Delivery Riders, Stuck in the System (Translation) 《人物》的《外卖骑手，困在系统里》翻译成英文
This is a machine translation of the Chinese magazine Renwu’s investigative reporting on the Chinese delivery service industry, edited for accuracy and readability. I have also added cultural notes to aid understanding in square brackets. Any mistakes not present in the original (https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Mes1RqIOdp48CMw4pXTwXw) are mine alone.
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A series of data released by the Department of Traffic Police has spurred a discussion of how food delivery has become a high-risk occupation.
Why does an industry that has created such great value also create social problems? The Renwu team spent half a year conducting a survey to answer this question. Through the contributions of dozens of delivery riders, participants at various parts of the distribution chain, and sociology scholars from across the country, we found the answer.
The article is very long. We are trying to get more people to think about a question together through a detailed interpretation of a system: in the era of digital economy, how should algorithms be used?
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Again 2 minutes disappeared from the system.
Ele.me rider Zhu Dahe clearly remembered that one day in October 2019. Seeing the system delivery time of an order, his hand holding the handlebar sweated, “2 kilometers, within 30 minutes Delivery”-He had run food delivery in Beijing for two years. Previously, the shortest delivery time for the same distance was 32 minutes, but from that day, those two minutes were gone.
At about the same time, Meituan riders also experienced the same “time missing incident.” A Meituan rider who specializes in running long-distance deliveries in Chongqing found that the delivery time for orders within the same distance had changed from 50 minutes to 35 minutes. His roommate who is also a delivery rider had discovered that orders within 3 kilometers had been reduced to a maximum of 30 minute delivery time.
This is not the first time delivery times had been shortened.
Jin Zhuangzhuang has been the stationmaster of a Meituan distribution station for three years. He clearly remembers that from 2016 to 2019, he received three notifications from the Meituan platform to “accelerate”: In 2016, the 3km delivery distance was the longest. It gave riders an hour. In 2017, it became 45 minutes. In 2018, it was shortened by 7 minutes and fixed at 38 minutes. According to relevant data, in 2019, the average delivery time in the entire industry in China was 10 minutes shorter than in 2016.
The system has the ability to continuously “swallow” time. For the creators, this is a commendable progress and a manifestation of the deep learning capabilities of AI intelligent algorithms. For Meituan, this “real-time intelligent distribution system” is called “Super Brain”, while Ele.me named it “Ark”. In November 2016, the founder of Meituan Wang Xing said in an interview with the media: “Our slogan is “Meituan takeaway, fast delivery”, and our orders arrived within 28 minutes on average.” He said, “This is a very good thing. The embodiment of technology.”
For delivery riders who practice this “technological progress”, this can be “crazy” and “deadly”.
In the setting of the system, delivery time is the most important indicator, and late arrival is not allowed. Once it happens, it means bad reviews, reduced income, or even being fired. In Baidu Tieba where delivery riders gather, one rider wrote, “Delivering food is a race against death, a competition with traffic police, and being a friend with red lights.”
In order to keep himself alert, a Jiangsu rider changed his social account nickname to “Late delivery is a dog’s head” [“dog’s head” refers to an emoticon on WeChat commonly used to express sarcasm]. A Shanghai rider who lives in Songjiang said that he would go against traffic almost every single trip. He calculated that he could save 5 minutes each time. Another Ele.me rider from Shanghai did a rough statistic. If he did not violate traffic rules, the number of trips he could run in a day would be reduced by half.
“Riders will never be able to rely on their personal strength to fight the time allocated by the system. We can only use speeding to prevent going over time.” A Meituan rider told Renwu that the craziest order he has experienced is 1 kilometer in 20 minutes. Although the distance is not far, he needs to pick up, wait for, and deliver the food within 20 minutes. On that day, his speed was so fast that his butt bounced off his seat several times.
Speeding, running red lights, going against traffic… In the opinion of Sun Ping, an assistant researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, these takeaway riders’ actions to challenge traffic rules are a kind of “reverse algorithm,” which is done by riders under the control and discipline of system algorithms for a long time. As a last resort labor practice, the direct consequence of this “inverse algorithm” is that the number of traffic accidents encountered by delivery workers has risen sharply.
Sun Ping began to study the digital labor relationship between the delivery system algorithm and the riders in 2017. In the exchange with Renwu, she talked about the delivery times becoming shorter and shorter, and traffic accidents becoming more and more frequent as a result of this relationship. She said “It must be (the most important reason).”
Real data strongly supports this judgment. In the first half of 2017, data from the Traffic Police Corps of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau showed that in Shanghai, an average of 1 delivery rider was injured or killed every 2.5 days. In the same year, there were 12 casualties among Shenzhen delivery riders within 3 months. In 2018, the Chengdu traffic police investigated and dealt with nearly 10,000 illegal riders in 7 months, with 196 accidents and 155 casualties. On average, one rider was injured or killed every day. In September 2018, the Guangzhou traffic police investigated and dealt with nearly 2,000 takeaway riders who violated the law. Meituan accounted for half of them, and Ele.me ranked second.
[Photo of a crashed delivery vehicle in Xi’an]
“#Delivery Driver, already becoming the most dangerous occupation” has been on Weibo’s “Hot Topics” more than once.
In public reports, specific cases are far more alarming than data.
In February 2018, an Ele.me rider was speeding on a non-motorized pathway in a hurry and knocked down Li Mouqiu, one of the founders of the emergency department of Ruijin Hospital and Huashan Hospital in Shanghai. Li Mouqiu died one month after the accident. In May 2019, a delivery rider in Jiangxi was in a hurry to deliver an order and hit a passerby, causing them to enter a vegetative state. A month later, a Chengdu rider ran into a Porsche while running through a red light, and his right leg was severed and flew off. In the same month, a takeaway rider in Xuchang, Henan, went against traffic on a motorway, was hit and flew in the air and rotated 2 times to the ground, causing multiple fractures all over his body…
Zhu Dahe, who was scared by the delivery time and had sweaty palms, also had an accident. In order to avoid a bicycle, he rode a speeding electric bike and fell on a non-motorized pathway. The spicy dry hotpot that was being delivered also flew out. At that time, what reached his brain one step earlier than the physical pain was, “Oh no, I will be late.”
In order to avoid late delivery and bad reviews, he called the customer and asked them to cancel the order, and bought the spicy hotpot by himself. “It’s too expensive, more than 80 yuan,” he said, “but it tastes good, and it’s too much. “He still feels bad about it, because he had just entered the industry at the time and had little experience. A more reasonable approach would be to pay the customer for the spicy pot and let him place another order. This way, “at least he can give me the delivery fee for this trip,” he said, “6 yuan 50 cents, I remember very deeply.”
“Car crashes are all too common. As long as you don’t spill your meal, it’s not a big deal for a person to have one.” Zhu Dahe said. “Usually I can’t stop” because “then my own meals will come late”.
The experience of the Meituan rider Wei Lai confirms this statement.
At noon this spring, Wei Lai and a rider in uniform of the same color waited for a red light at an intersection. It was only a few seconds before the other party was anxious and rushed past when a car came at high speed. The rider and bike went flying. The driver was surely dead.” Wei Lai said, seeing his colleagues lying in the middle of the road, he did not stop, “The order in my hand was about to expire.” And then, A new order came, and a familiar female voice rang — “Delivery. From XX to XX, please reply after the beep, and receive it.”
[Video of driver being struck by a car]
Rainstorms
According to the system settings, after the riders reply “received”, they will get to work.
In 2019, at the ArchSummit Global Architect Summit, Wang Shengyao, a senior algorithm expert on the Meituan distribution technology team, introduced the basic operations of this intelligent system —
From the moment the customer places the order, the system will start to decide which rider to send to take the order based on the rider’s route, location, and direction. The order is usually dispatched in the form of a 3-order or 5-order. One order has 2 task points: picking up the food and dropping it off. If a rider carries 5 orders and 10 task points, the system will compute 110,000 route planning possibilities, carrying out “10,000 orders for 10,000 people in seconds” [“10,000” is commonly used to express an uncountably large number rather than specifically 10,000] and plan the optimal delivery route.
But in reality, if you want to crush this “optimum situation”, a heavy rain is all you need.
The riders’ attitudes towards rain are conflicted. They like rain because there will be more orders on rainy days, but if it rains too much, the system will easily “burst orders”, and they will also easily get into trouble.
