The Gig Economy Works. That Doesn’t Mean It’s Good.
Convenience is easy. Accountability is harder.
I tried to make my life a bit easier this week: I booked a cleaner. Not because I hate cleaning, but just because I was busy and wanted to save some time. I blocked my calendar, worked from home and moved a few things around so this would all go smoothly. In a busy month, it felt like one of those small life upgrades that should create a bit of breathing room.
Instead, it turned into three days of friction. The first cleaner cancelled late the night before. Life happens, I get that. The second one showed up late, left early, billed a bit generously, and did a job that was… fine. Not terrible, not great. Just enough that when I walked in, my first thought wasn’t relief. It was, “I could’ve done this myself in a few hours.” And, since I’m picky, there were a few things I noticed I would’ve done better.
Somewhere during those three days, this stopped being about cleaning.
The Subtle Cost of Convenience
The gig economy sells you on convenience, and to be fair, it delivers. You can get almost anything at the tap of a button now. A ride shows up in minutes. Food arrives at your door. Someone can come clean your home while you’re on a Zoom call. On paper, or better yet, my phone screen, the concept is brilliant. We’ve turned our smart phones into a remote control for daily life: with the right app, anything imaginable shows up at the touch of a button.
But the convenience removes something else: ownership. The person showing up isn’t building something that’s theirs. They’re completing a task that lives inside someone else’s platform. And you can feel that difference, even if you can’t always explain it right away.1
It shows up in small ways: A bit less attention to detail, a bit less pride in the outcome, a bit more “close enough.” Just enough to not get a bad review, and then they ask for a tip.2
When It’s Actually Your Business
I’ve worked with cleaners and other contractors before, but those were always small, local businesses. Same service on the surface, completely different experience in reality.
When someone owns the business, even if it’s just them, the energy is different. They care about how the place looks when they leave. They care about whether you call them again. What you say about them to others matters more than the review you leave on some faceless online platform.3
With a business owner, you can build a relationship there, even if it’s informal. With a platform, that connection is thinner. You’re matched, the job gets done, and both sides move on. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal. There’s always another cleaner, another customer, another ride, another pizza to deliver.
The Middleman Takes the Margin
That flexibility is the selling point, but it’s also a big problem for anyone participating in the gig economy (sellers and buyers). The issue is the laughing third party that’s quietly part of every transaction. The platform benefits the most, without doing any work. The platform isn’t the one cleaning your home, cooking your food, or driving your car. But they are taking a cut from it all, and often not a small one.
So you end up in this slightly awkward setup where the person doing the work is not fully invested, the customer is not fully satisfied, and the platform quietly collects in the background. It’s a lose-lose no matter what you do, except if you own the platform.
You See It Everywhere
Walk down the street and you’ll see delivery drivers everywhere, rushing from one order to the next. In Vancouver, electric bicycles and scooters fly by on the sidewalk. Restaurants, already operating on tight margins, hand over a percentage of every order just to be visible on those third-party delivery apps.
More and more places now nudge you to order directly, offering small discounts or incentives if you bypass the platform entirely. That tells you everything you need to know.
Uber is another obvious example. It works, most of the time, but it rarely feels like a private driver service in the traditional sense. Occasionally you get a great driver, someone who clearly takes pride in what they do. More often, it’s just a ride. A functional and hopefully somewhat predictable way to get from A to B. That leaves a lot to be desired from Uber’s original tagline ‘everyone’s private driver’.
What Happened to Pride in the Work?
Did we, collectively, decide somewhere along the way that “good enough” was enough? This is the struggle I keep coming back to with gig economy. My cleaning dilemma was never really about being late or missing a room or billing an extra twenty minutes.
There’s a quiet gap between completing the job and doing it well. Between finishing a task and taking pride in the outcome. The platforms own the relationship and take their cut no matter what, and when nothing is truly yours, it’s harder to care that much.
Build Your Own, or Choose Someone Who Did
If you’re the one doing the work, there’s something powerful about owning it. Even as a sole proprietor you can set your own standards, build your own client base, and create something that reflects how you want to show up.
And if you’re the customer, there’s value in seeking out people that take ownership for the work they do. Working directly with someone who actually cares for what they do. Sometimes you may pay a bit more, maybe, but in return you’re getting something that feels more human. And you support local.
After my experiment this week, I’m leaning back in that direction. Not because the gig economy doesn’t work. It’s because what I keep coming back to, is that “working” and “being good” are not the same thing.
Get Into Action
If this resonates, it might be worth taking a closer look at where convenience is quietly lowering your standards without you realizing it. My various business courses are created for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to own their platform, instead of participating in someone else’s. You can discover how to optimize your online presence, implement growth hacking techniques, and leverage social media for business success. Free previews available via the link below.
Further reading
That’s why I work with my students to build their personal brands and platforms, encouraging them to create something of their own. You can preview my business courses related to Entrepreneurship & Marketing by clicking here.
The problem with tipping is that money is a blunt instrument for something (good service) that should feel anything but transactional. Full story here. This applies even more to the gig economy, as most interactions are in fact transactional. How can you really go above and beyond on delivering my pizza? It either got there, or it didn’t. (But if you also brought ice cream, different story.)
Referrals in business have changed. No longer do we refer a business to do the business owner a favour, we do it to do our friends a favour by recommending something that may help them.