Paper short abstract:

The simultaneous use of multiple apps by gig workers is hailed as an entrepreneurial tactic which helps maximise their incomes. This practice reveals the growing pressure to earn a living in increasingly precarious working environments.

Paper long abstract:

A food courier carrying an Uber Eats or Stuart bag as they deliver your meal ordered on Deliveroo at the door is certainly a puzzling encounter, but not an extraordinary one. Doing food deliveries while working on multiple platforms at the same time is a common phenomenon amongst couriers, to the point that it has its own moniker: multi-apping. Workers themselves extol the opportunity to earn better money, and also the skills needed to do so, by using two different apps to pick up two different meals from two different restaurants and deliver them at two different addresses. When not openly encouraging it, platforms are turning a blind eye to the practice since this allows them to argue in court battles that their workers are entrepreneurs who they do not control. This entrepreneurial mindset has nevertheless drawbacks for couriers whose accounts can be immediately deactivated if they are late delivering some orders or if clients report them. The risk of traffic accidents also increases with the intensification and speeding up of tasks at hand. This paper aims to investigate the coping strategies deployed by food couriers to deal with the pressures of multi-apping and the further precarisation of work that this phenomenon entails.