Hunan Meituan rider Geng Zi had a terrible rainy night. The rainstorm kept coming down for a whole day, orders poured in frantically, and the system exploded. Every rider in the site carried more than a dozen orders at the same time, the boxes were full, and the handlebars were full. Geng Zi remembered that his feet could only be lightly leaning against the edge of the pedal, and while running, staring at the middle of his calf so the boxes of lunch stacked there would not be damaged.
The road was too slippery. He fell down several times, then quickly got up and continued to deliver. It was not until 2:30 in the morning that he delivered all the orders on his hand. A few days later, he received the salary stub for the month, and the number was actually much lower than usual. The reason was simple. On the day of the heavy rain, many of his orders were late, so he was cut.
It is not only Geng Zi who had his wages deducted, but also the stationmaster of the distribution station.
“Eating data.” Meituan’s distribution station director Jin Zhuangzhuang defined himself like this. For a distribution station, the most important data includes: orders received, late delivery rate, bad review rate, and complaint rate. Among them, the late delivery rate is the most important, because many bad reviews and complaints are also because of late deliveries.
Normally, the late delivery rate of riders should not be higher than 3%. If it exceeds this, the rating of the site will be lowered, and the unit price of the entire site will also drop, including everyone from the site manager to personnel, quality control, etc., and even affect channel managers and regional managers related to the site.
At the end of each year, the site will also face the assessment of the Meituan and Ele.me platforms. The bottom 10% of the distribution stations in each area will face the risk of being eliminated.
Under this systematic evaluation system, being latebrings not only the loss of income to the riders, but also the second mental injury.
“He will become a thorn in flesh of the team.” Sun Ping said, “Being late is serious, not only just deducting money, but deducting a lot of money, and then there is also the issue of group honor. He drags everyone back, and the stationmaster will find him , The stationmaster will look for him after looking for the regional director. After looking for the regional director, the district director will look for him. Everyone does not like him.”
This causes great mental pressure in the rider. Zhu Dahe, who fell on the road with the spicy dry hotpot, told Renwu that in the first few months of being a rider, every day was spent in depression.
He came from a small town and was unfamiliar with Beijing’s roads, not to mention the huge traffic and crowds on the road. He tremblingly abides by the rules, and is deducted for late deliveries every day. This makes him feel incompetent. “It’s it said that the delivery staff earns more than 10,000 yuan? [a lot of money] Isn’t everyone able to deliver orders? Why do I do it badly?” He said, “I don’t seem to be a delivery staff type of person.”
Later, as the electric bike rides become more and more slippery, and the road more and more familiar, he has changed from a novice to a master of time on the road, and the sense of incompetence gradually disappeared. “Compared with being late, driving against traffic is nothing.” He said that he can even experience a sense of “auspiciousness” when going against traffic with his colleagues.
Nowadays, under normal circumstances, Zhu Dahe is rarely late, but the extreme bad weather is still a curse that he cannot escape. At this time, the out-of-control system will also have him carrying an excessive amount of orders, completely lose control of the delivery time, face late delivery penalties, and not allow him to ask for leave.
[Image of a delivery worker in a heavy rainstorm]
In August 2019, Typhoon Lekima struck Shanghai. An Ele.me rider accidentally got electrocuted while delivering goods in the rain. Then, a screenshot of the WeChat group chat of the delivery station was uploaded to social media. In the screenshot, the stationmaster said “@Everyone, no leave for the next three days… anyone found absent will face double the normal penalty. Confirm that you have received the message.” Under the instructions issued by the stationmaster, a long list of riders responding “1” to indicate they have received the message.
This screenshot caused a huge public controversy. Some netizens said that in typhoon days, why can Hema, KFC, and McDonald’s all suspend delivery, but the delivery platform cannot?
In this regard, Meituan staionmaster Jin Zhuangzhuang can only express helplessness. Every time it rained heavily, the riders would come to him for leave, a flat tire, a fall, and family trouble, for various reasons. But in the face of a large influx of orders, for the sake of the site’s data, he had to forcefully stipulate, “Except for birth, old age, sickness and death, you cannot ask for leave in bad weather, and you will be fined if you ask for leave.”
In heavy rain, when Jin Zhuangzhuang was the most tired, he had to sit in front of the computer at the station and constantly monitor the position of each rider, the amount of orders he carried, and the delivery time. For his station, Meituan stipulates that each rider can only receive 12 orders at a time. If the number exceeds 12, the system will stop dispatching orders. However, in severe weather or major festivals, this is far from being able to carry the huge orders that flood in. At this time, the system is also the easiest to collapse: some riders carry double orders, some riders have almost no orders; Some riders received orders in the opposite direction, with the delivery time of the closer order being longer than the far away one…
At this time, Jin Zhuangzhuang needs to play another role-”manual scheduler.” Under this status, he can enter the system and transfer rider A’s order to rider B in order to balance the capacity. Although the system is capped at 12 orders, manual relocation is not restricted. As long as someone controls, the number of orders in the hands of the rider can become a very scary number-a rider carries 26 orders at the same time at most. At one delivery station more than 30 riders have digested 1,000 orders within 3 hours; in one county with a population 500,000 there was only one rider, and 16 orders were allocated at the same time during the peak period.
An Ele.me stationmaster told Renwu that this kind of manual intervention is not to save the riders, but to “excavate the potential and speed of each rider to the maximum.”
If, when the riders’ potential has been tapped to the extreme, it still isn’t enough, Jin Zhuangzhuang will go out to run the orders by himself, taking up to 15 orders at a time. “(When the orders are exploding) Make the rider boil for a while. Once he can’t go anymore. I can only apply to Meituan to reduce the scope of our deliveries. After 2018, our station is no longer allowed to apply for reductions. No matter how many orders, we have to run them all.” He said that when the orders explode, once the final delivery has been made, the whole person is numb, running by instinct, “there is no human emotional response.”
Last year, Jin Zhuangzhuang left the business because his family was sick. He said that he would not come back again. Recently, a friend wanted to work for a delivery station, he was also persuaded, “This industry gives people a sense of time pressure and data pressure, which you can’t imagine.” This summer there was heavy rain in Southern China, Jin Zhuangzhuang was glad that he had escaped, but was also worried. He didn’t know how many stations again had orders exploding, and how many riders needed to desperately chase for their delivery stats.
[A delivery driver delivers an order through a flooded street]
Navigation
In order to complete the her research, Sun Ping has contacted nearly a hundred takeaway riders in the past four years, many of whom have complained about the delivery routes given by the system.
In order to allow riders to focus more on food delivery, the intelligent system will replace the human brain as much as possible-help riders plan the order of picking up and delivering food for multiple orders, and provide food delivery route navigation for each order, riders do not need to use their own brains , you only need to follow the prompts of the system to complete, and at the same time bear the risk of being led “astray.”
Sometimes, the navigation will show a straight line. A rider once said angrily to Sun Ping: “It (the algorithm) predicts the length of time based on the straight-line distance. But this is not the case for our food delivery, we need to detour, and we have to wait for the traffic light… Yesterday, I sent an order and the system showed Five kilometers. As a result, I drove seven kilometers. The system treats us as a helicopter, but we are not.”
Sometimes, the navigation will also include sections that require driving against traffic.
In October 2019, Guizhou rider Xiao Dao posted on Zhihu that Meituan had guided riders to go against traffic. In the communication with Renwu, he said that he had just been a rider for half a year and had already encountered several navigations that guided him to go against traffic. One of them was to deliver a meal to a hospital. Normal driving required a U-turn, while the route on Meituan Navigation was to cross the road and go against traffic. According to the screenshots he provided, the part route that went against traffic was close to 2 kilometers.
“There are more skilled ones,” said Xiao Dao. “Some places are not convenient for going against traffic. If there are overpasses, the system navigation will let you pass over the overpasses, including those that do not allow electric vehicles to go up. There are also walls, which will make you go straight through the wall.”
In Beijing, short video blogger Cao Dao also encountered the same situation. For professional experience, she worked as a Meituan rider for less than a week. What surprised her was that when she took the order, the system navigation actually appeared in a walking mode-there is no difference in walking forward and backward, but the delivery system gives time is calculated based on the shortest route, which contains a large number of driving against traffic sections.
From the perspective of Xiao Dao, whether it is with or against traffic, the purpose of the system has been achieved-the system will pay the delivery fee according to the distance and time calculated by the navigation. More users have also reduced distribution costs.
