A Strange Day In The Life Of A DoorDash Dasher 🛥️

And What A 4-Star Review Will Get You!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Welcome to Inspired By True Events with me, Adam Rockwell! I’m an Oregon Coast-based writer, humorist (sure you are!) and chronic oversharer. This is part of my Offbeat Stories Series!

This post will probably get me fired from DoorDash in a DoorFlash. I am required by the DoorDash Code Of DoorEthics to inform you that I am NOT an employee of DoorDash, and therefore cannot be fired. I can only be relieved of my bright red DashBag.

I’m a Dasher¹. That’s what you call somebody who “works” for DoorDash. I’m the person who brings you your bag of Taco Bell because you were too drunk and/or tired (lazy) to drive the quarter mile and sit in the drive-thru lane for five minutes.

I’m the person who quietly walks up to your front door and gently sets down your bag of Chalupas and Xtra-Large MTN Dew Baja Blast Freeze.

Actually, it’s my son,

Fineas Rockwell

, and me. I drive, he runs. We’re a DoorDash DoorTeam. Is this a thing? I don’t know, I think I might’ve invented it.

Each day, when we are done Dashing, we usually take all the money we just made and go get a big order of Super Oscar’s Mexican Food (not on the DoorDash DashApp) to bring home and then have a DoorFeast.

I’m what’s known as, “good with money.”

Today, I’m going to tell the tale of a DoorDash gone wrong and what a four-star review will getcha’!

About a year ago, Finny and I were Dashing one nice, late summer afternoon. It was cool and cloudy, the kind of weather we Dashers enjoy. But it had been slow. Too slow. No orders were coming in.

Usually, when we’re Dashing, we station ourselves in what we call “The Sushi Triangle.” There are three sushi restaurants on the DoorDash app in Newport, Oregon. Sushi is the most expensive food in town and we get the highest tips from Sushi orders. So, when we get ourselves a sushi order, we deliver that sushi and make that cheddar!

So, there we sat, creepily, like a couple of burglars casing the neighborhood, waiting for an order to come in. After about a half hour… BING, magically, one did. Our first catch of the day (and only catch of that day).

BUT, it was a SUBWAY order, not sushi. 😭

What had fate wrought the poor Dasher to accept this order?????

Subway is the BANE of Dashers in our neck of the woods.

Here’s how the app works on the Dasher side: When an order comes in, you get sixty seconds to decide whether you are going to accept the request and deliver the Dash. If you turn too many down, corporate gets mad and the algorithm starts giving you only McDonald’s orders. That’s the DoorBasement.

We examined the Subway order and it had a five dollar guaranteed tip attached to it! PLUS, we hadn’t had any DashAction, so we pressed “Accept” against our better judgment.

Subway, at least the Subway here in Newport, is known amongst Dashers to be SLOW with their food preparation. REALLY slow. That said, it was a guaranteed five dollar tip. There was no way we were passing that up.

After accepting the order we put our Honda-HRV into gear and beelined up Highway 101 to Subway. We got there with time to spare.

It was a simple order: One footlong meatball sub and a Coke. Wham bam thank you mam’. We knew we would be out of there fast even if the workers were moving slow. But, as Robert Burns and Dashers everywhere know: the best laid plans of men often go awry when it come to freaking SUBWAY!!

We walked into the Subway and NOBODY was in there.

Typical.

When you’re a Dasher, it is your inborn duty to annoy the restauranteurs and food workers with, “Yo, where’s the food??”. I have often almost yelled, “Just get me the gosh darn food! Jeez you guys, I got a schedule to keep you know!”

When you’re a Dasher you are on a clock. It’s like Domino’s in the 80s with their delivery guarantee. You have to have it there in a certain amount of time or things start getting iffy with DoorDash Corporate.

But, that day in Subway, there wasn’t a single customer OR employee in sight. I yelled, “Hey, anybody back there?” Not a word. I peeked my head around the corner of the “kitchen” and there was nobody there. Heck, we could’ve walked out with the cash register.

I had a hunch what was going on. I went outside and looked behind the building. Sure enough, there was Candy, taking a smoke break. (Candy’s name was changed to protect her identity from the Subway Home Office if there is, indeed, such a thing.)

I held up my red DoorDash DashBag and said, “Candy, come on, I have to get this order out the door in a DashFlash!”

She apologized, as only Candy could, “Yeah, yeah, I’m on my break. You know I don’t even want to be working here, Andy.” People often call me Andy even though my name is Adam. I just roll with it. I just looked at my watch.

