Gig workers are fed up with being treated as second-class citizens by store workers

• Gig delivery workers say store staff can make shopping for apps like Instacart much tougher.
• Employees at supermarkets and Walmart stores often ignore gig workers — or berate them.

Most days, a driver for Walmart's Spark delivery service in California says he has to show his receipts from the orders he shops to a store employee as he heads through the exit. It's a practice Walmart has instituted for Spark drivers at some stores to reduce theft.

But before he even gets there, a manager usually steps in first to ask for the receipt. "In my mind, I'm like, 'Sure, but also, why are you asking me that?'" the driver told Business Insider. "Why are you asking me to show that I am not stealing items when I'm going to be asked the same thing once I leave the store by the person at the door?"

The pressure is already on for gig delivery workers for services like Spark, Instacart, and DoorDash, who've got to get to a store, find exactly what customers ordered, and deliver it on time in hopes of getting a good tip. Many didn't expect there'd be another group of people they have to deal with: The store's employees.

Several gig workers that BI spoke with said that cooperating — or fighting — with store workers is a regular part of their job as independent contractors.

One Instacart shopper who delivered from grocery stores in Portland, Oregon, last year told BI in February that employees at some stores would regularly follow him around as soon as they figured out that he was shopping for an order for the app.

The store managers he confronted about the problem would tell him that they were trying to prevent theft — or simply tell him not to come back to the store, he said. "No matter what I would say, the very first thing that they would say is, 'Oh, you're Instacart,'" the shopper said.

An Instacart spokesperson directed BI toward the company's community guidelines, which apply to shoppers as well as store workers. Among the guidelines is a request to "treat others the way you want to be treated."

The company treats "any reports of violations of these guidelines very seriously," the spokesperson said. Shoppers can report issues to Instacart's support team.

For Spark workers who go into a Walmart store, things can be even worse — ironic, some say, given Spark is owned and operated by Walmart. One former Spark driver in Montana told BI that store associates regularly ignored him when he needed help.

Once, while he was waiting in line at a Walmart electronics department for some printer ink for a Spark order, an associate who recognized him simply moved on to the customer behind, saying: "This motherf*cker can wait."

Other Spark drivers have said that associates have threatened to get their accounts deactivated when they push back on mistreatment.

"It's very clear to the Walmart associates that I'm not a fellow employee, but it's also clear that I'm not a customer," the Spark worker said. "That puts me in this weird gray area where they don't have to help me because I don't work with them, and they don't have to be nice to me either because I'm not a customer."

"We were founded as a values-driven company that is grounded in the four core values of Respect, Service, Excellence, and Integrity," a Walmart spokesperson told BI. "Walmart associates are expected to operate based on these values and put fairness, equity, justice, and integrity at the heart of everything we do."

The spokesperson added that Spark drivers who feel that they haven't been treated this way should contact Walmart's ethics complaint line.

Conflict between gig workers and store employees isn't new. Early in the pandemic, Amazon's gig-worker shoppers became more common at Whole Foods locations, sometimes drawing ire from store employees.

Gig delivery workers have had to contend with a range of challenges over the last few years, from falling pay rates to greater competition for orders.

And store employees aren't the only ones giving gig workers a hard time. One Instacart shopper in Illinois told BI that they've had multiple customers claim that items are missing from orders — even when the shopper has taken photographs of the orders on the customers' doorstep to verify delivery.

Usually, Instacart assumes that the customer is right, the shopper said. That leaves shoppers with negative feedback and low ratings on their record — though this is something that Instacart told BI doesn't affect the order offers that shoppers see in the future.

But the Illinois shopper is skeptical of that explanation, telling BI that her husband, who also delivers for Instacart, often sees offers that she never gets. "Whatever rating they gave you, the one star they gave you, plus their negative feedback that they left stays on your account for a year," the shopper said.

Do you deliver food, groceries, or other items as a gig worker and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com