At the end of 2017, the Meituan technical team also mentioned “cost” in an article introducing the optimization and upgrading of the intelligent distribution system. The article pointed out that the optimization algorithm has reduced the platform’s capacity loss by 19%. The meals that 5 riders could deliver in the past can now be delivered by 4 riders. Finally, “cost” appeared as the conclusion of the article, “efficiency, experience and cost will become the core indicators pursued by the platform.”
In fact, Meituan has also gained tremendous benefits.
According to data released by Meituan, in the third quarter of 2019, Meituan’s takeaway orders reached 2.5 billion, and revenue per order increased by 0.04 RMB compared to the same period in 2018. At the same time, cost per order was reduced by 0.12 RMB year-on-year. This also helped Meituan earn a full 400 million yuan in the third quarter of 2019.
However, behind the huge profits of the platform is the decrease in riders’ personal income. Xiao Dao said that whenever there is an against traffic section in the system navigation, he will face a dilemma without solution. Either give up on the against traffic section and run longer roads and face the risk of a late delivery, or follow the navigation to take the safety risk. However, no matter which choice, “The money is really less.”
“Every rider must measure between safety and income.” As an “outsider” who temporarily participated, Cao pointed out the plight of riders. “All delivery platforms are chasing profit maximization. In the end, the risk is passed on to the rider who has the least bargaining power.”
[Screenshot of a navigation requiring a driver to make a reckless cross against traffic.]
In the communication with “People”, several riders all said the same sentence, “They don’t worry that no one will come to take the order, you don’t do it, and some people will do it.”
Before becoming a Meituan rider, A Fei was a KFC delivery worker. “One person can send up to 600 or 700 orders per month. Because of the restrictions in the store, the brand can give the delivery company a high unit price of 12 or 13 RMB. Therefore, The delivery fee for delivery staff has remained unchanged at 9 RMB.” He used “the most standardized” to describe the job, but the income is not high, “you can earn more than 5,000 RMB a month.” In the end, inspired by the “takeaway income of over 10,000 RMB,” he decided to leave KFC to deliver food.
In Meituan and Ele.me, riders are divided into two categories- “
special delivery” and “crowdsourcing”.
“Special delivery” is a full-time rider attached to the distribution station, with a basic salary, a prescribed commuting time, accepting system dispatch, and taking their reviews and on-time rate as the evaluation criteria. “Crowdsourcing” is a part-time rider with extremely low barriers to entry. One person, one bike, and one app can be employed immediately after registration. They have no basic salary, they can freely grab orders, and they can refuse the system to send orders, but if they repeatedly refuse orders they may become restricted from taking more. Crowdsourced riders are not affected by bad reviews and complaints, but being late will cause heavier penalties. If the order is late by even one second, the delivery fee will be directly deducted by half. Regardless of whether they are special delivery or crowdsourced, no rider has a labor-employment relationship with the delivery platform.
A Fei finally chose to join Meituan and became a crowdsourced rider. It was around 2017. He worked about 9 hours a day, specializing in running long-distance delivery, and earning about 10,000 RMB per month. At most, he earned more than 15,000 in a month. Low barrier to entry and high income. This is considered the most important reason why the takeaway platform “is not afraid that no one will come”.
In the eyes of sociology scholars, “delivery staff earning more than 10,000 yuan” is nothing more than a “special existence” in the initial stage of the platform. After conducting long-term research on the labor process of couriers and delivery workers in Wuhan, Zheng Guanghuai’s team at the School of Sociology at Central China Normal university found that with the end of platform subsidies and more and more riders joining, “income over 10,000” is becoming an illusory dream.
The research report released by the team showed that delivery riders with a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan accounted for only 2.15% of riders, while 53.18% of the interviewees reported that their current income could not meet family expenses.
A Fei told Renwu that after delivering takeaways in Beijing for a period of time, he went to Chongqing for personal reasons and his income dropped. Especially after the epidemic, more and more people joined, and he even had difficulty getting orders. Sometimes the monthly income is less than 7000 yuan.
According to the “Report on the Employment of Meituan Riders during Epidemic Periods in 2019 and 2020” issued by the Meituan Research Institute, during the epidemic, the number of newly registered single riders on the Meituan platform reached 336,000. Among the sources of new riders, factory workers ranked first, followed by salespeople.
As for “when is the most profitable now”, A Fei’s answer is, “Only when it is very cold and very hot.” Because, at such times, “most people are not willing to go out.”
[Image of delivery drivers in a snowstorm]
Elevators
According to the public statement of the food delivery platforms, when the system estimates the delivery time, waiting for the elevator will be considered as a key factor.
In an interview with 36Kr, He Renqing, the head of Meituan’s distribution algorithm team, also emphatically mentioned the elevator: “Meituan’s food delivery system pays special attention to the rider’s time to go up and down, and tt even specializes in studying the length of time when the rider goes to low and high floors.”
However, the complexity of reality far exceeds the predictive capabilities of AI. “Waiting for the elevator is really a pain point for us, it’s super painful,” said A Fei, who has been unable to earn more than 10,000 yuan a month.
In the impression of many riders, elevators in hospitals are the worst.
As a rider for four years, the scariest thing A Fei has ever encountered was the elevator of Peking University Third Hospital. It was the rush hour for lunch. He took seven or eight orders and went to the surgical building of the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University. “It’s super scary,” he said. “I remember clearly that the elevator entrance, takeaway, patients, doctors, and family members are all crowded together. The scene should not be too spectacular. “After waiting several times, I finally squeezed in. Everyone stuck together and couldn’t breathe.” On that day, after sending this order, A Fei’s 6 orders were all late.
Later, he went to Chongqing, and the elevator was still painful.
At Hongding International, the Internet celebrity building, “It is very magical, with a total of 48 floors, all of which are densely packed with small studios. There can be 30 or 40 studios on the first floor. How terrible you think.” Although there are seven or eight elevators in the building, at the peak of mealtime, the people waiting in line for the elevator are “the same as queuing to enter the scenic spot,” and the waiting time is about half an hour.
There is also Chongqing World Financial Center. The building has a total height of 74 floors. There is only one freight elevator in the whole building that is open to takeaways. “First, during the peak dining period, the elevator resources themselves are tense. Second, it may also be an image problem of the office building.” A Fei analyzed, “We can only wait outside the elevator, the people inside rumbling down, and people outside rumbling in. It takes ten minutes to wait for the elevator to go up, and another ten minutes after the meal is served. How long does it take for a single order? How can it be possible without arriving late?”
Delivery riders in office buildings are not allowed to ride on passenger elevators-many riders in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Hunan and other places have told Renwu that this situation is extremely common.
On July 11, 2020, Cao Dao released her own professional experience video of being a delivery rider. Among them, the topic of Beijing SKP store’s refusal to let delivery riders enter reached the hot topics section, triggering a discussion on occupational discrimination across the internet. In Cao Dao’s view, SKP is only the tip of the iceberg in the systematic discrimination in the delivery industry. In that the video of less than 10 minutes, there is an elevator that has not been noticed.
“I was very impressed,” Cao Dao said, “I went to pick up the food. There are a lot of shops in that building, and they all rely on deliveries. There are other elevators in the building, but the security just doesn’t let us use it. Only one elevator is open to the delivery staff.” She is a novice, just to find this elevator, it took a lot of time, and then with dozens of riders, waiting in line for the elevator. “All the takeaways were automatically lined up in two rows, leaving the middle empty for the takeaways who came out of the elevator.” That day, it took her more than ten minutes just to wait for the elevator.
In addition to office buildings, some high-end residential areas are also “elevator minefields” in the minds of riders. Here, you need to swipe your card to get on the elevator, and most customers don’t want to go downstairs. “He would make us stand in the elevator, and he would press on it, but not all of them could get up.” A Fei said that when encountering such a customer, many dedicated riders will directly climb more than 20 floors in order to avoid getting bad reviews, while A Fei runs crowdsourcing and is not afraid of bad reviews. His solution is, “That person lives on the 14th floor and asked me to climb the stairs. I couldn’t do all that. The last thing I discussed was that I climbed the 7th floor and he went down the 7th floor. This is more reasonable.”
At the elevator entrance, A Fei saw countless riders crying and quarreling emotionally. There were too many, because “after all, it was the last step. If you squeeze it up, you will be done!” But in reality, the riders can only stand at the elevator entrance and wait, “You can’t do anything, just wait.”
