Truth About Favor Delivery

So... Someone needs to rethink "business" in the age of the millennial worker. We are spread thin. We are trying to find ways to manage our lives unconventionally. So what's with the conventional way of measuring our performance? Disclaimer. I'm pissed. Here's why. I work 5 part-time jobs. Five. Well, 3.5 now that I quit one in order to make more time for another... but, of course, I was fired from that other one two days after I left the one I quit in order to make more time for the one I was fired from. Confused? Feeling overwhelmed? Welcome to the life of a modern worker. And where does the .5 come in? Well, luckily, I didn't quit "all-the-way." I asked for some time off. "What," you say! "You can ask for time off, and they'll give it to you like that. You lucky daawwwg." Yeah. Right. Seems that way.

Yes, it seems lucky to those stuck behind a desk, working for somebody or something they care little about, and yes when all is running smoothly working for yourself or contracting for something like Uber or Favor in order to supplement income is completely THE DREAM, but it's a dream short-lived.

Someone needs to rethink the millennial worker. I work 5 part-time jobs in order to pay rent, and pay bills, and eat. Why so many? Because each one of those jobs doesn't offer enough hours to support me throughout the week. Think of it this way. Each one of my jobs offers enough hours to pay me for 1 work day. So I'm juggling 5 different jobs, filling out schedules week to week because schedules are never the same from one week to the next, working two or three jobs on one day at times. And yes. For the folks out there who work a 9 to 5, and think "it must be nice" when you see someone taking a stroll on a Wednesday while you're eating your lunch at your cubical. Yes, folks, I get to take off in the middle of the week and choose what days I want to work and what days I don't. Sounds great until you favor in that I need to work all 5 jobs in order to pay bills, and if I'm working all 5 jobs, I can only take maybe 4 days off in the entire month. And yes, those days are probably going to be Wednesdays because due to the nature of the industry that I'm in, our busiest days are on and around the weekend. So if you're counting, I get 4 days off a month, you get 8 days off per month.

Someone needs to rethink business in the age of the millennial worker. I can't keep up with 5 jobs. That's 5 jobs, not including my independent projects that I'm not paid for, and it's not including anyone else's independent projects I'm working on pro bono, and it doesn't include personal time for finances, grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, etc. And if you were wondering, no. No social life. I can't keep up. Which is why I added the 5th job in the 1st place, running errands for Favor. And it was working out great. Favor offers an almost unlimited amount of hours, and remember I only have so many jobs because each one doesn't offer the hours that I need. Favor was supposed to allow me to shave my 5 jobs down to 4 (in other words, replace 1), then allow me to take fewer shifts for the remaining jobs. It was supposed to help me gain control over my life. And it was working out perfectly. I quit one of my jobs after about 3 months of working for Favor like I had planned. But two days after I quit I get a text message from Favor telling me that I had been "deactivated."

What? And why?

I emailed Favor to find out what happened.
The response was that my rating had dropped to 4.55 out of 5 stars and after 100 errands, runners must maintain a rating of at least 4.7. Mind you, I had just recently run over 100 errands, but had not had the time to improve my rating due to, you know, my other 4 jobs.

Favor was supposed to make my life easier so that I didn't have to be on so many different companies' payrolls, and answer to so many different supervisors, and keep up with so many different schedules, and read emails from each one of them. It was supposed to get me closer to having, you know, like... 3 jobs. That sounds reasonable.

Well now that I have 3 jobs (since I quit one in order to make more time for the one that quit me), I only have 12 days of work from those 3 jobs on May's calendar. Twelve days. That's obviously not enough to pay for anything. That'll pay my utilities plus a month of groceries. Goodbye rent.

So now what? I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. Before I had Favor I was scrambling to figure something out, and when I was hired on, everything changed. A weight was lifted. I reorganized my life in order to fit Favor in because it was saving me, and it was THE thing that would allow me to continue to pursue my ambitions. I can't believe that, just like that, they dropped me without warning and without a chance to come back. A rating of 4.55 out of 5 isn't bad. I mean, to get dropped that way (by text, and without a warning) you'd think I had a rating of 3 out of 5 stars or something... actually, like maybe 1 out of 5 starts. But 4.5 out of 5 stars, and I'm trash? Excuse me, 4.55. So... rounded that would be 4.6.

So now I'm questioning the Collaborative Economy Honeycomb. Do these jobs take in consideration the specific stresses and pressures of the millennial worker? Don't get me wrong, I understand that Favor needs to weed out bad employees, and there isn't a way of doing so without the rating system. There are just too many runners to get to know all of them, or evaluate them in any other way. But, Favor sends all important messages through text. There's a reason that they do this. They know that their employees are connected to their phones, and will receive their important message if that message is sent through text. So they're already using unconventional means of communication. So why revert back to conventional means of communication for messages that are important for employee performance?

When I questioned Favor about why I was never warned, they told me that I was sent an email a month ago. I never saw that email. I work 4 other jobs, and all four of those other jobs require me to read and respond to emails. Favor always communicates through text, and I was also reading the two and three texts I got from Favor a day. But I wasn't looking for emails from Favor, because Favor doesn't communicate that way. Heck, they even broke up with me through text. What I'm saying is that companies in the Collaborative Economy Honeycomb should stay consistent with their approach. These are unconventional jobs, for people who are working through life in an unconventional way. Don't revert back to "convention" when you feel like it. Stay consistent. If you don't you'll through everyone off.

Don't know what I'm going to do, but I've got to start brainstorming. Back to the drawing board. And for the record, I soooo envy those of you who have full-time jobs. One job? REALLY???!!!!!

"The Collaborative Economy Honeycomb enables people to get what they need from each other."

-Jeremiah Owyang

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