Women who say they've been sexually harassed by food-delivery drivers say the companies are failing to help them

• Five women told Insider they were sexually harassed by food-delivery drivers.
• The allegations range from disturbing text messages to fondling and unwanted touching.

It was 2 a.m. on a cold December night in Brooklyn, New York, and the 30-year-old was eager to get back into the warmth of her apartment.

She quickly greeted the driver, took her order, and was just about to turn around, when he jammed his foot in between the door, she told Insider.

After that, everything happened quickly.

The driver entered the foyer, and insisted she give him a hug, she said. Fearing for her safety, she agreed, but as the driver leaned in he reached into her robe and groped her breasts and backside, she said.

Then he got more aggressive, telling her he wanted to "fuck her," Cassie said.

"I tried to step back inside the foyer … but he followed me and then he took out his penis and started to jack off," she said.

She said she watched, frozen in shock, as the man ejaculated on the floor, pulled up his pants, and ran out the door.

"I ended up having to wipe up the mess he made with the napkins from my order," she said.

Cassie, who is trans, was too stunned to grasp what had happened until the next day, when the driver sent her a text message asking her to "not tell anybody" about the night before. Insider has reviewed the message.

She immediately called Seamless — where she ordered her food from — to report the incident. The customer service representative was dismissive, she said.

"They told me they couldn't help me because it wasn't their driver, it was the restaurant's driver," Cassie said. The restaurant, Krazy Chicken & Pizza in Brooklyn, did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

"They washed their hands of it, which I thought was funny because if they forget the ketchup in your bag, you get a $5 credit at least, but if you get sexually assaulted it's not their problem," she added.

Unsatisfied with Seamless' response, Cassie reported the incident to the police, kick-starting what she described as a "traumatizing" investigation that lasted for months.

The investigation, confirmed to Insider by the New York Police Department, resulted in the driver being arrested. Cassie chose not to press charges, and the department declined to comment on whether the driver was charged.

But while the inquiry was going on, Cassie said she still saw the same man delivering food around her neighborhood.

"We would make eye contact, even in front of my house because he would ride by multiple times," she said.

Allegations range from disturbing texts to unwanted touching

Cassie is among five women who told Insider they were sexually harassed by food-delivery drivers.

All of the women, apart from one who is named in full, asked to either be identified with pseudonyms (in asterisks) or have their last name withheld to protect their privacy. All their identities are known to Insider.

Of the four women besides Cassie who spoke to Insider, one said she was sexually assaulted by a driver after ordering from Grubhub, while three others said they were harassed by drivers after ordering from Doordash.

The alleged incidents in New York, Illinois, and Texas largely took place during the COVID-19 pandemic — between February 2020 and October 2021 — a time when most people were confined to their homes, sensitive to social distancing, and heavily reliant on food delivery.

The allegations range from disturbing texts and calls, to fondling and unwanted touching.

Annie*, a 20-year-old college student, said she was spending lockdown with her parents in Rochester, New York, in April 2020, when the delivery person who brought her DoorDash order tried to stop her from closing the door on him and pressured her to "hang out."

She said she immediately filed a complaint, but DoorDash refused to issue a refund. A customer-service representative only verbally apologized after her father called later and yelled at them, she said.

"We're in a global pandemic," Annie told Insider. "People have died and this man is out here wanting some coochie."

Jenna*, who lives in Chicago, told Insider a driver delivering her DoorDash order called her and played porn noises over the phone in July 2020.

She said she filed a complaint with DoorDash the next day and consistently asked for updates on how it would punish the driver. She said she was told two weeks later that DoorDash had closed the case because the driver denied the incident, and when she asked for his name, the person on the phone said they couldn't give it to her due to privacy policies.

None of the women, except for Cassie, got the police involved, but all of them said they felt upset and demoralized about how the food-delivery companies dealt with their reports.

Companies' response

Representatives for both Grubhub — of which Seamless is a subsidiary — and DoorDash told Insider they have strict policies against sexual harassment.

"What has been reported is entirely unacceptable and has no place on or off our platform. DoorDash has zero-tolerance for sexual harassment of any kind and takes all reports extremely seriously," a DoorDash spokesperson told Insider in an email.

A Grubhub spokesperson, who also spoke for Seamless, told Insider: "We take these allegations extremely seriously, and there is no place for this conduct on Grubhub."

"We are committed to continuously updating our policies to protect and support our diners, diners, and restaurant partners, and we work closely with local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute any incidents."

