Uber Eats Effectively Lays off Thousands of Walkers
You would think with record high gas prices and climate change being a major issue, Uber Eats would be thrilled with its army of food delivery walkers. Yes, walkers. Not drivers or cyclists, but people that use their legs as the primary mode of transportation.
For years, Uber Eats has allowed people to deliver food by walking. It was great for major cities. Especially in the downtown core where drivers would have issues parking.
This was a great side-gig for people who wanted to make some extra cash while staying fit. You’d get the ping, grab the order, and deliver it under 15 minutes. Sometimes as fast as 8 minutes. It was super quick. Walkers could go the wrong way down one-way streets. They could hop across parking lots. Go through the opening in fences, hedges, or dart down alleyways.
For most orders, walking it would be faster than driving it. Especially during rush hour. And don’t get me started on snowstorms. Or rainy weather. When it rains, most of the bikers disappear. But the walkers are still out there. They use umbrellas. They hide under awnings and inside bookstores.
Walkers have no qualms about delivering food to your door. Even if you live in an apartment. There’s no car that could get a ticket. No bike that could be stolen. It was risk-free to go up the elevator and provide the best customer service.
On March 31st, 2022, sometime in the afternoon, Uber Eats effectively laid off their walkers. But they didn’t send them an email saying they were fired. Or that the program was ending, or even changing at all. They didn’t notify the walkers whatsoever.
What Uber did was sneaky and underhanded.
Uber shrank the delivery radius which massively lowers a walker’s income. Many walkers report getting no orders at all after this update. Some reported a drop in orders of 80-90%. This will likely force them to quit. It’s like instead of firing someone and looking like the bad guy, you just don’t give them any shifts. Uber can’t even defend themselves by saying there aren’t any orders for walkers. There are. They just want to give them to drivers instead.
Uber, it seems, would rather pollute your city with exhaust fumes than let someone walk your fast food a few blocks.
In the past, an Uber Eats walker could receive an order that would have them walking between 50 to 1,300 meters. (This could go higher if there were no bikers or drivers around). Most orders were around 800 meters. After Uber updated the algorithm, the radius shrank to about 500 meters. It also seems to prioritize bikers and drivers. As in, even if a walker is closer, if there’s a driver around, they will get the ping. Even if the walker is closer.
Most walkers were confused. Every few hours on the Uber Eats subreddit you’d see posts like this:
Or on Twitter, you’d see people asking for help.
“What’s going on?”
“Why am I not getting any orders?”
Uber won’t comment publicly on nuking the walker program, because they know there would be blowback.
Uber Eats is a fun side-gig/hobby for me. I like the exercise. I do my best thinking when I’m out wandering around the city. Thankfully, I can survive just fine without this income. But many others cannot. Imagine being fired for no good reason completely out of the blue? What sort of horrible company does that?
Uber it seems.
What’s worse is the support staff won’t even admit there’s been a change. If you ask them why you aren’t getting orders, they just say, “We understand this can be frustrating.” But then they’ll add that nothing has changed and it’s just a supply and demand thing.
It isn’t.
Uber effectively fired thousands of people without any notice. They did it smartly so there wouldn’t be blowback. If someone gets their account deactivated, there are mediators that can help them. Legislation is many parts of the world protects gig workers from being arbitrarily fired. Shrinking the delivery radius down to practically nothing gets around these protections.
Laying people off without notice is one of the meanest and despicable things a company can do. Thousands of Uber Walkers depend on this money to pay their bills. I even know a woman who delivers in an electric wheelchair. Her app was set to walker. This is not someone who can just hop on a bike.
Uber didn’t want to look like the bad guy here. So instead of just cancelling the program, they cut everyone’s income by 80-99%. Understandably, most people will quit.
One Reddit user was able to get a straight answer out of the support team.
What Uber has done here is typical of spineless corporate shitheads. Instead of facing the heat from laying off thousands of workers, they’re forcing them to quit. In a month or so they’ll be able to shut down the program “due to a lack of interest.”
Removing walkers is bad for downtown traffic, it’s bad for customers, and bad for climate change. We should be encouraging people to lower their carbon footprint. Not increase it.
Less walkers means more pollution which means worse air quality.
Uber is the bad guy here. They could have easily sent out an email a month ago saying the program was changing. This would have given people time to make other arrangements. Instead they just cut off a vulnerable section of their workforce. These are people who can’t afford cars, and possibly not even a bike. Maybe like wheelchair lady, they can’t even bike.
So, from the bottom of my heart, I would just like to say, Uber, you suck. It’s not too late to declare this update a mistake/accident/bug and let the walkers walk again. We don’t need more cars on the streets of downtown. We need more people on foot.
Update: April 21st, 2022: The delivery radius for walkers seems to have shrank even further. It’s now about 300 meters, which is ridiculously low. You’d have to camp yourself in a 24/hour restaurant surrounded by apartment buildings just to get any orders. At this point, Uber should just remove the walking option because they’re treating the walkers like disposable garbage.
Second Update: April 21st, 2022: This afternoon, bikers are also reporting issues getting orders. I’ve posted my thoughts about this on Twitter. It’s probably just a glitch. I’ve had my app set to biker mode for four hours now and haven’t got a single order. Unless Uber is phasing out both walkers AND bikers in certain cities, this definitely just a glitch.