In order not to be late, some riders will click “delivered” in advance when waiting for the elevator, but this is not allowed by the system. “If the customer complains about the delivery in advance, a deduction is 500 yuan.” A Meituan rider from Gansu told Renwu.
“At this point, you should be a little more humane if you are hungry,” said a Guizhou rider. According to him, in Ele.me’s system, there is a “report” function. “When the rider arrives downstairs, he has to wait for the elevator. It will be a minute or two. You can click to report to record your arrival downstairs. Then when you go back down stairs you can press the button again.”
Zhengzhou rider Zhang Hu was a special delivery rider for Ele.me, and also delivered through Meituan crowdsourcing. Comparing his work experience on the two platforms, he feels that Meituan is indeed more wolfish.
“Meituan riders are just a group of sprint machines. Ele.me’s local market share is not that big, there are not so many orders, so they will appear relatively gentle and polite.”
Real data can also support his judgment.
According to a survey conducted by Trustdata, a mobile Internet data monitoring platform, in the first half of 2019, Meituan accounted for 64.6% of the national delivery market share. Specific to the order volume, Meituan riders will run 20 more per day than Ele.me riders on average.
“No matter how hard the rider tries his best to keep up to speed, the platform still feels that it is not fast enough.” Zhang Hu couldn’t help complaining about Meituan, but in the end he chose to leave and join Meituan, because in Zhengzhou, Meituan could give him unimaginable amounts of orders.
This is why A Fei chose Meituan in the end. Although his income declined during the epidemic, he was in a good mood. During that time, many communities and office buildings did not allow anyone to enter. He no longer has to compete with elevators, but with the lifting of the epidemic, more and more communities and office buildings have lifted the ban, and the pain points of elevators have started again.
When the new round of elevator wars was staged again, Cao Dao also completed the final editing of the professional experience video of the delivery rider. She cut the scene of waiting for the elevator into the feature film. In mid-July, she once again recalled the scene to Renwu. She said, she was waiting at the elevator entrance, “like a worker ant.”
[Clip of delivery workers struggling to enter the elevator from Cao Dao’s video]
Goalkeeping
In 2019, Li Lei, who lives in Zhengzhou, changed his job from Ele.me to Meituan, from a stationmaster to a business development, his main responsibility is to open up more cooperative merchants for the distribution station. In order to allow more popular merchants to cooperate with the distribution stations under his jurisdiction, he often goes to sweep the streets and maintain relationships one by one. At the peak of the weekend, he will move a chair to guard the door of the business-this is not to expand cooperation, but to urge the merchants to send out the food.
For riders, slow meal delivery is even more painful than elevators.
The system is constantly optimized and upgraded in the name of “intelligence”, shortening the delivery time again and again, but the problem of “slow meal delivery by merchants” is still a major problem. Wang Shengyao, a senior algorithm expert at Meituan, once stated in a public article that even if the history of completed orders is analyzed, it is difficult to obtain the true value of the merchant’s meal completion time. As long as the business meal time is uncertain, this random variable will always exist.
But in the face of the quantification of “meal delivery time,” it is only the rider who bears and digests this variable.
According to the riders, there are many reasons why businesses are slow to send out food. Some stores are well-known and popular. At the peak mealtime, dine-in alone is already overwhelming, but they are still unwilling to suspend delivery orders. In some small shops, the owner is more casual and doesn’t have a sense of time. Sometimes the rider has already rushed to the shop to pick up the food, and the owner only just then comes back with the freshly bought vegetables. There are also some shops, in order to ensure the taste of the food, they will wait for the rider to arrive in the shop before they start making, especially noodle shops.
“There three especially large difficulties: grilling fish, stewing soup and barbecue.” A rider told People, “Last time I received stew when I arrived at the store they hadn’t even started stewing. I just watched them stew for 40 minutes.” Another rider shouted “Grandpa” directly, “I’m crazy, and all I think is, grandpa, hurry up!” But the merchants are still not in a hurry, “They are really not worried at all. Anyway, when the money arrives, even if the money is deducted due to overtime, they will not be deducted.”
“The problem of slow food delivery by merchants is unsolvable” said Jin Zhuangzhuang, former Meituan distribution station chief. In the evaluation system set up by the system, businesses can make negative reviews and complaints to riders, but riders have no right to evaluate businesses. Sometimes, riders have to take the blame for the merchants’ mistakes, “too spicy”, “too salty”, “forgot to add vinegar”… These complaints about merchants often appear in the rider’s negative comment area. For this reason, many riders have appealed to the system, but none of them succeeded.
In order to solve this problem, the riders have to find a way by themselves. Jin Zhuangzhuang’s experience is: “In a small restaurant with a lot of food, the rider has to often go and develop a relationship, pass a cigarette, chatter, joking with the boss, and in the end they can cut me in. Big businessmen have to have a good relationship with the little girl at the front desk or the packer. If you chat too much, they will use the walkie-talkie to remind you, which is always useful.”
But this does not solve the fundamental problem, and conflicts between riders and shop assistants still occur frequently. Because of meal problems, a takeaway rider in Jinan had a fight with the clerk of the HeyTea shop, while in Wuhan, a rider stabbed the clerk during a dispute, and the latter died because medical aid failed.
[Image of clerk in Wuhan stabbed by a delivery rider]
Sometimes police are even called because of the conflict between those waiting for the meal and the businesses. The riders see too much. As for how to solve this problem, one rider said, “Extend the delivery time a bit, and there is plenty of time, so everyone won’t be so anxious.”
But in reality, the delivery time is getting shorter and shorter, and among the various voices assailing the riders, one of the protagonists who consumes the rider’s time, the merchant, is also an important voice.
In the process of discussing cooperation with the merchants, Li Lei found that the merchants were most concerned about the speed of the rider. As long as the speed of the rider does not meet the expectations of the merchant, the merchant will propose to Li Lei to replace the rider at the delivery station or terminate the cooperation relationship. Usually, there are two distribution stations on the same platform near popular large commercial districts. Merchants can freely choose which station to cooperate with. As for the conditions of cooperation, Li Lei said, “It’s very simple. One factor is the distribution capacity of the distribution station, and the other is the rider’s arrival speed.”
In order to get large orders from merchants, Li Lei will go to the distribution station to urge the riders to be faster, and faster again, but if the rider’s late delivery is caused by the slow meal delivery of the merchant, which affects the station’s data, all he can do is to discuss it, or go to the spot by himself, but this is not something everyone can do. “The ability to collect orders in a store depends on whether the private relationship is ironclad.”
Sitting at the door of the store, Li Lei would stare at the screen of the merchant’s takeaway order receiver, and he would not dare to lose his mind for a moment. Ding! An order comes in, and the sound of his voice will arrive at the same time as the order, “Meituan is here. Our Meituan order is here.” He said, “We must defeat the opponent from the first second.”
[Image of a delivery driver picking up an order from a store.]
Pepa Pig and Coke
Because of a conflict with the customer, Meituan rider Xiao Lin discovered a “secret” hidden in the system-the delivery time displayed on the customer end was inconsistent with the rider end.
At that time, he had just started delivering as a Meituan crowdsourcer, and once he received an order, and as soon as he rushed to the store, he received vehement questions from customers. “How have you not arrived? It’s already late by a lot.” Xiao Lin felt that the customer was unreasonable to make trouble because, at that time, there were still nearly 10 minutes before the delivery time displayed on his mobile phone. Later, when the meal was delivered, he and the customer had a dispute over time, and the two took out a pair of mobile phones-the customer’s “expected delivery time” was 10 minutes shorter than the rider’s “requested delivery time”.
Ever since discovering this “secret”, Xiao Lin calls Meituan customer service every month. He has been calling for four years and each time the response is different, but his words are always the same: “Explain to the customers, that is just the expected [emphasis mine] delivery time.”
This is not just Xiao Lin’s personal experience, many riders have mentioned this problem to Renwu. In their view, this is a way for the system to please customers and stabilize customers’ mood, and this is also one of the important reasons for conflicts between customers and riders.
Scholar Lu Taihong pointed out in the book “Consumer Behavior: Perspectives of Chinese Consumers” that the convenience provided by the digital age makes consumers more and more critical. They pay more and more attention to service quality and product experience, but their loyalty to products and brands is reduced, and they are ready to change suppliers at any time. Therefore, “hey have a greater influence and dominance over the market than they used to.”
In the face of this kind of influence, food delivery platforms that pay attention to the number of users and orders have also used algorithms to build a power structure. In this system, customers become the top existence and have supreme power.
