“Deliveryman” — A Short Story

His teeth were yellow, his beard was long, and there was no way for him to resolve the contradiction between his active mind and his stagnant body. As lively as his brain was, his body remained equally motionless. He felt resentment towards everything as he spent his day in the stress and tension of meeting the expectations set for him. Like a galloping horse, the sounds coming from his keyboard, the bugs waiting to be fixed, the tasks that needed to be completed, and the orders that needed to be placed… The work he was trying to accomplish, the order he wanted to fulfill. His head spinning between monitors. Every new tab he opened, every new file he created, was part of an endless cycle that continued until it became uncontrollable. The time he thought he had earned to repair himself when everything was suddenly erased. His rush to fill his empty closet at the market. New emails landing in his inbox, new requests coming in. Inescapable loops within loops.

Above his head, the company that was supposed to feed him had turned into enormous debts that weighed heavily on his efforts. Every task he completed was divided and fragmented, and he was forced to start working on it again early in the morning. His eyes were red and strained in front of the screen, working on tasks that needed to be completed in an unknown place and time, in a vague corner where he did not belong, at a desk set up under a portable wall mural on rented property. Tools of work were scattered around, with the appearance of a workplace maintained with false motivation… His mind, like a distribution worker’s network, reached every corner of the world. In outsourced jobs, he carried the requests and whims of strangers, and he bore the responsibility of contracts he was not a part of. Under workplace surveillance, he worked in a day filled with requested instructions and a pile of tasks he had to complete. He worked with career and status-hungry managers entangled in false relationships. It was a mix of work, household economics, future anxieties, and many other things.

Aykut’s efforts were turning into collective skills through Wi-Fi networks. He worked for the bank, and whatever he earned went to pay off his debts to the bank. He worked for airlines, and in the end, he had nothing to show for it. He had to constantly come up with new things and improve himself. He worked in a workforce that handled communication, connection, and data transfer worldwide, but he himself was confined to a desk. He could write a world of things, but he couldn’t find the words to express himself.

Each new day started with a remote work meeting, where he would review the tasks from the previous day and receive new ones for the next day. That was the beginning of his day’s effort.

The company’s management met secretly on certain days of the week, giving lessons to team managers on labor surveillance, control, productivity in remote work, performance, and communication. They were instructed to maintain control through roll calls and tight communication with all tools, increase internal team communication through various online activities, and make their team feel that they were not left idle during working hours.

Aykut and his team were never informed about these meetings, but they were aware of the increasing pressure on them. They felt like deceived children. Managers who outsourced work to the bank for their own benefit, aimed to please themselves, and blamed Aykut’s team for unnecessary reasons, whether true or not. While they tried to object and buy time, their objections went unanswered, and eventually, they were forced to do the assigned tasks through coercion. Aykut was not only frustrated by this but also by his colleagues at the bank treating him as a customer and dumping all the grunt work on him.

He called his coworker and opened up to the company.

Normally, the Aykuts couldn’t speak freely within the team; they were constantly monitored by team managers, and their internal communication was under control. Aykut could only talk comfortably with his team members through secret communication. Whenever he felt overwhelmed, he would call one of his colleagues.

Nergiz came to mind:

Aykut: There’s no end to this work; the more I work, the more they give me.

Nergiz: Yes, they’ve made me write down all the tasks I do too. To progress smoothly, without drawing too much attention, and to avoid showing that you’re working overtime, you have to stick to a routine, not answer any calls or messages outside working hours, especially those from the company…

Aykut: Someone keeps calling persistently; let me answer this, and I’ll get back to you…

Nergiz: Alright, we’ll talk later then.

The caller asked, “Are you at home?” Aykut replied that he was at home and sat down at his computer. A few minutes later, the doorbell started ringing incessantly. A breathless man came up the stairs, wearing a white mask, holding a bunch of files. He lowered the mask below his mustache, sweat was dripping from underneath, and he looked tired. Aykut raised his head from the computer, walked to the door, and the postman stopped, saying, “Can I see your ID, please?”

“What if I just tell you my ID number?” Aykut asked, but the postman’s hands were trembling, and he turned and said, “Do you know, I’m not only dealing with my superiors, but also hundreds of people, and when I return to the office, they ask me for the ID numbers of the people I delivered to. If these are wrong, I get scolded by a 25-year-old and they give me orders… If you won’t give your ID, I can leave.”

The postman was not bluffing; if Aykut had said, “Okay, go,” that would have meant one less person for him to deal with. The postman was serious because he didn’t care.

A sudden feeling of guilt overwhelmed Aykut, he hesitated for a moment, and then he said to the postman, “Don’t we have someone giving us orders as well? Aren’t there managers pushing us to work more? You’re absolutely right… They make us work more so that you can work more, which means we collect more data. And they even have performance programs for us.”

The postman turned back and said, “Of course… So who’s the winner?”

“The winner is definitely us,” Aykut said.

The postman had calmed down, suddenly grabbed his chest, and said, “Okay, you don’t need to show your ID, just tell me your ID number.”

“Would you like some water?”

“That would be nice.”

Aykut grabbed the pitcher and filled a glass of water for the postman. The postman had become tired, took a moment to calm down and drink the water, and then said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. They make us work so intensively, and despite the pandemic, they make you work in the streets, under risk and stress…”

“We are at risk, of course, and we take our own precautions. I’m going to buy gloves with my own money in a bit, I bought this mask the same way…”