Instacart shopper Courtney Fox stands in the checkout line at a Safeway in Palo Alto with groceries for three separate orders.

A few months ago, I was in a grocery store and heard shrieking at the seafood counter. A frustrated woman was pointing her phone at the various fish, struggling to communicate in halting English with someone on a video call. She was confused about all the salmon options behind the glass counter; from the look of the phone, she was an Instacart shopper.

I’ve seen more and more scenes like this during the past few years, though none as tense as that fish encounter. Grocery stores have taken on almost gladiatorial atmospheres — and I’m not just talking about Berkeley Bowl on a Sunday afternoon. City streets are clogged by double-parked delivery drivers hoping to shave off a few precious minutes of pick-up time. Gig work has created a combative, stressful atmosphere in these places that stinks of desperation and labor exploitation.

It’s easy to say that if we don’t approve of the working conditions of gig workers, we should just eschew those apps. Yet most of us probably know people who depend on these services — perhaps because they’re disabled or otherwise not able to go pick up food themselves. For them, gig services are necessities, not luxuries. These companies, essentially middlemen, exploit the public for profit — but what if they didn’t need to make enough money to appease venture capital and private equity firms? Could we square that circle........

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