He drives for three apps because one app isn’t enough
to cover the insurance the apps refuse to cover—the bluff
of independent contractor flexibility: that free
means free to work the hours nobody else will be
available to work, which is the weekend shift at two
and the holidays and the forty-minute drives to you
from nowhere, which the algorithm doesn’t charge you for
but also doesn’t pay him for.
It’s the gig economy, the benefits don’t work
into the platform’s model, which is built on your being
a partner not an employee, which the courts are seeing
differently in some states but not the ones he drives in.
It’s the gig economy and the freedom he derives in
telling himself at least he’s his own boss,
the gig economy and the health insurance loss.
Three-forty for the car. Two-twenty for the insurance.
Gas fluctuates. Last week came up short.
The mileage deduction helps at tax time when he files
provided he’s tracked the miles, which he does in the miles-
of-human-error fashion of a person who is busy
driving twelve hours a day and doesn’t have the pizzazz
to open the tracking app at every ride start.
The platform’s quarterly newsletter arrived,
the one he actually reads:
*We’re committed to the earnings potential and the needs
of our driver community and the new earnings guarantee
ensures a minimum per hour that is exactly
one cent above the state minimum wage before expenses.*
The newsletter thanked him for his time and all the tenses
of his contribution to the ecosystem of the platform.
He rated the newsletter one star
and drove to the airport on the warm.