Customers can make mistakes. “Sometimes the customer is really, there's no way to say it.” On this topic, Gansu rider Wang Bing has a bellyful of words: “Many people don’t know where they live. They live at 804, so write 801 for themselves. They obviously live at the South Gate, but write that they are at the North Gate. Some customers actually forget after ordering the meal, and no one answers the call. The next day they remember and call me, where’s my meal?…Some people don’t look at the address at all when placing an order…” However, customers do not need to pay for their mistakes. If the order is overdue, the rider will still be punished.
As a sociologist who has long studied the professional dilemma of food delivery riders, Sun Ping also talked about this “customer’s supreme power” in a research report. In the process of delivering meals to the rider, customers can gain insight into everything about the rider-real name, cell phone number, punctuality rate, how many rewards have been received, time to pick up the meal, delivery route, and how long it will take to arrive. During the order process, the customer also has the right to cancel the order.
“They can see everything, all the progress, but we don’t know who they are. And once something goes wrong, we cannot cancel the order like they do.” A rider complained to Sun Ping. He also shared an experience of canceling an order:
“I have two orders. One is 1.5 kilometers with 45 minutes remaining; the other is 3 kilometers with 20 minutes remaining. I delivered the one far away first. The customer who was 1.5 kilometers away was angry because he saw my GPS passing by his house but did not deliver him food. He was very angry, cancelled the order, and complained to the platform about me…”
In the Renwu survey, there was also a rider who shared a similar experience. On that day, the customer asked the rider after receiving the meal, “Don’t you just deliver me this order?”
With the faster and faster delivery speed and the complete tilt of the evaluation system, customers have become more and more impatient under the pampering of the system.
Jing Jing, who lives in Shanghai, admits that he has been “spoiled.” He is usually busy with work, does not know how to cook, and almost entirely relies on takeaway to fill his stomach. He often ordered food at a low calorie food restaurant not far away. He remembers that in the past, it took about 45 minutes from placing an order to eating the first tomato in a caesar salad. To pass the time, he usually watched a 45-minute long TV series. Recently, the waiting time has stabilized at 26 minutes, but not long ago, the rider’s meal delivery time exceeded 30 minutes, and it became unbearable. He made 5 calls to remind the driver of the order.
In 2017, Ipsos, a French research institute, conducted an “impatient” survey on consumers in 12 provinces and cities in China. The results show that the development of mobile technology has made consumers more and more impatient in all aspects. This phenomenon is more pronounced in economically developed areas and young people. Among them, “consumers in Beijing are the most impatient.”
Faced with increasingly impatient customers, the riders had no choice but to try every means to comfort them.
Speaking of this, Wang Bing also has something to say-when the delivery time of two orders in his hand is the same, he will pick the expensive one first, because customers with high unit prices are usually more likely to lose their temper. “I didn’t listen to any explanations. I suddenly became angry and said that I would return the goods. I don’t have the money to pay for the food for more than 100 yuan every day.”
Also, drivers can try to meet customer needs other than food delivery, such as buying cigarettes and water, or “bring a razor to an Internet cafe.” For a while, under the influence of Douyin, there were always customers who asked Wang Bing to draw Peppa Pig when delivering the meal. Wang Bing was very angry, but he had to draw it, “I bought a piece of kraft paper, drew a page, and wrote a sentence, are you stupid?”
“Delivery is a social performance centered on customers.” Sun Ping wrote in the investigation report that she called the behavior of riders to please customers and strive for five-star praise as “emotion and emotional labor.” In her opinion, this part of the labor is often overlooked, but the damage to the rider is far greater than the physical labor.
In the same conversation with Renwu, she mentioned the rider who impressed the most, “His bike was stolen twice in three days, and the battery was stolen three times. He started crying as he talked. He said that the platform asked us to say, “Have a nice meal.” No one knows it, but I came from the countryside. I used to farm the land. I’m really embarrassed to say this. I want to make people give me 5 stars, but I’m a big man, how can I go and say that?”
In an interview with Jiemian News about the “SKP incident”, Shen Yang, associate professor of the Department of Public Economics and Social Policy at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said, although takeaway riders may have a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan, they still face great inequality. “It is to make more money at the expense of time and health, and to do more intense work-both physically and emotionally-to get more wages.”
Wang Bing is still developing new tricks to soothe customers. In summer, many people will order an extra cup of Coke with meals. But this summer, there is a lot of rain. He often crashes because of orders. When the car crashes, the Coke is basically gone. If you go back to the merchant and make up another copy, you will not only have to pay for it yourself, but the order will inevitably be late. In order to prevent customers from getting angry, he always keeps a bottle of Coke in his takeaway box. If the customer’s Coke is spilled, he finds a place where no one is there, fills the spare Coke into the original paper cup, and wipes the cup back and forth. There are no traces. He thinks this method is very talented.
At the same time, some anxious customers appeared on several legal consulting websites. Someone posted a question, “I urged the delivery man to go faster, which caused a car accident. Do I have to bear legal responsibility?”
Below the question, a lawyer replied: “No responsibility.”
[An image of a receipt with Peppa Pig draw on it by a delivery rider]
Games
Not long ago, Meituan and Ele.me successively announced the second quarter of 2020 earnings. In this quarter, Ele.me realized a positive profit per order, while Meituan completed a net profit of 2.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95.5%. Among all of Meituan’s business, the delivery business is the biggest contributor to the profitability of Meituan.
On August 24, 2020, Meituan’s share price also reached a new high, with a market value exceeding US $200 billion, making it the fifth-largest company in the Hong Kong stock market by market capitalization.
In its half-year-long survey, Renwu came into contact with nearly 30 delivery riders, but one word the riders frequently mentioned was: 10 cents.
One Meituan rider from Hunan said, “If the punctuality rate is less than 98%, 10 cents are deducted, and less than 97% is a 20 cent deduction. Isn’t this forcing the riders to speed up? After all, a dime less per order is a very big deal for us.”
One Ele.me rider from Shanghai said, “The lowest unit price of Ele.me is 4.5 yuan. The more you deliver, the higher the unit price. Sometimes it feels very touching to add 10 cents. The feeling of 4.90 yuan is very different from 5 yuan.”
In order to keep this “dime”, riders not only need to run faster, but also run more.
This is what the system wants to see, because there is another secret hidden in the system-a “game” about ratings.
Whether it is Meituan or Ele.me, the system has set up a point level system for riders-the more orders you deliver, the higher the punctuality rate and the better the customer evaluation, the higher the points the rider will get, the higher the points, the higher the level, and the greater the reward income-
The system has also packaged this evaluation system into an upgraded game of fighting monsters. Riders of different levels have different titles. Take Meituan as an example. From low to high, these titles are ordinary, bronze, silver, gold, diamond, and king.
A Meituan crowdsourced rider from a city in the southeast explained the specific level setting: within one week, complete 140 valid orders, with a punctual rate of 97%, and become a “silver rider”, you can get an extra reward of 140 yuan per week. If you complete 200 valid orders and the punctuality rate reaches 97%, you will become a “golden rider”, you can get an extra 220 yuan per week. With Ele.me, the order quantity is directly linked to the delivery fee. If the number of orders completed per month is less than 500, 5 yuan per order; 500 to 800 orders, 5.5 yuan per order; 800 to 1,000 orders, 6 yuan per order… and so on. In the game rules, the points will be cleared on a weekly or monthly basis.
In the research report “Orders and Labor: An Exploration of Algorithms and Labor from the Economic Perspective of Chinese Food Delivery Platforms,” Sun Ping said that in addition to late delivery punishments, the system also uses this gamified evaluation method to involve many riders in an unstoppable loop. “They want us to work around the clock.” A rider said to her they couldn’t get away, “I was a Black Gold Knight last month. If I want to maintain it, I still need 832 points and there is still a lot of work to do.”
“The higher the level, the greater the pressure on the riders to maintain the level.” In Sun Ping’s view, this kind of gamified packaging not only has the possibility of addiction, but also cleverly combines the rider’s self-worth realization with capital management. The gamified coat is “for the exploitation of algorithms.” A universal, internalized, and reasonable explanation.”
[A Meituan rider resting by the side of the road]
According to the “Rider Employment Report for the First Half of 2020” published by Meituan, the total number of riders in Meituan has reached 2.952 million. The Ele.me Hummingbird official website shows 3 million riders. Facing the systemized survival of nearly 6 million riders, Zheng Guanghuai, a sociologist at Central China Normal University, put forward the concept of “downloading labor”.
