“I want to help but this just feels wrong,” was one Redditor’s response to an unusual request from their DoorDash driver, sparking a conversation about the lengths people are going to support themselves through the current economic downturn.


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User sch0oly shared a screenshot of a message they received from their DoorDash driver to the r/doordash subreddit that read, “Hey, I am otw with your food now!!! Sorry to bother you it’s kind've embarrassing but if you have any spare change to help feed my son and I today that’ll be greatly appreciated we’re kinda sleeping in our car rn so anything helps!”



Many commenters were quick to condemn the driver, with one urging the OP to report them, adding, “If she’s dashing, she literally has access to daily money. She’s lying and 9 times out of 10, covering a habit.”


But rather than assuming the worst of people, particularly someone already making an effort to try and earn money by working as a contractor with subpar wages and zero benefits, what the message actually suggests is that working as a delivery driver doesn’t bring in enough money for people to live decently.


According to DoorDash, the base pay to its drivers per delivery ranges from $2 to $10, and Ridester reports that drivers can make between $10 and $25 per hour. There’s also the opportunity for tips from customers or promotions from DoorDash including “Challenge Bonuses,” where dashers have to complete a certain number of deliveries in a set amount of time. (Amazingly, though maybe not surprisingly, they’ve managed to gamify underpaying food delivery drivers.)



In any event, posts featuring unusual requests like this have become almost commonplace in the various food delivery subreddits; a particularly frequent request is a delivery driver asking for gas money so they can deliver the customer’s food. DoorDash drivers, who are required to use their own personal vehicles for the job, are also required to cover any and all expenses related to their vehicles, such as maintenance costs.


Instead of a knee-jerk negative response and condemnation of the driver, I wish the instinct was to ask ourselves why, assuming they’re delivering food full-time, they still feel they have to resort to asking customers for spare change. It doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of thing someone rolling in cash earned from scamming hardworking DoorDash customers would do, does it?