*Because they stole my idea from 2003.

If this masterpiece is too long for email, you can read it here in Substack. Or download the app.

Couch Tomato, a precursor to Uber Eats™

With self-esteem akin to a burnt fried egg stuck to the bottom of a frying pan, inedible and not very nice to look at. I found it nearly impossible to find work after finishing my Multimedia HND at Swindon College. Prior to my HND study, I worked in warehouses and on building sites, jobs where I didn’t have to think much and I could just hide away mentally whilst performing physical tasks.

I’d frequent an internet café down the road from me to apply for jobs, back in the olden days, we didn’t have internet in our homes, let alone on our phones, so I had to get out to do basic things like check email. You youngsters don’t know you’ve been born. At the café, I would apply for web design jobs and felt like I had been rejected before I even hit send. I truly didn’t believe in my abilities, despite my abilities being pretty good.

The idea of working in an office filled me with dread, ‘would I have to facsimile important documents with my bare hands?’ I thought in my head, but the real fear was of making small talk with others and having to wear uncomfortable office attire.

I was lazy and I liked food (a lot) and also drink, so I thought, why don’t I invent a service that delivers food and drink to your home when you sit on the sofa on your laptop or as my American friends say, “Couch”?

Then voila!!…

Couch Tomato was born. It was a delectable play on words, professional punnage that would blush at, the replacing the vegetable known as Potato of Couch Potato with the fruit known as Tomato (Genius, I know).

I put together this iconic logo (it felt that way in 2003, anyway) and started planning how much cans of drink would cost at wholesale, after putting a few items on my notepad and adding them manually, I got totally fucked off with it all, screwed up the paper in a fit of rage and that was that.

Then, on one fateful day in August 2014, those fuckers at Uber stole my idea and founded Uber eats.

I contacted Uber Technologies to politely ask for some compensation. I’ve decided not to take them to court, or use physical violence, I’m not a monster.

This is how it’s gone down. (Me in blue, Uber the corporate thieves in a light grey, hex code #ccc, I think):