Hitting the “Gig Work” Wall…

Woodstock Ross
5 min readJul 6, 2022

Hitting the “Gig Work” Wall…

It’s Wednesday and I don’t believe I’ve cracked the $200 mark for this week. I am on a seesaw of “working towards getting out of driving while learning new skills online and job hunting” AND “Desperately thumbing through beeps, boops, and buzzes of (2) different gig apps constantly going off at lunch time with $1.75–10.01 runs that require me to drive 13 miles one way when gas is $5/gallon.”

I’ve had enough. More appropriately:

“I’ve 100% totally and completely, mutherfucking-purple-crayon-wielding had enough.”

I remember my first I.T. job in and then out of college, helping to run the computer labs on campus, jack-of-all-trades+actual lab manager vs the alcoholic the previous manager hired, because her advisor was his wife and she gave her an A+ on her thesis for both the content and her hiring choice. It was $15 an hour and required a ton of responsibilities, which I took way too seriously.

That job was better than gig work and paid better with less overhead or risk. I was respected and appreciated for my skill sets, my intelligence, my problem solving and my empathy. I never took advantage of my position and never treated anyone as lesser. And as my UberEats app pangs with a $4.83 trip my stomach drops…

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Woodstock Ross

Professional Unfucker, Lifelong Student, Coffee Lover, Pizza Connoisseur, Love Combinator, Chocolate Addict, Productivity/Life Hacker, Hugger