Navigating the gig economy

Honesty about the challenges goes a long way

I didn’t know about Gigtube until recently.

Not this particular media avenue, that is. I’ve been part of the “gig economy” for decades, long before it was assigned that name. 

This new aspect (to me) is interesting: an increasing number of food delivery app drivers are spinning up YouTube channels to offer tips and tricks of the job. After reading about the phenomenon in Fast Company, I got sucked into a few channels, which were both fascinating and frustrating (the latter due to the ridiculous challenges of the job). 

GigTube and the broader gig economy media ecosystem has grown to have a large amount of influence and legitimacy. They have thoughts on bonuses and new features and will share exactly what certain terms and services mean. They suggest products, and commenters will say they’ve bought them (for example, a specific flashlight for night shifts). One thing is clear: There’s money to be made educating those interested in a growing field that, despite attracting millions of workers, is in some ways still relying on a cutthroat, every-person-for-themselves formula.

Yes, there’s competition, cutthroat at times, but there’s also insights into competition throughout the channels. Anecdotal boundaries help other drivers frame their own workdays with suggestions: Never accept any order that pays under $1 per mile. Log off when you hit your daily goal. Make sure driving out to an order means you can pick up another on the way back. 

(The last one reminds me of the challenges of living in Brooklyn back in the day: you had to physically enter a taxi before stating your destination or else the driver would just take off, given the rare amount of traffic back into Manhattan. Once you were inside it was illegal for the cabbie to deny driving to your destination. Times have changed, however.)

This article also got me thinking about one of the gig economies that defined a large part of my career: yoga instruction. Yoga is often presented as an aspirational vocation, a spiritual calling. A cohort of major influencers treat money like a blessing, correlating an abundant bank account with a finely-tuned spiritual practice. This presentation of the yoga gig economy isn’t pervasive but it’s certainly popular.

What you won’t find much of—I’m sure it exists, but not nearly in numbers like the above—is instructors discussing how shitty the pay is at some studios or the challenges of dealing with their students. Most of my peers freely discuss these topics among each other, but never to the camera. That would dampen the spiritual sheen stuck on top of modern yoga marketing. 

Which is a shame. The fact that Gigtube exists is indicative of the chronic free market ethos that dominates American society, which presents itself as prosperous for all but in reality only favors a small percentage of people. Whether delivering food or delivering asanas, we’re all part of a broken system of gig workers doing the best we can to make ends meet. 

At least one of these vocations is honest about the fact. Wellness would be a lot more well if its workers reckoned with that fact.