And if you're a thief (not all thieves are just random people walking by) you will KNOW that someone who just jumped off a bike and locked it will not be back for a certain time, and tossing the bike into a truck, lock and all, could be a moment's time.

So now you need to lock it to something, causing even more time lost.

That's what I did when I did bicycle deliveries. Yes it was a pain, but I considered it part of the job. But I was working for an individual pizza shop which did a good job making the job worthwhile overall and paid me well enough for my time and this sort of "extra effort".

And you likely had "downtime" when waiting at the shop for an order to deliver; these delivery people are often servicing an almost infinite number of orders and shops, and the next order is just an app click away.

Sort of. I'd help out around the pizza shop if there wasn't a bicycle delivery to be done. I could handle any of the other positions in the shop as well. But yes, there was generally plenty of downtime, other than maybe a 2-4 hour super rush period around lunch or dinner some days.

Much of the current "labor complaints" in general come from the maximization that doesn't "exist on paper" - jobs often involved "downtime" (even if you have slogans like "if you can lean, you can clean") and a few hours each day of absolute panic crunch-time.

Now we're becoming quite capable of optimizing it so that the panic crunch-time is the entire shift (and if it isn't you make less than minimum wage) via these "Silicon Valley gig apps".

Now imagine the pizza shop put you in a race with another delivery driver, and the loser was going to be banned from delivering and making that extra money.

Because that's the reality these delivery apps set up.

Isn't this the plot of Snow Crash?

Yeah, these gig workers need to be paid enough to cover the time for faffing about with locks that are large enough to deter thieves for 10 minutes or so. I doubt they are, which drives these conflicts.

The problem is more than just payment, but the worker competition dynamic the apps are built around. It doesn't matter if you are paid handsomely per order delivered, including ample time and effort to properly lock everything up or truly do anything the customer wants and is willing to tip for, as long as the company pushes more orders to the people delivering faster, it will force a race to the bottom in service quality.