CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
There was mild frustration on the streets of Betoota’s French Quarter this afternoon, as an upper middle class teal voter was cut off by a food courier cyclist that was rushing to make his next delivery in a 12 hour shift of unsustainable deadlines.
“Oh for fucks sake!” roars Klara de Carvalho (38) as she flicks an uncharacteristic middle finger out the window of her Tesla to the exploited migrant worker.
As a part-time philanthropic events planner, full time stay at home mum, Klara is rarely in her car. Except for the trip to and from daycare for drop off and pick up.
Increasingly, these 40 combined minutes of driving are becoming quite frustrating.
And it’s all because of these delivery cyclists who keep acting against the spirit of traffic laws in their efforts to make enough money to make their weekly $300 payment for a bunkbed in a windowless 13 person boarding house, where they sleep for 3 hours a night in between studying English at a fraudulent training provider that charges him more than Klara paid for her unused humanities degree.
“I mean jeez, I know they don’t have any insurance or health benefits” she says.
“But they certainly drive like they do”
Unbeknownst to Klara, this is the same subcontinental slave that delivered a plastic bag containing a Thai green chicken curry, Pad Kee Mao and a cashew basil stir fry to her front door last night for $89 – after deciding at 6pm that she just didn’t have the energy to make dinner for her 4 year old son and half-pissed stockbroker husband that was coming home from a long lunch in an Uber.
The reason she doesn’t recognise him is because she avoids eye contact at all times when engaging with the help, out of fear that she might feel pressured to leave a 5% tip, of which the delivery rider will receive less than half, as a gig economy contractor working for a global tech company on the perfectly legal wage of $9 an hour.
“It’s like they don’t know the road rules. Where do they find these people” she scowls, as she glares at the exhausted serf valiantly pedalling into the distance to deliver yet another take away meal to yet another socially progressive but fiscally conservative climate change warrior who thinks it’s a disgrace that the arts remains so underfunded.
