Running the road

Moments in Capitalism #1

I have been delivery driving. Got that Door Dash, Uber Eats, Menu Log, GoPeople hustle on. Each involves a fuck-tonne of admin hoops to ninja through to be onboarded. I have successfully Simone Biles-ed the routine and ticked off the steps to actually work on Door Dash (Congratulations!). GoPeople too, but I am not actually securing any runs. The app tells me to do some casual on-demand single jobs first. I don’t get any of them either. I call GoPeople chasing up approval of my police check and their casualised call centre worker in the Philippines mentions that they are swamped with people applying to become runners.

So here we are in late-stage capitalism. I have a PhD and I am delivery driving.

Look: so do many, many people who immigrate. I keep hearing about someone’s aunt that does this too. I know that there is a historical class privilege I grew up with that prioritises education to secure a middle class career. I know that some of my disappointment and bitterness is due to that privilege.

I know that my individualised emotions and reflections about my status lead to a vortex that goes nowhere but in and that goes nowhere good.

I know my hustle is possible. In fact, I do it, I AM that hustle. I reflect that maybe I do have a geospatial connection to this city now as I drive. I notice a broccoli-tree-fractal-organism on the way to a drop-off, and a Free Palestine sign at someone’s door when I do the delivery.

I take my dog with me because I apparently have the full-time load of his separation anxiety, and he is happy when he is with me. I let him out for a wee periodically.

I get better at which zone to dash in, at which time, and where to wait. Maybe. Really, it’s guesswork because with all the tech and the notifications and the ‘oh you are your own freaking boss dashing girl boss’, I’m blind. I see the fellow dashers, runners, hustlers on the road on their e-bikes, motorcycles and climbing into their thin cars. My eyes are opened to this strata of the cityscape, the ubiquitous delivery drivers are now a we, a me, an us. I guess where these runner dasher hustlers wait for orders and I notice their pizza bag slung across their hip ($10.50 at your own expense, increases your chances of securing a run). I clock them inhaling the fumes from the arterial road while stuffing a quick small fries into their mouth in the KFC car park. Waiting for that beep.

But we are blind. The tech bros send us their welcome emails, automated to hit that ‘welcome to the hustle but watch out if you don’t accept enough work quickly enough but we don’t guarantee you anything and in fact how about you cover public liability insurance, all vehicle costs and ha no, there’s no workers compensation, benefits, or sustenance but quick there’s a surge on RIGHT NOW’ tone of urgency and lingering threat.

So I dash, I run. I actually cruise. I reclaim my driving inner critic that grew from driving lessons when I was a teenager with a creepy chain-smoking Jabba dude who would take me to practice on the roads outside the country town (alone, unnamed female fear) and who nastily undermined my confidence on the test day. I reclaim: all of the fucking things I have executed and survived in my life - I can refine my parallel parking and shed the anxiety that builds up when people are behind me on a High St near the restaurants in the bougie area. The patriarchal finger pointing over my shoulder, woman driver, my mother’s contagious anxiety on the road that swamped my nervous system. I can do this.

I have a motherfucking PhD. I can do this.

Truly, though. The resilience and grit and self-belief through ego-death-valley that I experienced pulling a doctorate out of a boulder-strewn time of chronic illnesses, gestating and birthing and suckling, struggling alone with a business and sleep deprivation in a new city without support is now infused into my subscription car and I imbibe it with easy breaths mixed with that fast food shit smell.

Flip my arm over the back and pat the warm furry dog skull and enjoy mammalian connection.

Each hustling individual straddling their e-bike, behind their mask to screen the car fumes, is FULL of potential. The amount of intelligence, creativity, love, companionship and connection that is wasted on these individualised roads under capitalism is infuriating. The communities that could be created if the human energy was freed up to connect, share, build create a fractal organism in my mind where each neuron branch is interconnected and a holistic energy is shared easily in elegant organic structures. Ideas tick through all of these other brains behind their visors as we cross and tangle through the city, spitting out our own fumes.

Apparently capitalism is efficient. Apparently this is an efficient use of human labour. Apparently it is neutral and fine that competitive hustling is just how it is. Apparently it is just our golden-peak-hour reality that our longing for co-regulation, that orangutan-in-the-zoo cuddle of a rubber arm draped over a buddy, that communion and reciprocal actualisation is far away behind the sunset backdrop of dirty pink clouds. It is far away and also deeply within, a resonant longing as we listen to music on our stereos from individualised playlists, chat to someone back home in Sri Lanka with the phone mounted on our motorbike handlebars ($29.95, own expense). The resonance spirals inwards as we look for the signs on each street corner to make the turn: a rumination on unmet needs that goes nowhere good.

I order delivery for myself on the way home because my hangry state probably affected missing the exit on my last delivery. I could have tried to double up and deliver it myself but in the dark on the freeway feeling a tender longing for supportive connection I just freaking ordered it. Someone else delivered it when I was home and transitioning to my casual connection time.

It is freaking delicious.