Food delivery rider begins to talk to the "system", "the most difficult year"
This year, Chen Liu, who has been a delivery boy for nearly 7 years, has made “complaints” to the customer service of the delivery platform much more frequently.
The most recent time was when he felt that the food delivery time specified by the platform when sending a drop-in order was unreasonable, causing his delivery to overtime.
"The time assigned to me for the three orders before and after was 6 minutes apart, and I was required to deliver them all within 45 minutes. How is that possible?" he asked in the complaint phone.
“It’s getting harder and harder to deliver food.” This is the common feeling of many food delivery riders after the beginning of this year.
In previous reports, food delivery riders were mostly described as a group of people trapped in the system. Xing Bin, a professor at the School of Liberal Arts of Linyi University, worked as a takeaway rider for one month in the winter of 2022. He mentioned: "There is no future in food delivery work. It is a very boring, purely repetitive manual labor with a very low ceiling."
However, we interviewed nearly 30 delivery workers with different career statuses and found that their career mentality and choices are changing. Riders are not just tools who silently accept orders from the system. Some of them are thorny and complain when they encounter bugs; some decide not to "get used to the system" and become free players; others try to talk to the platform...
In fact, "As a platform, we also expect veteran riders to use the 'maintenance system' to reduce uncertainty in the labor process and improve and update digital technology." said a person in charge of Meituan's algorithm.
The competition in the food delivery industry is becoming increasingly fierce, but more and more people are still pouring into the already crowded track... The constant running-in with the system is also the real situation faced by new professional groups that rely on the rapid expansion of the platform economy.
At around 10 o'clock in the night, more than 10 riders were sitting on the benches in the square of a large shopping mall in Baoshan District, Shanghai, silently scrolling through their mobile phones. The screen stayed on the order grabbing hall page of the takeaway rider APP.
The system has been silent for nearly 10 minutes. "It's like he's asleep, not even a ghost can be seen." Chen Liu joked.
On this day, the 42-year-old Meituan crowdsourcing full-time rider has not yet completed his goal, "at least reaching 300 yuan," but he plans to persist for a while.
"Bah--" A rider came back from delivering food, slammed on the brakes, and shouted: "I delivered two more garbage orders! The road is so roundabout!" His reaction ignited the topic, and several riders began to count and say no. Smooth food delivery experience.
In the order grabbing hall of the riders' mobile APP, Jiang Hailong, a rider of the Meituan Lepao team who was born after 1995, also saw the clue: the orders that no one grabbed for the past 30 to 40 minutes have disappeared. "Seconds gone." After the meal rush hour, almost all the items hanging in the order grabbing hall are reservation orders and errand orders for a few hours later.
If riders want to maintain the original odd number, they have to increase their working hours. "It now takes me 9 hours to run 40 bikes a day. I used to do enough in 6 hours." A middle-aged rider in his 40s complained.
The wages of special delivery riders are paid weekly and are relatively fixed. A delivery rider on a certain platform recalled: "In the past two years, with the same unit price, for example, if you ran 500 orders before, you could earn 4,000 yuan, but now it is almost 3,500 yuan." Among the nearly 30 riders interviewed by the reporter, Riders who have been riding for more than one year have said that "their income this year has dropped compared to previous years."
Chen Liu used to love delivering food on heavy rain days. The platform will reward riders for reaching a fixed odd number in extreme weather such as heavy rain and high temperatures. But in recent months, weather allowances have become increasingly smaller.
In order to obtain the reward of teaching, Chen Liu accepted several apprentices. If these apprentices can make more than 400 orders within 20 days of joining the industry, Chen Liu can earn hundreds of dollars. But gradually, Chen Liu found that the subsidies he received were not proportional to his time investment. "Only 3 out of 10 of my last batch of apprentices completed their tasks, and I often had to help them deliver takeaways that were almost overdue." Gradually, he stopped accepting orders.
The difficulty of running orders has only increased. Many riders get "increasingly unsmooth" rides in the system: "Although it is in a general direction, the various turns are like tree branches, making it easy to time out." A rider who has been in the industry for three years said The rider complained.
