Rent is due.
Your kids’ tuition fees are coming up.
Groceries, gas, phone bills,... none of them wait. But the shifts?
They disappear in seconds.
Friday comes. Shifts are supposed to drop.
You open the app, stare at the screen. Nothing.
That moment hits hard.
Because when you’re an immigrant trying to survive in Canada, “no shifts” doesn’t mean a day off. It means stress. It means uncertainty. It means wondering how you’re going to pay what’s due.
1. My Biggest Frustration
I’m an immigrant from India. I came to Canada five years ago through the Federal Economic Class Programs, believing that if I followed the rules and worked really hard, life would slowly stabilize.
But while waiting for paperwork to be completed, I couldn’t afford to sit still.
Jobs were scarce. Competition was everywhere.
So I did what many friends do. I became a food courier for SkipTheDishes.
At first, it worked.
Then it didn’t. Fewer shifts showed up. And when they did, they disappeared within seconds.
2. Why don't I get SkipTheDishes shifts?
At first, I told myself it was just bad luck. Always, the shifts kept disappearing before I even had a chance. I kept trying, but nothing really changed. For a long time, I didn’t understand what was happening.
But after months of delivering for SkipTheDishes, and talking to many other couriers, I finally understood something: Not getting shifts is not a personal failure. It’s how the system works now.
Here are the real reasons.
The Real Reason #1: Too Many Couriers, Not Enough Orders (supply is higher than demand)
This is the most basic reason, yet the most overlooked. SkipTheDishes keeps onboarding new couriers. Every week, there are more drivers on the road. However, the number of orders does not increase at the same pace.
The result is simple:
- More couriers competing for weekly shifts
- Fewer shifts available for each driver
Even if you schedule yourself for the entire week, the system simply doesn’t have enough shifts to give everyone. This is why: The market is just overcrowded.
The Real Reason #2: Shift Distribution Is Not Fair or Transparent
I used to believe that if I scheduled early and stayed active, I would get shifts.
But that’s not how it really works. Skip uses an internal system to prioritize couriers, based on factors they never fully explain, such as:
- delivery speed
- completion rate
- acceptance behavior
- overall account performance
The biggest problem is transparency. Not all shifts are shown to all couriers. Some dropped shifts never appear on my screen, they are only visible to a small group of drivers.
The Real Reason #3: Open Shifts/ Overflows Appear When You’re Unavailable
When I got no scheduled shifts, I had no choice but to rely on open shifts and overflows. But these shifts don’t appear at convenient times. They show up when:
- another courier drops a shift
- demand spikes unexpectedly
- the system urgently needs drivers
And almost always, they appear when: I’m sleeping, I’m driving, or my phone isn’t in my hand. By the time I open the app, the shift is already gone.
Open shifts often last only a few seconds. That’s why manual refreshing feels useless.
3. What you can do about it
The truth is uncomfortable, but clear: Working harder doesn’t get you shifts. Being there at the right moment does.
As a courier, I can’t:
- stare at my phone all day
- refresh every second
- stop sleeping, driving, or doing daily tasks.
So what was I supposed to do when my two children were waiting for me to raise them, and the bills were constantly due?
And when I saw my friends still running shifts regularly, I was extremely puzzled as to why they could catch open shifts and overflows while I couldn't. I finally managed to find out their secret: a shift-grabber tool.
Instead of refreshing manually, it:
- watches open shifts and overflows for you
- reacts the moment they appear
- gives you a fair chance to compete in a system built on seconds
It doesn’t make the market less crowded. It doesn’t change Skip’s rules. It simply makes sure you can earn sufficient income in the short term to take care of the ones you love.
The shift-grabber tool changed everything for me.
