Woman Was Told Her DoorDash Drivers' Names Were Emily & Stacy — But Saw Two Tall Men When She Opened The Door
Many women have had similar experiences.
Ground Picture | Shutterstock It seems many food delivery drivers on popular apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats are either using different accounts or pretending to be women after customers have noticed an alarming and odd trend.
In a slew of videos, multiple content creators have questioned whether this has become the norm for others after ordering food and expecting to see a woman at their door, but when they go out to meet the driver, it's actually a man.
A woman was told her DoorDashers' names were Emily and Stacy, but when she opened the door, she found two tall men instead.
In an 11-second TikTok video, a woman admitted that she was taken aback after ordering food on DoorDash and the name of the delivery driver picking up the order was a woman's name. It happened on two separate occasions, and when she went to answer the door to grab her food, she was shocked to find men standing there instead.
"I ordered DoorDash. 1 dasher's name was Emily, and the other was Stacy. Both times I approached my door to retrieve my order, and they were 6ft+ bulky men," she wrote in overlay text. Unfortunately, this wasn't just a one-off. Many other women have either had similar situations or awkward and frightening encounters with their food delivery drivers, who are almost always men.
In another video, a content creator named Denise questioned her followers if they'd heard of this new epidemic of women letting their boyfriends drive for Uber Eats and DoorDash using their name. Denise explained that this mostly impacts women who only give explicit directions to their houses to women food delivery drivers because they feel unsafe, allowing men to know their addresses.
"You open the door for Ebony, and Ebony actually happens to be Steve. That's not okay," Denise said. "Y'all have got to stop letting your boyfriends who cannot pass a background check, deliver food to people's apartments, or pick people up for Uber."
Women already face scary and unsettling experiences with Uber drivers as it is.
According to NBC News, Uber reported 141 incidents of rape and 998 incidents of sexual assault in 2020. Additionally, per an Alarms.com report, 23% of women surveyed say they reported uncomfortable driver behavior to Uber. Lyft came in slightly lower, with 15% of women surveyed saying they had reported a driver’s behavior to Lyft.
Another woman recalled a creepy encounter with an Uber Eats driver who had delivered her food.
To prove the point about how unsafe women feel, another content creator named Lea Denim explained that she'd recently ordered from DoorDash, and when the driver arrived, he called her to open the gate and drop off her food. However, when she buzzed him in, and he put the food down outside her apartment door, it took him longer than usual to leave.
"I'm watching through the peephole, and he just stands there on his phone," she recalled. "He sits there for 5 minutes, and he doesn't submit the picture. Then I looked down at my phone [and] he texted me, 'Can you please come out here?'"
When she texted him back, questioning why he needed her to come outside, he didn't respond but continued waiting for 20 more minutes outside her apartment. At one point, she watched from her window as he walked down the stairs and then back up, peering around the corner at her front door in case she came out once he was gone.
This is a frightening experience that proves apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash need to undergo more vetting and implement stricter safety protocols to ensure the safety of their customers.
It's disheartening that women can't simply order food without worrying about their safety. Amid all of the other routine activities that women have to do while keeping a careful eye on their surroundings and personal security, this added layer of concern for a mundane task like ordering food is not just an inconvenience but a significant burden to everyday living.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.