A woman doesn’t have to do much to get unwanted attention from a man. She doesn’t have be wearing anything in particular, or going anyplace special—basically all she needs to do is exist, and some man will find a way to harass her.
A perfect example of this phenomenon is what happened to a writer named E.M. Ricchini in Philadelphia. She ordered food to her house and got a lewd text message afterward from the delivery driver. See? She didn’t even need to leave the house to be harassed. And she did absolutely nothing to warrant it except for committing the rookiemistake of having a face and breasts.
uhhhh pic.twitter.com/ktWHqcDO6L
— jawn claude van damme (@emricchini) May 8, 2019
Ricchini had ordered food on Wednesday night from DoorDash, one of the many apps that provide food delivery. She described the food drop-off as ordinary to Jezebel. But a few minutes later, she received a text from the driver that read, “OMG please forgive me for saying this, but you are so gorgeous.” A second text followed: “And I hope this doesn’t offend you but you have the most perfect titties.”
When Ricchini responded, “Who is this?” she got an auto response saying that the number couldn’t be used again—it was a dummy account used by DoorDash to protect the privacy of the drivers. Ironic, right, since one of their drivers was now harassing one of their customers. And he knows where she lives.
“It was kind of a predatory thing to say,” she told Jezebel. “This person knows my address. It’s 7:30 at night.”
like honestly. i can’t even eat my FUCKING pizza fries in my own home without some piece of shit man making me feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
— jawn claude van damme (@emricchini) May 8, 2019
Ricchini did report the incident to DoorDash, both by posting about it on Twitter and by sending a message directly through the customer service page. She received an auto-reply via email that read, “We very much appreciate your perspective, and will flag this correspondence for the appropriate team here at DoorDash. Please rest assured that we regularly review customer feedback as part of our ongoing commitment to delivering the best service possible.”
i barely slept because i felt so violated in my home and all @DoorDash_Help could do was send a canned email response after ghosting me on messages on here. they do not care if the end user is safe or happy, as long as they have their $.
— jawn claude van damme (@emricchini) May 8, 2019
It wasn’t until almost 12 hours later when she heard back from Doordash, who let her know that the driver would no longer be delivering orders for their company.
That might take care of the situation in this one case, but that man can go on and get a job at any number of other service companies, whether it’s food or driving or whatever. And he’ll still be able to make women uncomfortable, or worse.
It’s the way the whole system works, with companies hiring a workforce of people they know almost nothing about. Combine that with a very small customer service departments and it’s a recipe for disaster. Jezebel points out that it wasn’t until a slew of lawsuits were filed by women who claimed they’d been sexually assaulted by their drivers that Uber rolled out safety additions, like a “panic button” that puts riders directly through to police departments.
Jezebel received a statement from DoorDash reading, “At DoorDash, we take the safety of our community extremely seriously and we do not tolerate any form of harassment or inappropriate behavior. We have reached out to apologize to this customer and we have deactivated the Dasher from our platform.”
h/t: Twitter: @emricchini, Jezebel