The spokesperson said that if a driver was an independent contractor, the company would inform the restaurant of the complaint and ban the driver from their platform. (Cassie said she doesn't remember what company the driver was delivering for when she saw him again.)

Little action

Reporting a complaint on Seamless, Doordash, and Grubhub is a straightforward procedure. Customers can either use a portal to fill in a form or call customer service directly.

But the women who spoke to Insider said that once they filed their complaints, they were left in the dark about what actions, if any, were taken by the companies.

That's what happened to Sarah Henalsteen, who told Insider she tried to get a driver fired after he kissed her hand and made disturbing comments while delivering a Chipotle order to her home in Fort Worth, Texas, in February 2020 that she had ordered through DoorDash. (Chipotle told Insider that it does not have its own delivery drivers and that all delivery orders are distributed by third parties.)

"He just said, 'Sorry, sorry, sorry. You're so beautiful,' over and over and over as I'm walking away from him to go back inside my house," she said.

"So I just ignored him. Just went back in and closed the door and locked it. It took me a little while to process what had happened."

Henalsteen said she made several complaints to DoorDash via phone and email. She said that while she received a verbal apology from a customer-service agent and a full refund for her order, she never managed to reach anyone high-ranking enough to explain the severity of the case.

"They just skirted over what actually had happened and just tried to make me happy by giving me money back," she told Insider, adding that it felt like she was speaking to someone who was "reading from a script."

Henalsteen said the experience left her feeling deflated and, after realizing she wouldn't get the answers she was seeking, she gave up.

"My whole goal was just to try to get him fired because I didn't want any other woman to get into the same situation as me because it could have been much worse," she said.

'Part of my life that I won't receive justice for'

Keira P.*, who lives in New York, said she faced similar hurdles filing a complaint on Grubhub against a delivery driver last October.

She said the driver shoved his way into her apartment, tried to kiss her, and groped her breasts.

"I felt dirty and used, despite doing the best I could to push him off of me and tell him to stop," she said. "I was afraid he would harm me."

She said she called, sent multiple emails, and complained about the company on Twitter, but Grubhub still refused to take responsibility.

She said a customer-service representative told her over the phone that they couldn't help her because the driver was an independent contractor who worked for DoorDash.

"But when I spoke to DoorDash they told me the same thing, that I could only get answers from Grubhub," she said.

So, like Henalsteen, Keira stopped pursuing the case.

"It became clear they were just trying to waste my time and exhaust me so that I would not pursue legal action," she said.

"I just now accept this is part of my life that I won't receive justice for and that I have to live with that."

Cases are out there but most go unreported, experts say

There is no publicly-available data that shows exactly how prevalent this issue is.

The emotional toll of reporting sexual harassment and assault, coupled with the response that some people may have received from food-delivery companies, often discourage people from taking their complaints further, experts say.

Insider sent public-records requests to the police departments of six cities — New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and Washington, DC. Of those that responded, none were able to give specific data about sexual-harassment cases by food-delivery drivers.

But Jaime Santana, a New York-based attorney who takes on sexual-harassment cases in the tech industry, told Insider there are "absolutely cases out there."

"Unfortunately in most instances, these are just not reported, which means not much can be done and these workers continue to remain on the road," he said.

Taking on such legal cases is also incredibly difficult because of the nature of the gig economy, Santana said.

The business models of companies like DoorDash and Grubhub rely on hiring workers as independent contractors rather than as employees. This paves the way not only for lapses in vetting, but also confusion around where the responsibility lies when liabilities like sexual-harassment allegations happen.

Alexandrea Ravenelle, the author of "Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy," told Insider this loose working arrangement means the companies can usually say that if there's a problem, it's the fault of the driver, not them.

"In a lot of ways, these platforms are like the Wild West," Ravenelle said. "It's just bringing up dangerous work situations for everyone involved."

Ravenelle stressed that the gig-economy model also impacts low-paid workers, who have reportedly also faced sexual harassment and other abuse on the job but receive no support when they contact the companies.

"It doesn't surprise me that customers would have problems reaching these platforms, seeing as the people who are making money for these platforms, also get no information," she said. "These platforms have a long way to go."

Many of the women who spoke to Insider said all they wanted was more information and clarity to start feeling comfortable ordering food to their own homes again.

Keira, who said she'd since deleted the Grubhub app, told Insider: "I am now scared every time I ring someone into my building, afraid it might be the man that assaulted me."