Remember in grade school when your teacher would assign you work that you knew was pointless? Math problems that you’d already done a zillion times. Essays on random writing prompts that were totally bullshit.

Busywork, we called it.

It wasn’t intended to make you smarter, or help you master a new skill set. It was just a way to waste time, to fill a few extra hours in the classroom and give your teacher more material to base your grades on.

That’s what a lot of new on-demand platforms feel like to me: just a way to keep people occupied without actually accomplishing anything.

Take Postmates, for example.

A few months ago, I was nearing the end of an online work-from-home gig that kept me at my computer a little too much for my liking. I’d heard that Postmates was launching in Portland, and, having had decent luck with other on-demand platforms, I thought I’d give it a shot.

The ads promised up to $25/hr for making deliveries by car or bike, while setting your own hours and being your own boss.

I wasn’t naive enough to think I’d actually make that much money from the platform; but still, the prospect of being outdoors all day and getting some sun sounded kind of nice. Why not try it out for a few months?

The first sign that things weren’t as they appeared was on my visit to their local headquarters. I’d exchanged a few emails with the organizers, and was scheduled to attend an orientation session at their downtown Portland office, a 30–40 minute bike ride from my house.

At least a dozen 20- and 30-somethings were waiting in the lobby, staring at their smartphones. The community manager invited us into a conference room, where he gave us a brief overview of the platform, and asked us why we were interested in becoming a Postmate.

One young guy said, “The $25 per hour sounds pretty nice.”

The community manager, Ben, tried to walk it back a bit. “Well, yes,” he hedged. “During high demand, we turn on Blitz Pricing, when you can earn 2 times the normal delivery fee. Sometimes you can stack up several deliveries in an hour. We’re especially popular on weekends — and at 2 in the morning when the bars are closing. Plus, you get to keep all your tips!”

I knew enough about the on-demand economy not to be surprised by the fine print. What really got me was the next part.

This meeting, he explained, had just been an intro session, and would only last 15 minutes. If we wanted come back for an “on-boarding session,” we could mark “yes” on a comment card, and they would run a background check and get back to us within a few days.

From the sound of it, I’d come all this way for a 15-minute meeting that didn’t tell me anything I could have gotten from an online video. This told me that Postmates didn’t value my time nearly as much as I did.

Still, mildly curious and hopeful that I might at least get a blog post out of it, I went back in a few days for the follow-up session.

This was a bit more interesting. Ben walked us through the details of the app on a screenshare, while the other occupants of the shared office space had loud watercooler conversations across the thin divider.

“I’m on your side,” he assured us. “I want you to make as much money as you can. If a customer gives you four stars but doesn’t leave a reason? I don’t count it against you. They were probably having a bad day.”

He told us that the best way to get in touch with him was on Facebook, where we could connect with other Postmates in a private group.

The most interesting part was the way zones worked. “If you live near the outside of a zone,” he said, “you may not get pinged for deliveries. You’ll probably want to head to a busier neighborhood before going on-call.”

There were heat maps to show us areas of high demand. “Don’t all head for the hot zones at once,” he said, “or the deliveries will all be claimed by the time you get there. Figure out your own optimal strategies.”

It sounded to me like making a decent wage on the app meant leveraging all these factors just slightly better than the Postmate next to you — and that, if you failed to do so, you’d be spinning your bicycle wheels for nothing.

I headed home, which was near the outskirts of the Portland delivery region, and turned on the app. I left it on all evening, and late into the night, then turned it on again the next morning when I woke up. Nothing.

Clearly, there wasn’t much demand in my neighborhood. I’d have to head toward downtown to see how much business was out really there.

After I’d settled in for a coffee at one of my usual spots, I got a notification that a job was available. “It’s free frozen yogurt day!” the app said. “Bring your customer a small cup of yogurt from the location nearest you. Don’t forget to take a photo for your receipt. Do you accept?”

It took me about 5 seconds to hit “decline.” After all this effort, that was my first mission? To deliver someone frozen yogurt?

It’s not that I think I’m too good for delivery gigs. I spent years delivering organic vegetables for a small business in LA. I’ve done airport runs for RelayRides renters, and made the occasional delivery on TaskRabbit.

But frozen yogurt? That’s just busywork.

There’s no good reason for an army of skilled 20-somethings to be sitting around waiting for their smartphones to ping them into action for a fro-yo delivery. Can’t these people get their own damn yogurt?

Over the next few days, I got pinged for several other deals Postmates had arranged with local businesses. Free grilled cheese day was next.

I imagined a new customer sitting at their phone, seeing the promotion come up, not even stopping to consider the individual they’d be summoning when they accepted their free grilled cheese. Or, if they did, they might congratulate themselves for giving some poor Postmate a job.

But all jobs aren’t equal: some work needs to be done, and some work doesn’t. It’s time these on-demand apps exercise a little more discretion when devising new forms of labor to keep the working class busy.