If you haven’t heard by now, there’s an Ontario-wide stay-at-home order.

This will be the third time since the pandemic started, that I’ve had no childcare and had to change how I balance being a mom and doing gig-work full-time.

I know I just talked about motherhood and gig work on Monday, but that was *BEFORE* I learned they were going to shut down schools, and I had childcare lined up for the foreseeable future.

Today, I’m going to discuss tips and tricks to help you get through the next few weeks of COVID-19 restrictions, especially if you’re in a region where they switched schools to online learning (I’m in Peel Region, where schools are closed until April 19, and all school-aged childcare has been shut down).

Sorry that I didn’t really explain the #DeclineNow movement. You can read about it in this Vice article: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3anwdy/organized-doordash-drivers-declinenow-strategy-is-driving-up-their-pay

Decline Now is a collective movement by DoorDash drivers to decline low-paying orders, forcing the algorithm to boost the payout for the next driver it’s offered to.

This actually works on other platforms, as well.

On Instacart, if a low-paying batch sits on the platform long enough, it will receive a peak boost. This is why we always tell new shoppers not to take low-paying orders.

This can work SOMETIMES on Cornershop. If a low-paying order keeps being sent to shoppers that are at a store closest to the customer, and those shoppers continue to decline that order, it may then be assigned to a shopper that’s at a different store branch that’s further away, driving the mileage pay up.

For this reason, I always tell gig workers not to accept low-paying offers — regardless of what gig they’re working on.