In the investigation report “Wuhan City Express Delivery Workers Group Survey: Platform Workers and “Download Labor””, Zheng Guanghuai’s team gave an in-depth explanation of this concept — —
Riders work through the “downloaded” app. On the surface, this app is just a production tool to assist them in their work, but in fact, what the riders “download” is a sophisticated labor control model. Under this model, “The original subjectivity of workers has been comprehensively shaped and even replaced.” They seem to be working in a freer way, but at the same time they “suffer deeper control.”
“The platform creates “platform workers” through downloading labor.” Zheng Guanghuai’s team wrote. The characteristics of this labor model are: strong attraction, weak contract, high supervision and low resistance.
The medium that assists the system in completing the “downloading work” is the riders’ own mobile phones-as the most important work tool. In public reports, food delivery platforms have been working hard to help riders who deliver food to get rid of their mobile phones.
“We are afraid that the rider will have an accident to take orders.” In an April 2018 interview with 36Kr, He Renqing, the head of Meituan’s delivery algorithm team, specifically mentioned, “for Meituan, the most difficult problem is how to prevent riders from looking at their phones while riding.”
To this end, Meituan took 7 months to develop a Bluetooth headset with a built-in intelligent voice interaction system. According to He Renqing, this headset is windproof, waterproof, noise-removing and smart. As long as riders wear it, they can complete all operations by talking to ensure that they get rid of their mobile phones during meal delivery.
In reality, none of the Meituan riders who have communicated with Renwu have received or used this smart Bluetooth headset, and no rider can really get rid of their mobile phones.
Although she has only experienced the life of a takeaway for a few days, Cao Dao still has lingering fears of being dominated by mobile phones. “You are guiding the navigation. The system will keep reminding you that Meituan crowdsource has new orders, please check in time, and then it will be mixed with the navigation sound, and they will soon be late again. Some customers will call to ask you where you are. You may have to take orders while navigating, and then answer the phone to explain to him why the order is late…” Cao Dao said that that feeling made her feel that every minute is important and that she is chased every day, “It can only be faster and faster.”
[A delivery rider dominated by their cell phone]
Electric Bikes
“We can never lose time on the road. The time on the road is the fastest part”, an Ele.me rider told Renwu. Another Meituan rider said that an order can really be in his hands only during the time he is running on the road. “Unless there is a traffic policeman following behind his ass and saying that you can’t speed, otherwise, when there are too many orders, all the riders want to fly.” After speaking, he again supplemented one sentence, “Flying is also late.”
At this time, the only thing that can help them is the electric bike that they are riding.
Before starting work, riders need to solve the problem of getting an electric bike by themselves. Usually, the distribution stations have long-term cooperative third-party companies that provide riders with electric bike rentals. In order to save costs, most riders will choose a car with a rent of a few hundred yuan, and most of these cars are, well, it’s hard to say in a word. Some do not have a rearview mirror, some pedals and front of the car are wrapped seven or eight times with rubber strips. Onerider said that after working as a delivery driver, he became an “electric bike repair master.”
If you don’t want to rent, some sites will also guide riders to buy a car in installments.
A Meituan rider in Chengdu, at the request of the site, bought an electric car of an unknown brand at a price of 1,000 yuan higher than the market price. Another rider said that he had spent thousands of yuan on electric vehicles bought through the station, and within two days of running, the battery broke.
Compared with those peers who spent too much money wrongly, Meituan rider Wang Fugui felt that he was very lucky. He was just on his first day as a rider when he was thrown out of his electric bike with the battery, striking his head on the guardrail in the middle of the road. He rented the bike through the station, and paid 200 yuan a month in rent. “Basically, it’s just a bunch of pieces put together.” It didn’t have lights, and the brake pads were worn out.
Sometimes when you step on the brakes, it will move forward, but when you step on the accelerator, it will reverse.
But this is not a problem. When he crashed on the second day, he spent 10 yuan to install a foot brake by himself. When he ran the night shift, he would put a small flashlight in his mouth instead of the car lights, or glue the flashlight to the front of the car. After all, this car also has its advantages. “It’s extremely fast and can run up to 65 kilometers per hour,” said Wang Fugui.
According to data released by the Ministry of Public Security in 2018, between 2013 and 2017, there were 56,200 road traffic accidents involving electric bikes causing casualties in the country, resulting in 8,431 deaths and direct property losses of 111 million yuan. In order to further regulate the use of electric vehicles, in April 2019, the country officially implemented a new national standard for electric vehicles. According to regulations, electric bikes cannot exceed 25 km/h, and an electric bike that meets the new national standard must be sold for at least 1,000 yuan.
However, in the nearly 30 delivery riders contacted by Renwu in this survey, no one’s electric vehicles meet the new national standard, no matter Meituan or Ele.me. These electric vehicles can generally run up to 40 kilometers per hour, far exceeding the speed limit. In the rider group and Baidu Tieba, there are still many people discussing how to remove the speed limit for newly purchased electric vehicles through modification.
After working as a rider for more than a year, the frequency of breakdowns by that broken car is getting higher and higher. Wang Fugui sometimes has to take a taxi to deliver meals. Fortunately, the county in the northwest where he is located is small. Compared to riding a broken bike and deliverying everything late, a taxi is more affordable. You can easily deliver more than a dozen orders for 50 yuan.
Later, in order to deliver faster, he gritted his teeth and bought a new bike by himself. As for the broken bike before, he doesn’t know how many parts were dismantled and installed on how many electric cars waiting to be rented.
Whether riding an old car or a new car, Wang Fugui’s performance has always been ranked in the top five and top three in the region, but not long after he did it, he resigned because he could not bear the platform’s new requirements. “In order to expand, Meituan made us take to the streets to solicit customers. Every day, two people who have never logged on to the Meituan app are registered. I just endured it for a few days at the beginning. Later, I couldn’t stand it anymore and ran away.”
[A delivery rider and his bike]
Operation Smile
After “delivery riders have become the most dangerous profession” became a hot topic, the system has also made efforts to improve.
In the early days of the platform’s establishment, whether it’s Meituan or Ele.me, there are safety training for riders, It’s just that most of them are concentrated in the onboarding stage, and the special delivery and crowdsourced riders only need to go through a simple safety knowledge test before they can start delivering orders.
For special delivery riders, the stationmaster will often ask about safety issues. A Meituan stationmaster told People that every time he did safety training, he would specially include a small video he made himself, which was a collection of electric car accidents, and make more than 300 riders watch it. After watching it, he will talk more seriously. “I know that you are in a hurry, and driving against traffic is inevitable, but I must trouble you to carefully watch the road.” This is also the voice of another Ele.me distribution station manager. “After all, the riders pretend that time is the first thing in their hearts. Sometimes they don’t cherish themselves very much, and they are still afraid of arriving late.”
Later, as the traffic accident rate of takeaway riders continued to increase, in order to further enhance the rider’s safety awareness, the takeaway platform also thought of some methods, for example, ask the traffic police to go to the site to give lectures, or organize the riders to go to the traffic police team for an exam… Meituan also designed a pair of yellow kangaroo-shaped ears for the riders. Most of these ears were written with slogans related to speed and safety. The most common ears read “No matter how busy delivering food, don’t forget safety” on the front, and “Meituan delivery, fast delivery of everything” on the back— — but in reality, it’s still difficult to have both. Most riders are reluctant to wear these ears because “it’s too much trouble.” One rider told Renwu, “As long as the speed is fast, the ears will be blown off by the wind.”
[Meituan’s kangaroo shaped helmet ears]
For safety, the system has also been implanted with a new function-after the rider goes online, safety education videos will pop up randomly from time to time.
“I often run and am restricted from taking orders. You must stop and watch the video immediately. Only after finished watching will the order system return to normal.”
A Dou, a Meituan rider from Hunan, said that during a peak meal delivery period, he had to stop by the roadside to watch a safety education video that suddenly popped up. As a result, he was knocked down by a speeding bicycle, sprained his ankle and was forced to rest.
Drivers live in the fear of being late every day and watch safety education videos on the way to the food delivery from time to time. Most of the riders are dissatisfied with this. But sometimes, they are also fortunate that what pops up on their phones is a safety education video instead of another “more deadly surprise” — Operation Smile.