Candy angrily put out her cigarette and came back into the empty restaurant.

I’ll just show you a review of our Subway that is most warranted. I usually hate Yelp, but here it is to prove I’m no dang liar:

This smacks of the truth.

Eat fresh(ish)??

I went back around to the front and stood there. It took her another minute and a half to get to the front counter. “What do you need?” she asked.

Theoretically, the order should have already been done and bagged, ready for me to grab and Dash. Theoretically.

Candy looked at the order and said something I never thought I’d hear out of a Subway Sandwich Artist’s mouth: “We ain’t got no meatballs today.”

Now, I’m no expert in Subway franchise operations, but I have eaten at Subway a few thousand times and half of those times I had a meatball sub. Not one single time in those thousands of visits to Subway did they ever say to me, “We ain’t got no meatballs.” It’s the Subway staple. For me, probably the only reason I’d go into Subway. What are you going to do, order the Cold Cut Combo like some kind of monster?

So, I had to do something that all Dashers hate more than anything else. I had to call the Dashee. The “customer.”

I got hold of him quickly and I said, “Hello sir, this is your DoorDash Dashing Professional. Unfortunately… they ain’t got no meatballs at Subway today.”

He was taken aback and said something along the lines of, “They ain’t got no meatballs? What the heck you talkin’ bout, man??”

“No. They ain’t got no meatballs. I’m sorry.”

“God dangit!” he exclaimed.

After some wrangling, he decided I wasn’t lying about the no-meatball conundrum and he ordered a toasted steak sandwich of some variety. A few minutes later we were out the door with the not-a-meatball sandwich.

Fineas Rockwell

was navigating and I was driving. But then, something even stranger happened. We couldn’t figure out the address. We live in a very small town so usually know where everybody lives. But that day, what the app said made NO FREAKING SENSE. That Dash was turning into:

The Worst Dash Ever!!

So we drove down to the vicinity of the order and I took the phone from Finny. He hadn’t seen that there was a special note attached to the order. Apparently, we were not delivering to a house, condo, townhouse, brick and mortar business, food truck, or anything else on land.

No, we were delivering to a boat.

Delivering to a tuna boat! Names redacted to protect the privacy of the Boaty McBoatFace and their 4 Star Review... 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Newport, Oregon, has the largest fishing fleet on the Oregon Coast. They fish for crab, tuna, salmon, clams. The usual sea creatures that people like to consume. Anyhow, this specific boat we were delivering to was one of the boats that sells “fresh” tuna to the tourists right from the boat.

We were running a few minutes late due to Subway not having meatballs. We figured out which tourist tuna selling boat we were delivering to. I had bought tuna from them in the past. It was the most popular of all the tuna selling boats on the Oregon Coast.

When we finally got the steak sandwich to the fishmonger working the boat, he was not happy. He was not sad. He was not mad. He just took the sandwich out of our hands because we couldn’t just silently leave it on the side of the dock because a sea lion would’ve gotten it.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. He didn’t even complain to us about the whole not having meatball thing OR that we were a few minutes late thanks to Candy’s smoke break.

After we got home, after eating all of our burritos that our Dash did not cover, I discovered something that left me in utter shock.

The fishmonger had left us a four-star review.

A four-star review!! Out of five stars!

Incomprehensible.

It was the first time we had ever gotten anything less than a five-star review.

I felt sick. It could’ve been the burritos, but more likely the thought of—A FOUR STAR REVIEW!

You might be saying to yourself, “Four-star review? That’s not bad. Good job, guys!”

But that’s not how I think. No siree, Bob.

Ever since that fateful day, I made a promise to the Lord Above and The Devil Below: I would NEVER buy tuna from that tuna boat ever again.

Still, to this day, when I drive by that boat I bristle. The four-star review had gotten into my craw and there it has stuck.

Anytime we have out-of-town guests staying with us, they will often say, “Hey, let’s go get some tuna to throw it on the grill, I saw a nice tuna boat we can buy it from!”

I say, “I know a different boat with much better tuna. It’s called Safeway.”

Something that people who utilize DoorDash often fail to realize is: We know where you live. Literally. AND we often know who gave us what review when.

We know.

Oh, yes, we know.

And we don’t forget.

Four-star review?? You might as well have just cut my throat.

I can’t imagine ever buying tuna from that tuna boat again.

All because of some missing meatballs at Subway.

The End

1. Quick note: I’m an Xtreme part-time Dasher at this point. The other day I logged onto the app and it said, “Oh, you, I thought we’d broken up.” 😅📱