Building on an emerging literature concerning algorithmic management, this article analyzes the processes by which food delivery platforms control workers and uncovers variation in the extent to which such platforms constrain the freedoms—over schedules and activities—associated with gig work. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 55 respondents working on food delivery platforms, as well as a survey of 955 platform food delivery workers, we find that although all of the food delivery platforms use algorithmic management to assign and evaluate work, there is significant cross-platform variation. Instacart, the largest grocery delivery platform, exerts a type of control we call “algorithmic despotism,” regulating the time and activities of workers more stringently than other platform delivery companies. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the spectrum of algorithmic control for the future of work.

Drawing on original survey and interview data on platform-based food delivery workers, we deploy an intersectional lens to analyze the ways in which the white working-class women who predominate in this sector of the gig economy interpret their work experience. With a focus on the gender–class nexus, we explore the reasons why these workers, especially mothers and other caregivers, self-select into this sector. These include: scheduling flexibility, which facilitates balancing paid work and family care; the opportunity to use previously unpaid food shopping skills to generate income, a neoliberal form of “wages for housework”; and the emotional rewards of serving elderly and disabled customers who cannot easily shop for themselves. Although these workers embrace the traditional gender division of labor and normative femininity, at the same time they express strong class resentment of both the companies they work for and the class and gender entitlements of their most privileged customers.

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