Around June 2017, Meituan began to implement “Smile Operation”. This is a systematic spot check. It is also an irregular and random mode. The riders who are drawn need to stop immediately, and then take photos from the chest to the top of the head, and ensure that the face is clear, showing the helmet, work clothes, and badge — — All this needs to be completed within 5 minutes. If the photo is not uploaded in time or the content of the photo is unqualified, the system may determine that the audit has failed, and riders will face fines ranging from as little as 300 yuan to as much as 1,000 yuan, and they may be blocked for three days or forever.
Since “Operation Smile” was launched, it has become a source of profound philosophy [original Chinese uses “xuanxue”, a concept from Daoist and later Confucian philosophy] in the hearts of the Meituan riders.
Regarding the moment of its appearance, every Meituan rider has a different answer-when climbing stairs, when waiting for the elevator, when waiting for a meal, when the order is broken…
The most memorable “Smile Operation” for A Dou occurred when a heavy rain caused and explosion of orders. That day, he was wearing a raincoat and couldn’t see the road clearly. He needed to park the car on the side of the road, take off the raincoat, reveal his badge and clothes, and take a photo. Another rider at the same site was eventually fined 400 yuan because he didn’t hear the alert tone with his mobile phone in his pocket.
On a similarly rainy day in February of this year, a rider with cerebral palsy in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province was blocked from his account because he did not have time to take photos. Fortunately, the video related to the incident attracted widespread attention on Douyin. After receiving feedback from countless netizens, Meituan officials quickly unblocked his account.
But not every rider can get such special treatment.
In the Meituan Riders Group and Post Bar, people repeat the same topic every day-my photos clearly meet the requirements, but it was judged that the audit failed, and the result of appealing to the customer service was that the account could not be unblocked. “Our voices will never reach the upper level,” a rider complained.
At the same time, some photos that did not meet the requirements passed the review. A Shenzhen rider revealed that after being blocked, he has been using his wife’s account to log in to and do deliveries, but his photos can also successfully pass the review of “Operation Smile”. Some riders will save a selfie of others in advance and still pass the review.
After the epidemic, wearing masks has also become a test item of “Operation Smile”. A Hubei rider said that his mask was wet by rain, before being replaced, the system audit failed and the account was stopped from accepting orders. Another Guangdong rider took a picture with his hand covering his mouth, but it passed.
Last winter, in Hailar, Inner Mongolia, a Meituan rider was drawn on the way to deliver meals. In the temperature of minus 30℃, he could only park the car on the side of the road and take off all the cold-proof clothing, revealing the Meituan uniform and helmet. The photos needed to be uploaded within 5 minutes — — Meituan riders that Renwu contacted described “Operation Smile” as “terrifying”, “emotionless”, and “a waste of time”.
Ele.me also has a similar detection operation, named “Blue Storm”. The difference is that “Blue Storm” gives the rider 15 minutes, and the fines are relatively small, mostly between 5 and 30 yuan. When Renwu conducted an investigation in 2019, no Ele.me rider complained about this inspection.
However, the good times are not for long. The latest news is-according to an Ele.me rider, in order to fully catch up with Meituan, this year, Ele.me’s “Blue Storm” detection time has been shortened from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.
Five Star Good Rating
With the increasing rate of violations and accidents of takeaway riders, traffic police have also changed from outsiders to people related to the system.
Xiong Chongjun is a traffic police officer in Shenzhen. He has been a traffic show host for nearly 10 years. Because of the popularity of several law enforcement videos on the internet, he became an internet celebrity traffic policeman, known as the “Shenzhen Bear Police Officer.” Last summer, police officer Xiong made it to the trending topics for penalizing two riders who were riding against traffic by handwriting tickets and reading them aloud. #”If your delivery hasn’t arrived, maybe he’s getting ticketed”. Some netizens commented, “Officer Xiong is too gentle and the punishment is too light.”
In fact, in the past two years, traffic control departments across the country have introduced various traffic punishment policies for takeaway riders.
In Pudong, Shanghai, Delivery riders were required by the traffic police department to wear electronic vests with their personal numbers. At the same time, one “Delivery Rider Traffic Civilization Scorecard” per person, 36 points per card. Traffic police on duty and surveillance probes enforce the law together. 12 points are deducted for not wearing a vest, 12 points are deducted for driving an unregistered electric vehicle, 6 points are deducted for running a red light, 3 points are deducted for driving against traffic, 3 points are deducted for riding on a motorway, and 3 points are deducted for riding on a sidewalk. After 36 points are deducted, the rider will face a direct permanent ban or be expelled from the company-Shanghai Pudong is also the first region in the country to implement the rider electronic vest policy.
Xingtai, Hebei, Shenzhen, Guangdong and other places have also studied Shanghai successively and introduced a civilized point card system; Qingdao has launched a blacklist system for illegal takeaway riders; In Jiangsu, delivery riders are stopped from work for 1 day for traffic violations, the Nanjing Traffic Control Department will also hold a learning day for takeaway riders who violate the law for the second time.
[Police offers show a delivery rider how to use a scoring app]
However, even under the tremendous deterrence, these measures have little effect.
In December 2019 and May 2020, “People” went to the Lujiazui area of Pudong, Shanghai twice to observe the situation of takeaway riders wearing electronic vests. According to statistics on the number of riders passing through Century Avenue in one hour, during the day, due to the large number of traffic police on duty, the proportion of riders wearing electronic vests in this area can reach more than 70%. However, even if wearing a vest, there are still riders who choose to violate the rules.
This is the result of “careful calculation” by the riders. During the day there are a lot of traffic policemen, who don’t wear a vest are easy to get caught. One deduction is 12 points. But if a rider wearing a vest is photographed doing something illegal, “running a red light or going going against traffic is a small score.” After entering the night, the proportion of riders wearing vests will drop significantly. The reason is simple, “The traffic police are off work.”
As law enforcement officers, many traffic policemen, including Officer Xiong, have a complicated mood. They are the people who have witnessed the most traffic violations of takeaway riders, and sometimes they understand the situation of riders.
Officer Xiong told People that he often appeared at the scene of car accidents of takeaway riders, overturned, crashed, hit people, got hit…According to his observation, the first reaction of all riders after a fall is to get up quickly to see if the takeaway is spilled, and then call the customer to explain, “No one cares about themselves.”
This made him understand the difficulties of the riders. Officer Xiong said that he often chats with takeaway riders and found that the idea of this group is very simple, just thinking about not being late, not being badly rated by customers, and not taking myself seriously. “Personal safety is never their focus. How to deliver meals to customers on time is their focus.”
As a front-line traffic police officer, in the eyes of Officer Xiong, what caused all this was the fierce competition among the food delivery platforms. It also exposed the problem of insufficient non-motor vehicle lanes in many cities. “Competition between companies has shortened the delivery time. Riders are getting more and more nervous. They must choose a path. Either they be late, or they be illegal.”
Therefore, whenever a rider violates the regulations, some traffic policemen will also express understanding while enforcing the law. On the day he gave the handwritten penalty to the rider, Officer Xiong specifically told the other party to write under the shade of the trees, and many traffic police also need to help the riders deliver meals.
There are numerous similar incidents in public news reports.
On March 25 this year, a takeaway rider from Tongxiang, Zhejiang, was stopped by a traffic police for going against traffic and was fined to stand at an intersection and participate in traffic direction. He told the traffic police that he had just received an order and had not had time to pick up the meal. If the time expires, he will have his wages deducted. In the end, the traffic police commissioned an auxiliary policeman to ride a rider’s electric car to deliver the meal. Along the way, the electric car turned off three times, and finally reached the customer’s downstairs. When the auxiliary police bowed his head, the meal was knocked over.
Fortunately, this situation does not often occur, and most traffic police successfully completed the task of delivering the food. On April 16, in Nanchang, Jiangxi, a Meituan takeaway rider rushed to deliver meals for three consecutive violations and was stopped by traffic police to accept punishment; In early June, in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, an Ele.me rider was seized for driving a motorcycle illegally; On June 29, the traffic police in Dongguan, Guangdong found that a Meituan rider’s motorcycle was not equipped with a motor vehicle license plate, and the car was seized on the spot-all orders that these riders failed to deliver were handled by the traffic police or auxiliary police.
After the food delivery is completed, almost all the food delivery police will do the same thing-say to the customer who ordered: “I wish you a happy meal, please give a five-star rating.”
[Traffic police helping a delivery rider finish his delivery]
The Final Barrier
Among all the takeaway riders contacted by Renwu in this investigation, Shi Chen is a unique existence. Because “I would rather have my wages deducted than lose my life,” he insisted that in his more than a year as a rider, he had never rushed through a red light and never went against traffic. He delivered meals every day, and his uniform and helmet were neatly dressed.
