By working collaboratively, these TaskRabbiters have achieved the free and flexible lifestyle sharing economy advocates are always talking about. But can it last forever?
The Taskers and friends at a party.
Jake Gonen
It's 5 a.m. on a Wednesday in San Francisco's Outer Richmond district, and Kyra Johnson is wide awake, making breakfast for her roommates — a feast, they call it. Chris Ledet, another resident of the little yellow house on a hill, likes to be awakened with a cup of coffee brought to him in bed, and Johnson is happy to oblige.
Johnson, Ledet, and Jake Gonen, Johnson's boyfriend, are up at dawn to attend Morning Gloryville, a trendy, sober, early-morning rave popular among a certain set of glitter-forward San Franciscans. There, Ledet works the coat check, holding on to the valuables of revelers looking to jump-start the workday with a little bump and grind. Meanwhile, on the dance floor, Johnson and Gonen consider it their personal responsibility to get the party started. ("We lose our shit," Johnson tells me later that day.)
By 10:30, the party's over, but the day is only just beginning. Johnson washes off her face paint, gets in her truck and, iPhone in hand, sets off to her first gig of the day.
Like Gonen and Ledet, Johnson makes her living on TaskRabbit, an on-demand platform on which workers set their own hourly rates for gigs that range from the quotidian (installing TVs and moving furniture) to the more bizarre (delivering thousands of donuts and pranking tech executives). All told, there are seven people in Johnson, Gonen, and Ledet's informal group, and all of them are living off of TaskRabbit. Most, but not all of them, live in the same house, with a rotating spot on the couch available as needed. All seven of them work collaboratively, connected by a constantly running group text message thread that enables them to ask for and offer help with tasks. And all, perhaps crucially, are of the age (22 to 34) and family structure (single and childless) that enables them to take on this kind of precarious employment model.
In some ways, the seven of them are the perfect embodiment of sharing economy ideals, working cooperatively to support themselves while following other passions and adopting a schedule that works for them. But spend enough time with the Taskers and it becomes easy to wonder if they don't also embody something more sinister than all the glitter might indicate: An unsustainable, shortsighted work model that sacrifices decent pay for the promise of "flexibility," facilitated by the so-called "on-demand economy" and perpetuated by the tech industry's insistence that the nine-to-five grind (plus the stability and benefits that come with it) is a thing of the past.
Jake Gonen
For his part, Ledet has two jobs lined up post-rave. The first ends up being a cinch: When he arrives, there's already a second Tasker there; they spend three minutes moving a table, and he gets paid $60. Ledet's second job of the day ends up being a bit more intense, and involves a lot of driving back and forth between neighborhoods. As the afternoon drags on, the early morning starts to catch up with him, but the job still isn't finished and he doesn't want to bail. So he sends a text out to the group thread, asking if anyone wants to pick up a task. As luck would have it, another group member, Thor Wilcox, is in the area and able to pick it up, which means Ledet can head home and take a nap.
Not every morning starts with a rave, but a daily mix of work and play is typical. For example, on a given morning, Andrew Macrae — another group member — might wake up with one or two jobs scheduled. After that, he might scroll through the app and pick up another gig if it's convenient. Or, if it's not, he might grab lunch with the other Taskers downtown. If they're not around, he might head home to work on personal projects. What happens as the day unfolds is up to him.
In addition to working as a TaskRabbit, Macrae is a painter with semi-regular shows throughout the city. He's also an experienced backpacking guide, a surfer, and an amateur mycologist. And for him, the beauty in tasking is that daily unfolding: Any given afternoon could find him painting, or working on the website for the guided backpacking company he's trying to start with fellow Tasker Andrew Delaney, or gathering mushrooms to sell to restaurants, or catching waves. Other house members spend their non-task time making leather goods, building furniture, starting advocacy groups, practicing their DJ sets, taking photographs, writing — the list goes on.
This, Macrae says, is perfect. "Forcing us into a 9-to-5 would be the worst thing you could do to us."
No comments:
Post a Comment