Ordering DoorDash is not entirely about eatng. It’s not even mostly about eating. What people pay for is a certain identity, access to which they buy by paying for the service. It’s the identity of a person who is so busy, so in demand that they need to have their meals delivered to them.
The reason why people freak out so badly when it is suggested to them that they could cook their own lunches instead of ordering DoorDash is that, to them, this sounds like a verdict of being rejected by the new economy. Their aspirational identity of the people whose time is extremely valuable is being placed at risk.
Of course the very fact of being sensitive about this identity means that you are definitely at risk of being discarded by the market. Feeling anxious on the subject betrays the aspirational nature of this identity that one wants to cultivate but will never fully achieve.
Clarissa's Blog 
I could not believe my ears when I heard people door-dash coffee! Coffee!!
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here’s the rub — the people doordashing infrequently buy high quality food, but the same slop that McDonald’s or ShakeShack produces. The fact that it is delivered to them is seen as a sign of prosperity or the phenomenon which you described, when in reality they are just as lazy and uncouth as the person sitting in the drive through.
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There are 3 social classes:
Proletariat – go inside a McDonald’s and spend time there
Middle class – go through a McDonald’s drive through
Aspirational precariat – DoorDashing McDonald’s from home
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😀
My kids have weird theories about McDonald’s, because they’ve never eaten there. I took them to a Dairy Queen recently, just so they’d know what it was. I spent half the time we sat in the booth explaining how a drive-thru works.
“Cultural literacy”
ethyl
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We had to go to McDonald’s several times when we were in Spain because I couldn’t find any Spanish food that my child would agree to eat. Finally we located an Indian restaurant in San Sebastian and that was a lifesaver because we could reliably feed her there. Of course I was cooking most meals at home. However you can’t always interrupt a long walk to go back home for pasta soup.
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