But he still suffered a car accident. One night in July 2019, he was knocked down by a passenger car while delivering a meal and fractured his right ankle. The traffic police arrived and decided that the other party was solely responsible. After being sent to the hospital, the owner of the car bears all medical expenses including surgery.
As a special delivery rider, the station deducts 106 yuan insurance premium from Shi Shen’s salary every month. This includes accident insurance, and under normal circumstances, Shi Shen can also get this compensation. But when he contacted the station after he was discharged from the hospital, he found that his rider account had been deleted.
In this regard, the reason given by the station is that he was unable to run orders for a long time due to hospitalization operations, his employment rate was not up to standard, and his account number was deleted by the system. As the rider account disappeared, Shi also lost the insurance payment record on the account. Since there is no record, he also went to find the insurance company to settle the claim. In order to retrieve the record, he tried to communicate with Meituan through the station, but found that he was kicked out of the station group.
Among the group of takeaway riders, Shi Shen’s experience is not an isolated case. In the system, insurance is the only and last safety guarantee that riders can obtain. However, Renwu found in the investigation that a large number of riders were unable to successfully obtain compensation after encountering a traffic accident.
According to the design of the takeaway platform, the insurance for the rider delivered to the rider is deducted by the site on a monthly basis, and the specific amount is also determined by the site. The insurance for crowdsourced riders is deducted on a daily basis, 3 yuan per day, and the guarantee period is from the first order of the rider on the day to midnight on the same day. If the rider is still delivering meals at this time, the insurance period can be extended by up to one and a half hours.
In the view of the sociologist Zheng Guanghuai, this labor security system is actually a clever transfer of the responsibilities of the food delivery platform.
When accepting an interview with Jiemian Culture during May 1st Labor Day this year, Zheng Guanghuai described the food delivery platform as a “hands-off shopkeeper”. “The platform contracted the delivery business to an outsourcing company, and the direct employment relationship (with the workers) was terminated. For insurance issues, workers purchase accidental injury insurance, and if a worker has a traffic accident, the platform can be pushed to the insurance company.” Zheng Guanghuai said that in this “pass-through” that “ambiguous labor relations also make it more difficult for workers to protect their rights.”
Sun Ping also discovered during the investigation that if riders got only a small cut or scrape, most of the takeaway riders she had contacted would choose to endure it by themselves rather than seek an insurance claim. “Many of them told me that the application process was particularly complicated and troublesome. They would rather bear it themselves than go through that complicated process.”
[Screenshot of a rider’s injuries from four accidents in their first month alone.]
However, once the accident exceeds the scope of small cuts and scrapes. Shi Chen’s story will be repeated.
A rider who was crowdsourcing on Ele.me told People that he had a traffic accident during the meal delivery and crashed a pedestrian into the hospital. The insurance company delayed for a year without compensation. Finally, he borrowed an online loan to pay for medical expenses.
A rider in Suqian was asked by the stationmaster to fill in the “Voluntary Waiver of Insurance Contract Guarantee” when he joined Meituan. He was puzzled, and the stationmaster told him: Riders are the most dangerous profession, and every day may be the last day. No one here dares to insure themselves. This situation is not an isolated case. Jin Zhuangzhuang, who was once the stationmaster of Meituan distribution station, said, the insurance for crowdsourced riders is paid directly through the app, which is a must, while the insurance for special delivery riders is paid by the site. “Many sites do not provide insurance for riders because they are afraid of trouble.”
The ones whose rights cannot be protected are pedestrians injured by delivery riders.
Last April, Lin Wei was knocked down by a Meituan rider on his way home and fractured his left leg. That day was the rider’s first day at work. The person in charge of the station said. The rider hasn’t had time to buy insurance, and the matter has nothing to do with the station. “We only make the rider deliver food, but we didn’t make him hit people.” The person in charge said.
After several communications, the site came up with a handling opinion: it can help persuade the rider to pay for medical and nutrition in installments.
Finally, the solution of this matter depends on personal relationships. Lin Wei’s company leader knew a certain senior member of Meituan, and under pressure from the senior management, the site finally agreed to pay for medical expenses.
On social platforms, a netizen left a message under a post by a Meituan rider defending rights of the rider: “The delivery riders helped Meituan deliver orders and grow market value, but Meituan, a company that relies on the delivery business to grow bigger, will not provide any takeaway with a formal employment contract.”
One year after the accident, Shi Shen’s rider account has not been restored, and he has not been able to receive compensation for the accident from insurance. He told Renwu, “I decided to leave the industry and never come back.” And those riders who are still on the road desperately fighting for time can only pray silently in their hearts-the Meituan rider Wei Lai who has witnessed the death of his companion on the spot at the intersection, in his online diary, he wrote, “May all riders go home safely.”
[A Meituan rider receives a badge from a traffic officer]
Infinite Games
When posting her delivery rider experience video, Cao Dao was shooting new works all around China. On the way to Tibet’s no-man’s land [a sparsely populated region in Tibet], she still felt suffocated even recalling the days when she was a rider.
As a short-term experiencer of the system, Cao Dao made a suggestion: All product managers and algorithm engineers of the food delivery platform can be made to work as riders for a month. “In this way. They will know how severely this system oppresses people.”
Under a report about how the Meituan system shortened the delivery time to 28 minutes, a rider also made the same suggestion: “Why don’t you come to the front line to give it a try for two or three days? See if you don’t run the red light, don’t go against traffic, and don’t run wild, how do you deliver it in 28 minutes?”
To some extent, this suggestion coincides with the data sociologist Nick Silver.
Silver once put forward the concept of “algorithm culture”. In his view, “algorithms are not only formed by rational procedures, but also by systems, human beings, cross-environments, and rough-off-the-shelf understandings obtained in ordinary cultural life.” He believes that algorithms are “composed of human collective practice” and suggested that researchers should explore algorithms anthropologically.
As a scholar, Sun Ping fully agrees with Silver’s view, but the algorithms in reality are still more based on digital logic.
“Strengthening programmer training and value orientation is very important. But the current domestic situation is that most programmers are accustomed to linear thinking of science and engineering, and there are few thinking of the contributions of social sciences. Therefore, they are relatively lacking in ideas about these issues of fairness and value.”
In the process of research, Sun Ping also communicated with some programmers involved in the algorithm. She found that programmers have their own logic and also take into account various emergencies. However, the programmer is only the executor, not the rule maker. “The rule maker is the takeaway platform, and the programmer is only fulfilling the platform’s decision.”
In this survey, Renwu also tried to contact the algorithm team of the food delivery platform many times, but the other party refused to discuss the topic of the system under the name of a “company request”. “This is a company secret,” said an algorithm engineer from Meituan.
Sun Ping said that “single voice” is the biggest problem with this algorithm. In the entire system, the most incomprehensible part lies in the hands that make the riders run faster and faster, including the riders themselves.
This is a bigger and less visible game. “Any data for each order that a delivery person delivers will be uploaded to the cloud of the platform as part of their big data system” said Sun Ping. The system requires riders to deliver faster and faster, and riders will try their best to meet the requirements of the system in the face of late delivery punishments. “Takeaway workers are working faster and faster, and they also help the system add more and more “short-term data” in disguise. Data is the basis of the algorithm. It will train the algorithm. When the algorithm finds that everyone is getting faster and faster, it will accelerate again.”
In Sun Ping’s view, the data generated by the takeaway rider during the delivery process still has ownership disputes, but the riders are still running hard. According to the latest data released by Meituan, in the first half of 2020, riders in 2,800 counties and cities across the country “regardless of the epidemic situation, day and night, daily necessities such as meals, vegetables, and medicine have been delivered to more than 400 million users in time.”
After the news that Meituan’s market value exceeded US$200 billion was released, some people once again mentioned Wang Xing’s fascination with speed amidst the exclamation, and the book he once mentioned that “has a great influence on myself”: “The Game of Finite and Infinity”. In this book, James Cass, a professor of religious history at New York University, divides the world of games into two types: “finite games” and “infinite games”, the former one aims to win, while the latter one aims to keep the game going forever.
The system is still running, and the game continues, but the riders know almost nothing about their identity in this “infinite game”. They are still running, for the possibility of a better life.
[Image of delivery riders on route]
(At the request of the riders interviewed, all names are aliases)
