Dash, Drive, Deliver

In the tradition of bestselling books by Barbara Ehrenreich and Eric Schlosser, intrepid reporter Mark Chiusano spends a year as a gig worker for a deep dive into the underbelly of American labor, highlighting how app work is reshaping our society and coming soon to a job near you.

Every time you DoorDash your dinner, hit the “buy” button on Amazon, or book an Uber to your next destination, you encounter not just convenience, but an entirely new working class. Dash, Drive, Deliver is the rollercoaster story of award-winning journalist Mark Chiusano’s year on the front lines of this often-invisible world. We follow Mark and his colleagues as they fight through heat waves, traffic, snow, and injuries, struggling to earn more than a few dozen dollars a day while obeying the faceless algorithmic boss. What he finds is a vanguard of modern butlers, always rushed and tracked in ways that should ring alarm bells for every service employee and laptop warrior looking ahead to their future: one that threatens to become ever more solitary, poorly paid, and at the mercy of powerful machines.

This instant classic of immersive reporting is a harrowing portrait of the way people make do in the gig economy, from delivery bikers who fled Putin’s Russia or journeyed through 11 countries for the privilege of delivering pad thai here, to online microworkers and former restaurant owners for whom the apps are the only safety net left. Be warned: readers may think twice about tapping out an order on their phones after seeing how the stuff gets sent. By turns funny, fascinating and alarming, Dash, Drive, Deliver questions the costs of convenience, for both workers and consumers and the communities we rely on, and points to new ways to make the apps work for us and not the other way around.