The difficulty of running orders made Chen Liu more and more sensitive to the inherent loopholes in the system. "Why is the rider's mileage calculated by the system always inaccurate, sometimes missing by nearly one kilometer?"
"If there is no feedback on the bugs in the system, then I will take all my apprentices to another food delivery platform." He declared to the webmaster of his site.
The repeated public challenges made Chen Liu a "thorn in the side" in the eyes of the webmaster. However, the "battle of wits" between more young riders and the system was more effective in concealment.
"Those who have run successfully have told me not to be too honest or to get used to the system." At around 1 p.m., Xiaoying, a 32-year-old rider, parked his food-delivery battery car at a tree-shaded intersection in a business district. Next to him, half lying leisurely. I ran a dozen orders in one noon, which was very efficient.
Xiaoying has been away from the food delivery industry for more than a year. After losing money when opening a small store, she just returned at the beginning of this year. After becoming a rider again, everything was cleared and his rider account "had not grown up yet."
"Keeping an account" is a slang term in the rider industry. It means that riders must constantly accept and reject orders efficiently to let the food delivery system know their food delivery route preferences and obtain a system dispatch route that is more beneficial to them.
Xiaoying envies those riders who “keep their systems well”. "If you grab a distant order, you can send three or four orders to the same direction, and you can get it for 70 or 80 yuan."
"The higher the level of the rider, the higher the system's ability to evaluate him, and the more rides he can send to him at the same time. The most powerful one can place eight or nine orders at the same time." Xiaoying explained. Now his rider level is "Glory Elite Level 2". "This is just like upgrading in the game. The level rises very fast when you enter the industry, and it will be difficult to upgrade later."
Treat delivery as a full-time job. Just as important as diligently taking orders is learning to refuse orders in a timely manner. "If you have a direction in mind, run in that direction and reject all other orders."
Correspondingly, there are also concepts of "junk singles" and "solo flying" in the rider circle. "Junk orders" refer to takeout orders from high-rise residents who are hard to find or don't have elevators, while "single flights" refer to food delivery orders that don't come along the way and may only earn a delivery fee for a round trip of more than ten kilometers. situation.
"Junk orders can be transferred, and up to 8 orders can be transferred every day, 5 of which are free of charge, and 3 of which require additional payment. In order to have your order taken away, you can also add money to this order, with a cap of 8 yuan. There is no limit on the number of rejected orders, but if it is controlled to about 20 orders a day, there will be no big problem. If there are too many orders, the system will not send any more orders that day. "This is the experience introduced by a crowdsourcing rider on the Ele.me delivery platform. The rules for transferring orders and rejecting orders are different depending on each platform and the form and team the rider belongs to.
Once, Xiao Ying caught a glimpse of a rider who was hurriedly setting off next to him. His level had reached the level of "God of War." He shook his head and said with a soft smile: "Such a rider is not the most powerful, but it may prove that he accepts all rubbish orders. You will get this title.”
Jiang Hailong also knows to some extent the survival rules of these delivery workers. While delivering food, he saw some new riders looking helpless in communities with complicated roads, or confused when they couldn't contact customers, so he wanted to provide them with some experience.
Jiang Hailong’s experience sharing post in the rider community. Photo provided by interviewee
Since last year, Jiang Hailong has successively posted some experience posts on food delivery in riders’ online communities, which have accumulated hundreds of thousands of clicks. In the experience post, "How can riders deliver food efficiently and avoid timeouts" is the proposition with the highest click rate. He sometimes also teaches tips on how to effectively use rejected orders and transfer orders, as well as tips on how to appeal after subsidy is deducted by the platform for violations.
There are also some experiences that are only suitable for word of mouth. For example, if a rider is busy during peak hours and mixes food with other riders, what should be done to avoid complaints from customers and punishment from the platform?
"Received" and "Okay" - most riders will leave a few messages after reading it. It's like a tacit understanding reached in the game between humans and algorithms.
