Uber Eats customer catches delivery driver eating his food

An Uber Eats customer was left outraged after he caught his delivery driver on security camera eating his order of chicken wings before he got to the door.

Richard Jackson, who lives in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, was looking forward to enjoying 15 boneless wings from Buffalo Wild Wings.

But when he spotted sauce smeared all over the bag, he realized the driver had already tucked in. Then he looked at surveillance footage and his suspicions were confirmed.

Jackson confronted the driver, who admitted what he had done, but said unapologetically: ‘Oh, I was hungry’.

‘He’s walking along the grass and then my camera happened to pick him up. I gestured towards my camera,’ Jackson told CBS Chicago about the incident. ‘He was clearly caught digging into my food.

‘He was digging into the bag, you know, sort of chucking the boneless wings – repeatedly popping them in. This is when I see the sauce smeared all over the bag. It’s missing several pieces of the chicken.’

The video appears to show the driver reaching into the bag almost immediately after getting out of the car.

Footage from one of Jackson’s several cameras around his property shows him refusing to accept the order after an inspection.

‘I did challenge him on why he was eating my food,’ Jackson said.

‘He eventually admitted to eating my food. He said, “Oh, I was hungry.”‘

The driver was not the same one originally assigned to his order, Jackson said.

Jackson got a refund for the meal but he is not happy with the restaurant for not putting a tamper-proof seal on the container.

‘It’s concerning that he was so nonchalant,’ Jackson said, ‘especially during a pandemic where we have a highly transmissible disease.’ 

Uber told DailyMail.com on Thursday that it looked into the incident immediately and the driver has been removed from the platform.

They said that as part of their contactless delivery service they have provided CDC guidance to restaurant partners and delivery people to ensure all orders are properly sealed in tamper-evident packaging.

The company also said that food prep areas are separated from any locations where delivery people wait for orders. 

A large number of businesses have been relying on food delivery orders amid the pandemic.

According to Uber, 82 percent of restaurant operators say Uber Eats has been crucial to business during COVID-19 and 75 percent of operators said that they would have had to close their business if not for Uber Eats.

A whopping 81 percent said they would have had to lay off staff members if not for third-party delivery and Uber Eats partners have reported more impact from the app than others during the crisis, including a larger increase in sales. Some partners saw sales increase by more than 40 percent.

CBS reported that s 2019 U.S. Foods study found 28 percent 500 delivery worker polled admitted to eating customers’ food and more than half said they were tempted by the smell.