I would like to stay in Montreal what remains of the summer. In order to do so, I will have to work. I need a job that where I won't burn (or be burned) because I quit on a day's notice. Preferably where I can choose my own schedule. Something active where I use my body, because in this season I find it difficult to sit at a desk in front of the computer when it's nice and sunny.
This requirement list makes it impossible to work, except in the gig economy. And that's what I've done, I signed up to deliver on Uber Eats.
I'm amused because I used to work for a competitor of Uber, as a Product Designer. I remember I used to be irked when I told them I worked for X and they asked if I was a driver, nowadays I'm irked if they ask if I'm homeless.
But I admit it has something to do with the fact that nobody knows me in Montreal. I don't think I would do this in Puebla, my hometown, in part because it pays peanuts; but even if it didn't, I'd feel embarrassment delivering to someone I know.
What is with this status anxiety? I thought I was over it, I don't care if I am top or bottom, it is not me who chooses if I'm Brahmin or Dalit. Intuitively I know that a healthy spirit is capable of dressing in rags, begging for money and sleeping on the streets and after a month of this he won't have any trouble putting on a suit and commanding a room full of executives.
You must know your position in the status hierarchy, but you must not believe it. Believing it is identifying with it. If you are rich you become a nobody when you are poor. If you are educated you will become a nobody when your career is made redundant. If you are strong and fit you will become a nobody when you become weak and flabby.
I feel like I've already written too much on the topic as to affirm that I don't feel a loss of status from taking a job delivering for Uber Eats. Something is stirred inside of me. I used to be on the other side of a very similar app, with all the perks of startup culture. Now I'm on the gig side, with all the downsides of startup culture. So be it.