Judging from the platform’s response, the system actually welcomes riders to say “no”.
There are three needs behind any order: users want to eat as early as possible, merchants want to have riders pick up the food as soon as it is delivered, and riders want to receive orders that come along the way and earn as much income as possible.
A person in charge of the algorithm of the Meituan platform explained: "The original intention of the algorithm is to take into account the experience of users, riders, and merchants under such demand. Novice takeaways are not familiar with the algorithm in the early stage, and their complaints about the algorithm can also be regarded as 'Running-in' process. But as a platform, we also expect an experienced rider to reduce the uncertainty in the labor process and improve and update digital technology through 'maintenance system'."
According to Meituan platform statistics, since 2021, the platform has made 7 algorithm disclosures and improvements, including disclosing the "estimated delivery time" algorithm rules, selecting the longest among them as the final order delivery time, and " "Estimated delivery time" was adjusted to "Estimated delivery time period"; the "Scheduling after meal delivery" pilot was launched. Merchants report the meal delivery status through the free terminal "Dineout Treasure". After the meal delivery is completed, the backend will dispatch the rider Go to the store to pick up meals; in pilot cities, the handling of bad reviews and overtime for riders has been changed from deductions to points, and riders can make up for it through safety training, exemplary deeds and other bonus points; push meal reminders to riders, Recommend "suggested arrival time" etc.
Many crowdsourcing riders recalled that starting from May this year, a food delivery platform issued new regulations. Crowdsourcing riders can only refuse a maximum of 10 orders from the platform per day. In the past, there was no limit to the number of riders who could refuse orders.
In fact, riders understand very well that as more and more people flock to the track, there are some situations that cannot be solved by saying "no" because they are in line with the objective laws of the market.
For example, why is the number of riders at each station still increasing when the number of riders is saturated? "The more riders a regional manager or webmaster recruits, the fewer orders placed by each rider, the fewer overtime orders in the area of responsibility, and the fewer cancellations and negative reviews, so his salary will be higher. But for the amount of orders, For riders who eat, it means low unit prices and difficulty in grabbing orders. "A crowdsourcing rider understands the logic.
After complaining to the platform’s manual customer service, Chen Liu often gets a stylized response. "Ordinary users who encounter problems when ordering food also call this customer service number. We do not have a dedicated internal channel for riders." At this moment, he always has a thought, "The platform is not my boss. I and those who order takeout Just like any other person, he’s just a user.”
Jiang Hailong will look for some special opportunities. The platform sometimes organizes symposia for new occupational groups with relevant government departments. At a recent symposium, he put forward a proposal on "fair riding opportunities for riders": It is suggested that the system backend should increase the screening of riders whose riding income has been lower than the average for a long time, and analyze whether they have suffered from unfair riding opportunities due to unfair riding opportunities. Low income provides them with more opportunities to dispatch orders. Currently, the proposal is still being submitted for processing.
Are delivery riders trapped in the system, or do they have the ability to talk to the system? After interviewing more than 30 food delivery riders, the reporter found that age seems to constitute a subtle dividing line.
For Xiao Ying and Jiang Hailong, who are not yet 30 years old, they do not feel trapped in the system. What they like is the freedom of being riders. Jiang Hailong is a native of Shanghai. He graduated from a technical secondary school in 2017 and studied automobile maintenance. However, he left after a week of internship at the factory. “I don’t want to live that kind of life on the assembly line.”
"Being a rider is all about pursuing freedom. You can go wherever you have more money," Xiaoying said.
Among other young riders under the age of 30 interviewed by the reporter, most of them are not their first profession, but more like a springboard: some have started businesses and opened stores; there are also young riders who have repeatedly worked in "crowdsourcing" and "special delivery" "Riders jump from side to side, and if they encounter other opportunities along the way, they will leave the riding industry for a period of time.
