The Lie of Consumer Convenience

App-supplied gig workers are supposed to save us time. What they actually provide is a false sense of control.

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Last week—in need of a cumbersome and voluminous grocery-store haul that certainly required a car and time I didn’t have—I shopped online.

Because I can’t bear to spend any more money with Jeff Bezos than I already do, and because I believe brick-and-mortar stores actually do something for our communities beyond selling goods, I tend to use Instacart, the service that allows you to send one of their shoppers to your store of choice (mine is the ethnic shoppers’ paradise Food Bazaar). As I perused the many brand and size options available to me for garlic marinades, adobo seasonings, and peach nectars, my excitement for the feast I would soon be preparing began to mount.

Three hours and about 20 semi-frantic texts with my personal shopper later, I was throwing on my coat and hoofing it to scour the local mini-marts for the numerous items that had not arrived… and once again wondering if the promise of technological convenience had outweighed the reality of what it could actually deliver.

Inevitably, the common problem with “convenience apps,” across the board, can be summarized as a common-sense issue. Let’s say I want a 32-ounce bottle of pomegranate juice. To put this item in my “cart,” I select from two different brands and about three or four size options. When the shopper gets to the store, however, if they aren’t able to find the exact brand and size of the product that I requested, that shopper can either use their own common sense and suggest a replacement (which I can approve or reject via text), or they can just refund my money and get on with it, which I’m also notified about via text. Some days, you get a pragmatic shopper—e.g., “Jean replaced your 32-ounce Brand A pomegranate juice with 32 ounces of Brand B” or “with two 16-ounce bottles of Brand A.” But, just as likely, Jean simply refunds my money and moves onto the next thing.

And why shouldn’t she? Jean has no idea of what recipe I’m making and why I (desperately) need pomegranate juice. Nor, I suspect, does Jean care. And again, I’m left to ask, why should she?

She’s either paid per shopping trip or a part-time hourly wage. Most likely, Jean took this job not out of a passion for grocery shopping or food, but as one of a number of flexible hustles to try to make ends meet. Which is exactly why, despite being given the option to rate her performance when my order arrives, never quite reflecting what I’d wanted—or, more frustratingly, needed—I never give a bad rating. (I don’t give bad reviews in general; to be honest, I love to give a rave, but why expend energy rehashing the unpleasant?)

In truth, my experience with Instacart is just one of many instances lately where I’ve found myself staring at my phone in frustration, wondering if all of these on-demand services that have come to dominate our lives have actually made them better. Or have they just created the illusion of efficiency? Because, if my online-grocery experiment concludes with me needing to still make a trip to the grocery store, it was hardly a time-saver.

I was thinking of this efficiency facade the other day at the airport, as I watched a stream of passengers from my flight schlep their way over to the remotely located ride-share pickup area to find their Ubers and Lyfts, while I walked a few feet over to the taxi stand and hopped in one of several idling yellow cabs. I wondered: Have we become so convinced that an Uber ride is that much better at getting us from point A to point B that we will literally go out of our way—turning down cheaper and more conveniently accessible rides—to use the service? Or have we become addicted to the illusion of control? The idea that a driver (or a shopper, or a housekeeper, or a handyman) is accountable to us—that their movements can be tracked by us, literally, through a tiny device in the palm of our hand? That if we aren’t satisfied with something, we can withhold stars or, better yet, talk to management?

When I stop to think about it, so many of the on-demand tech services that we’ve come to love—or at least, become unable to live without—are not borne out of improving an experience as much as they are about seeming in control. And in the beginning, that control felt both novel and luxurious. Grocery shopping in the middle of the night? Amazing. Not waiting in the cold to hail a taxi? Awesome. Booking a housekeeper through the push of a button instead of having to ask around for a referral and wait for the person in question to call you back? How cool! All of it, yes, does make life easier.

But “easier” isn’t always better… and easier isn’t actually always easier. A job done right is often better than a job that’s simply done.

I’m not saying that I’m quitting technology (though, to update you all, I have quit Twitter and have long kept Instagram off my phone). But I am quitting the belief that tech unilaterally makes my life better. This especially goes for the realm of on-demand services.

Now, I’m weighing what constitutes “better” on a case-by-case basis. If the occasion I’m grocery shopping for is important enough for me to care that it’s done right, then maybe I should do it myself. The truth is, I like the grocery store. I tried Handy once or twice to hire a house cleaner, but nobody beats the lovely Emmy, whom I met through friends and shows up every Tuesday. (And who, like myself, refuses to gentrify her cleaning cabinet and uses old fashioned bleach-based products.) And, I’ve accepted that taxis are sometimes still the very best—not just for price and convenience, but for the quality of the experience.

I was out late the other evening in Manhattan and, seeing lots of yellow cab lights rolling down Fifth Avenue, decided to hail one home. I gave the driver an intersection in Brooklyn, and this man knew backstreets and routes that even I, a native New Yorker, had never seen before. Delilah was on the radio, the Christmas lights were twinkling, the meter was running, and I was back home in record time, where the driver told me he’d wait to make sure I got inside. There was no GPS to track and no rating to give, but I definitely would have given him five stars.