DoorDash has agreed to pay a $131.5m (£99m) settlement to New York City regulators after the food delivery giant admitted failing to compensate thousands of workers correctly or on time. In a statement that will surely be framed in the lobby of its San Francisco headquarters, the company said: "Simply put, we screwed up."

The agreement with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection follows a city investigation into wage violations, with a significant share of the payout addressing how DoorDash calculates compensation for the time delivery drivers spend waiting for orders. Because apparently, in the gig economy, waiting for someone to decide between extra guac and no guac is considered a hobby, not work.

The settlement marks another chapter in an ongoing battle between so-called gig economy platforms and municipal leaders. The likes of Uber Eats and Grubhub have repeatedly clashed with city officials over tipping laws, minimum wages and data-sharing requirements. It's a tale as old as time: tech company meets city regulation, tech company complains regulation is "complex."

San Francisco-based DoorDash blamed "complex" changes to the minimum wage in New York state introduced in 2023. Under the landmark minimum pay standard for app-based delivery workers, wages differ depending on the county, tipping and how many people work for the employer. DoorDash also cited technical glitches and multi-stop delivery routes for causing the firm to underpay workers or delay wages.

The company said: "While these mistakes weren't intentional, that doesn't make them okay." Which is the corporate equivalent of "I didn't mean to burn the toast, but also I ate it anyway."

DoorDash said local workers earn roughly $30 per active hour on average. It said it has now patched the software bugs responsible for the mistakes. The business said the errors hit roughly 264,000 workers, though it insisted the issues affected under 1% of overall local transactions. Systemic errors caused around $6.6m wages to never reach workers at all, and another $5.7m arrived days or weeks late - because when you're living paycheck to paycheck, what's a few days between friends?

The settlement is yet another reminder that in the gig economy, the only thing more flexible than your schedule is your employer's commitment to paying you accurately and on time.