"Many of our younger generation of riders have gone to college. Few of them are forced to become riders because of their livelihood. Most of them do it for the flexibility and freedom of work." Jiang Hailong said that the truly passive ones are those over 40 years old. For middle-aged and elderly riders, “it is difficult for them to be accepted by another industry in this city.”
Before becoming a rider, Chen Liu was a technician in a factory. He worked there for 12 years and finally became the workshop director, supervising fifty or sixty workers. When he changed careers 7 years ago, it was the peak period of the food delivery industry. Chen Liu's monthly income could easily exceed 10,000 yuan. "When I went back to the village, my voice was louder when talking to others." Due to family issues, he and his wife couldn't come to an agreement, and the two ended up divorcing. All three children were given to Chen Liu, who was relatively financially capable.
After his income dropped, Chen Liu also thought about changing careers, but what to do? The original factory was engaged in new energy wind power generation. It was responsible for producing a type of hydraulic pipes. After leaving the factory, it was almost difficult to find jobs that required this technology.
After speaking harshly to the webmaster, Chen Liu did not have the courage to actually change the platform, because the unit price of each order on that platform was nearly 1 yuan lower than the current one.
Xiaoying has seen many older crowdsourcing riders eventually switch to dedicated delivery riders: because young people are generally unable to grab orders, they can only rely on the system to dispatch orders. His 50-year-old father has been a full-time rider on another food delivery platform for nearly 10 years. This platform was established early, but the unit price of food delivery by riders is very low. "Can you believe it? It's only 4 yuan to climb up to the sixth floor to deliver an order." Xiaoying always persuaded his father to switch jobs to his own platform, but his father was reluctant. "He always felt that he was a dedicated delivery rider on that platform and was more secure."
A sense of belonging is something that riders over 40 care more about.
At the beginning of September, when the three children started school one after another, Chen Liu had to ask an acquaintance to borrow nearly 20,000 yuan in tuition fees, and suddenly he was in debt of more than 10,000 yuan. In order to pay off the debt as soon as possible, he decided to apply to join the "Lepaoyuan Riders" team again. Chen Liu concluded that Lepao riders are “selected and disciplined” among crowdsourced riders. He also joined for a period of time last year, and his income was stable at just over 10,000 yuan. However, he was dismissed after six months because of several disputes with merchants over the speed of food delivery.
After two months of twists and turns, he finally successfully transferred to another job.
However, his original station did not have a Lepao rider team, so he had to transfer to a more remote station, and he had to give up the area he was already familiar with and the business connections he had accumulated. Moreover, after becoming a Lepao rider, you will have more rules at work: you have to go to the site for regular meetings twice a week, you must wear the clothes specified by Meituan when delivering food, and you are regularly checked to see if you are wearing a safety helmet...
But "thorny head" Chen Liu accidentally developed a long-lost sense of belonging that he only had in the factory. "Each team has an experienced knight leader to lead you. You are paid once a week, and your salary is more sustainable. In the past, you were paid on a daily basis, and it was more like a temporary worker."
A sense of belonging also means security. Older riders are most concerned about accidental injuries during food delivery. Who should pay for it?
Some time ago, Chen Liu fell off a battery cart while delivering food, causing pain in his calf for almost a month. "Being able to walk means no bones were injured, just skin trauma." After only resting for an hour and applying some iodine, he was back on the road. From that day on, he always felt like he was running too fast, and his injured leg would make a crunching sound. He began to try his best to avoid those who climbed to the fifth or sixth floor. "I have to save my legs because I can't afford medical expenses."
What is the use of the more than 2 yuan in commercial insurance premiums that are automatically deducted every day when work starts? Chen Liu didn't know. "What I know is that medical expenses below 300 yuan are not reimbursed. If I buy some medicine, it may only cost 50 or 60 yuan. Can I be compensated?" Chen Liu, who always felt that he was working for himself, had no confidence.
