to understand how this could happen, but I’m putting this note here mainly so people can feel good about having their pets spayed and neutered at their regular vet that they have a relationship with. I understand if people went to discount clinics, though. I mean, A) who knew? And B) people do what they can.

4. $25, I think she said it was.