In March 2020, Jamie Gray, a marketing executive at füdmüd, a fictional New York City food delivery company, attends a performance review with their boss, Robert Sanders. Sanders asks Jamie to suggest improvements to help the company compete with other food delivery companies. Claiming to like Jamie’s suggestions, Sanders offers Jamie work as a “deliverator,” or delivery driver, claiming it’s a good opportunity. Realizing Sanders is firing them, Jamie rejects the offer and calls Sanders an asshole.

At home, Jamie informs their roommate, Brent, and his boyfriend, Laertes, what happened. Jamie plans to use their severance pay to pay the rent for a while, though they dread the possibility of becoming destitute and unhoused amid the pandemic. Brent says he and Laertes can stay with Laertes’s parents if they have to. However, Jamie knows that this would be difficult because Laertes is a trans man and his conservative parents have an anti-trans bias. To keep Brent and Laertes from having to move, Jamie agrees to be a “deliverator” for füdmüd.

Seven months later, in October 2020, Jamie is still working as a deliverator for füdmüd. During one delivery, Jamie discusses their dissatisfaction with their deliverator job and their dissertation on futuristic literature.