This year, Chen Liu vaguely heard from other delivery workers that the platform would buy new insurance for delivery workers. "This insurance will provide more comprehensive protection." The "new insurance" he refers to refers to the occupational injury protection for platform flexible employment personnel that has been piloted in Beijing, Shanghai and other places from July 2022 to the end of the year, and is implemented by the human resources and social security department. In July, more than 1 million riders across the country received occupational injury coverage. Although Chen Liu has been included in the insurance group, because this insurance does not require riders to pay, he does not know how to settle claims for this insurance.
More than two years later, Jiang Hailong was promoted to the knight captain of the rider team. There are more than 30 riders in the team. From then on, he began to think about some deeper questions.
"What is my relationship with the platform? Am I an employee or a business partner of the platform? It seems neither."
During the Lunar New Year in 2023, the leader of the community in Yuepu Town where Jiang Hailong lives came to investigate. He proposed an idea that had been brewing for a long time: Can a small room be used as a rest stop for riders in the community’s Party and Mass Service Center? He wants to use the 1,500 yuan rider bonus to buy a freezer, drinks and snacks. "Riders are half-freelancers, and sometimes it's hard to find a sense of belonging in a community. Having a small room like this is also a comfort."
After the rider station of less than 10 square meters was built, Jiang Hailong held a weekly rider meeting in the station. Riders from the surrounding area come to sit inside when they are not busy. Nearby companies have also donated supplies to the station. Riders often take away drinks that cost several yuan a bottle, but bread to satisfy their hunger.
At the end of last year, Jiang Hailong signed up for the opportunity provided by the platform to study modern logistics management for free at the Open University.
Jiang Hailong is in the community rider station he initiated. Photo by Zhang Wei
Riders are a job with an easily visible "ceiling": the average cost per order of Meituan's instant delivery in 2022 is 4.53 yuan. On the Meituan Takeaway Rider APP, the order rankings of riders in each city will be displayed. The average city champion can order 140-150 orders a day and earn 675 yuan per day. Even if he runs for 30 days and reaches his physical limit, he will earn 675 yuan per day. The monthly income will not exceed 20,000 yuan.
What can free online adult education bring to Jiang Hailong? He wasn't clear. However, when he signed up for school, he downloaded and saved a schematic diagram of the growth path of Meituan riders produced by the platform. On this form, he saw the words webmaster, customer service, trainer, and recruitment specialist. At the Open University, he also met a fellow rider who was promoted to a regional manager after graduation. “At least this is the path that the people in front of me have taken.”
Even though he doesn't agree with his father, Xiaoying sometimes feels the "floating feeling" of being a crowdsourced rider. For example, whenever he thinks of having to spend money on the platform to buy rider uniforms throughout the year, he is always a little reluctant.
Jiang Hailong initiated the rider station in the community party and mass service center. Photo by Yang Shuyuan
Until the beginning of October, Chen Liu, who had joined the Lepao team, had not yet completely overcome the economic crisis: his daily running orders had just reached the standard; his life was stretched due to debt repayment. He was originally supposed to buy autumn rider work clothes on the platform to wear, but he couldn't bear to part with them, so he simply put on winter work clothes when running takeout at night. After running down the street, the wind felt cold on my face, but my body felt hot.
Although his income is not as good as before, Chen Liu still has "good things" to say about this industry to his new apprentices: "I only graduated from elementary school in the village. When I first started delivering food, I was quite rude and shouted at the customers. Shouting to customers outside the door, "So now, whether it's a spilled meal or a late delivery, he has his own way of dealing with crises.
At the beginning of October, Jiang Hailong received some exciting news for many riders in the group: rider Wu Weishuang successfully applied for more than 2,000 yuan in new occupational injury protection compensation. In May, Wu Weishuang fell while braking while trying to avoid a vehicle on his way home from delivering food. He was diagnosed with soft tissue injuries to his left calf and right hand. That month, a total of 10 similar occupational injury insurance claims were accepted in Baoshan District, where Wu Weishuang is located.
Now, Jiang Hailong still has a moment of worry, "If I stay in the food delivery industry, can I really achieve my goals after further study?" But soon, this idea will be replaced by new orders in the order dispatch system. Voice prompts are covered.