Third Update: April 21st, 2022: Orders for bikers and walkers are still messed up. Moderators of /r/UberEats are now deleting posts with people asking why they aren’t getting any pings. So that’s nice. Keep them poor and in the dark, I guess.
Here are some examples. Mods are on a rampage tonight. And people ask me why I don’t post on Reddit :)
Update April 22nd, 2022: As suspected, the biker mode not working was just a glitch. People seem to be getting orders now. I left my app on all day and am getting consistent bike pings. Walker pings are still non-existent. Some users have contacted support and support says there is an issue and they’re working on it. This is either a lie or they don’t know what’s going on because the algorithm was clearly changed.
I don’t know how often Uber updates the algorithm but it’s probably not that frequently. Uber is probably collecting data again. If they want to keep the walkers, they’ll change the algorithm back within a week or so. At least that’s what happened last time. So if you’re a walker, then either set it to biker mode, or take the week off. Check in next Wednesday afternoon. If they’re gonna fix it, it should be fixed by then.
Saturday April 23rd: Walker delivery radius is still stuck around 400 meters. Customer service reps continue to blame “demand.”
Monday April 25th: Walking is still dead. Rode around downtown for two hours at lunch on my bike to see what was up. Didn’t see more than three pings. Spoke to some drivers who haven’t noticed anything off. If anything, they’re even busier. I suspect that bikes have been set to low priority. So if there are drivers online, it will give the order to the car, even if the bike would be faster.
This isn’t a good long-term idea, but it would serve to herd all the cheating drivers back to car mode. (Many car drivers set their app to bike mode to get shorter trips.)
I still suspect things will change again on Wednesday as there is almost zero chance that Uber is doing away with bikers.
Second Update Monday April 25th: Wanted to test more of the biking aspect today, so I rode my bike around the downtown core from 5-8pm. Zero pings. But from 8 to 8:20pm I got four pings. So my theory now is that bikes have been de-prioritized for lunch and dinner. I am now leaning heavily towards the theory that Uber is upset with cars taking bike orders, and trying to force them back into car mode.
Unfortunately, it seems bikers are getting MASSIVELY punished for this. Some will lose an entire week’s of wages. This is obviously ridiculous behavior by Uber, but nobody will ever hear about it (except you, dear reader) because as soon as Uber turns the money tap back on, bikers will go back to work and quickly forget this ever happened. Clearly nobody at Uber Eats as ever studied economics, because there are much easier ways to get people to do what you want other than taking away their money.
I will turn the bike app on tonight during the late-night rush and see what happens.
Tuesday April 26th: After leaving the bike app on most of the night, and a bunch this morning, it’s very obvious now that bikes have been de-prioritized for cars. In the downtown core, this is insanity. Nobody wants more cars on the road. It almost has to be a ruse on Uber’s party to get drivers to stop setting their app to bike mode for shorter trips. I’ll do another article if it remains this way, because Jesus. If Uber told the walkers to buy a bike, and then essentially laid off the bikers as well, they’re going to have an interesting PR day when this story hits the mainstream media.
Wednesday April 27th: It’s been more than a week now, so it’s probably safe to say that walking mode is unofficially done. Although Uber still hasn’t admitted to reducing the delivery radius. Cars are also still getting higher priority than bikes, even in busy downtown areas. I’ve written a second article detailing the changes to biker mode, and how ridiculous it is that Uber emailed people telling them to get a bike, and then effectively killing biker mode.
Here is something interesting that was posted in a Reddit thread last night.
It seems it might be a pilot project, designed to give all orders to cars. Let your mayors and city officials know about this. Uber is intentionally increasing their carbon footprint, while lying to low-wage workers that nothing is wrong.
Thursday April 28th: This was just posted to Reddit an hour ago. Hopefully it’s accurate. It’s unknown whether this is for bikers, walkers, or both.
Update, Sunday May 1st: Functionality appears to have been partially restored to walking mode. In some markets, walking mode was working Friday night through Sunday afternoon. There was an unexplained outage on Sunday evening, but it seems to have been resolved. If you’re still not getting any walking pings, post a comment or tweet me.
May 5th: After multiple days of testing both walker and biker mode, I can say with a high degree of certainty, that Uber is prioritizing cars over everything else. If you want to make money on either biker or walker mode, then you must ignore the surge map. You’ll need to work when and where the cars aren’t working. Early morning, afternoon, late night, etc. If at any point there is a surplus of cars to orders, then walkers and bikers will receive no orders. Or they will receive the orders that drivers don’t want. (Awkward pickup/dropoff + no tip.)
There doesn’t seem to be any way around this. It doesn’t matter what your acceptance rate, satisfaction rate, or cancellation rate is. Uber just loves cars now. If you want to work more, get a car, it seems. This sucks for multiple reasons on multiple levels, but the worst of it still is the zero communication from Uber.
Couriers are never advised of changes to the algorithm. Which is bullshit.
January 21st, 2023: Uber Eats Appears to Have Killed the Walking and Biking Programs Again.
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