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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2020
He’s delivering your groceries to you.
He’s also risking his life
Instacart shopper Matt Gillette delivers groceries in Washington, DC.
PHOTOS: THE WASHINGTON POST
Matt wipes down the door of his car after completing an order at a Harris Teeter
supermarket in Washington, DC.
Ellen McCarthy
THE WASHINGTON POST - You have to protect the
things you can, so when the cashier at the Harris
Teeter checkout counter asked Matt Gillette if he
wanted anything double-bagged, he considered
the stakes.
“I’m really just worried about the eggs,” he
said, before carefully wrapping a second bag
around a carton.
The eggs were not his. Gillette, 36, makes
shopping runs for customers who place orders via
Instacart from the safety of their homes.
On this day, Gillette’s cart held provisions for
three households. He was worrying about their
eggs so they didn’t have to.
He is part of a corps of workers who have
become essential in the coronavirus pandemic:
those who are willing to risk venturing out to places
that many people are trying to avoid.
Gillette was dressed for the job in jeans and a
T-shirt. No mask, no gloves. He had hand sanitiser
and wipes in his car, for disinfecting after the fact.
“As an HIV-positive person, it does worry me
a little bit,” he said. But, he added, “I am more
cognisant of the fact that I’ve got to survive.” In this
case, survival didn’t just mean avoiding infection; it
meant continuing to work so he could buy groceries
of his own.
The eggs would make it safely into Gillette’s
car and then safely en route to their destinations: a
large apartment building, a penthouse with a private
elevator operated by a concierge, and an upscale
home where a voice would ask him if he would mind
leaving the groceries on the other side of the door.
For years there has been talk of a divided
America: those who have thrived in the modern
economy and those who have been hurt by it. The
wrath of a highly contagious coronavirus has made
that dividing line bluntly literal: It’s about two inches
thick, and it locks.
Gillette spent the past two years trying to make
the gig economy work for him. He’s driven people
around via Lyft, done their handiwork via TaskRabbit.
It hasn’t been much of a living.
He’s been on the verge of homelessness,
crashing with friends and asking others to take in
his beloved dog, a Labrador mix named Nitro. He’s
currently living with a friend, kicking in rent when
he can.
Things had been looking up in early March,
when he was in line to interview for a management
position with a local parking company. Then came
the novel coronavirus, the closures, the stay-at-
home orders.
Healthcare professionals warned that the
coronavirus would not discriminate between rich
and poor, black and white, insured and uninsured.
But there is emerging evidence that covid-19
is killing a disproportionate number of African
Americans, and the virus’ broader economic fallout
is not egalitarian.
Salaried workers fortunate enough to be able
to work remotely have a couple of safety nets: the
paycheques that are still being deposited into their
bank accounts, and the healthcare plans that will
protect theminancially if they do fall sick - a scenario
made less likely by the privilege of teleworking.
An Axios/Ipsos survey released last week found
that 48 per cent of upper-middle-class Americans
are working from home, compared with 11 per cent
of their lower-middle-class counterparts. For the
latter group, it’s seldom an option.
When Gillette signed up to deliver groceries for
Instacart, he joined a small army of colleagues in
the area he may never meet.
You can spot them by their uniform, a lanyard
around the neck, sometimes a T-shirt: green for
Instacart, blue for Amazon Prime Now. (Amazon
Chief Executive Jeff Bezos owns
The Washington
Post
.) And by the way they constantly stare at
product details on smartphones as they attempt to
do other people’s grocery shopping for them.
They are folks like Moe Ali, 27, a tile salesman who
can’t sell tiles during a quarantine but still needs to
provide for himself and his wife, who is a student.
Angelique Thornton, a 24-year-old with thyroid
cancer who lives with her elderly grandparents.
(“I’m extremely nervous,” Thornton said.)
Nina Makel, 32, a mother of four who estimates
she has been working 60 hours a week lately -
mostly at a Whole Foods that has more shoppers-
for-hire than regular customers these days. And
Phyllis Greenhow, a woman in her 50s whose
immune system is compromised because of kidney
problems and a recent heart attack.
She is giving half of her Instacart earnings
to a friend who got laid off from a pizza parlour.
Greenhow’s adult daughter wants her to stop but
is not winning that argument. “I am one of these
people that believes God has me,” Greenhow
explained.
Some of Gillette’s new colleagues joined a
one-day nationwide strike of people working for
Instacart, Amazon and Whole Foods last week.
The workers, who do deliveries or fulill orders in
warehouses, demanded increased hazard pay and
safer conditions. The strike succeeded in garnering
national attention and some concessions from the
companies, though many workers say they still
don’t feel safe.
Matt prepares to fulil an order at a Giant supermarket at a Harris Teeter supermarket in Washington, DC