I am your delivery man. Do I not bleed, too?
Print Edition
Ying Chun, a 35-year-old waimai (takeout food) delivery man, checks his phone every few seconds as his agitated footsteps shuffle on the elevator floor; the deadline of his next delivery is rushing up, but he is still stuck, descending in an unbearably slow elevator in a completely different building. The consequences of his tardiness, Ying knew, would be an infuriated client and a heavy fine, which, combined, could potentially throw all that he has worked to earn in the past two or three days out the window. Standing in the elevator, sweating as the seconds tick by, frustration and worry gradually overtook the delivery man. Soon, he burst into tears.
The video of his breakdown quickly circulated widely on Chinese social media. This brought attention to a takeout food delivery man’s life — because as the modern city’s demand for takeout escalates, a delivery man’s journey to bring delicious waimai to the table often goes unappreciated and unknown.
But to understand the life of a delivery man — or the increasing number of delivery women — we must first seek to understand the nature of their work. For the popular waimai company Meituan, the basic monthly wage starts at 4,000-5,000 yuan (US$620-775), but more deliveries mean more money.
The average delivery man earns around 7,000-8,000 yuan a month working 10-12 hours a day. But some average 15 hours a day.
It’s fast-paced and high pressure.
“Contrary to what people might imagine, we don’t accept and deliver orders one at a time — we often manage several at once,” says a delivery man surnamed Liu.
The pressure of the work, the pollution, rain and extreme weather take a toll. And timing.
Waimai apps usually give an estimated time within which the delivery should arrive. Those times are often reasonable, but juggling several orders at once can be impossible.
“During lunch time — one of the busiest delivery times — we often have to deliver six to seven orders at once,” says former delivery man Wang Shi. “Sometimes the customers don’t understand — if we’re late even by a minute we could face a heavy fine.”
Liu recalls: “After New Year, it was snowing hard so the roads all froze up. While I was driving, the customers started calling me and telling me to hurry up, and eventually to answer all the calls I had to talk on the phone while I drove.
“The motorcycle ended up slipping on the ice and I lost the entire load of deliveries. What I felt standing beside my motorcycle that day was terrible. Terrible.”
Delivery riders sometimes cause fatal accidents as they ride and call at the same time, or speed. Journalist Fen Xiang recalls an experience with a late delivery man who ran through the rain to deliver her meal. When she opened the door, she was alarmed at a large bleeding scrape on his hand, and asked if he had slipped on the way.
He simply, breathlessly, replied: “I was running too fast, but it’s fine — your soup hasn’t spilled, it’s just the box that’s a bit dented. Please don’t file a complaint — I would be extremely grateful!”
In addition to the occasional infuriated customer, delivery riders also face another hidden challenge: prejudice.
We often forget that among “ordinary, lowly delivery people” there are avid readers, singers and artists. One 26-year-old delivery man from Beijing, for example, caught bystanders’ attention as he waited for his order at a local restaurant: He was poring over a copy of “A History of Western Philosophy” while he stood in line. He told curious passersby: “I don’t like to play phone games, so I read.”
Perhaps we have forgotten that glasses, a briefcase, and an armload of textbooks aren’t the only signatures of a student.
It may be easy to assume that the mouth-watering waimai that we hold in our hands has arrived with ease. But perhaps as we take our order and shut the door, we haven’t considered how many months it’s been since the delivery man last ate dinner with their family, or how fast they might have ridden through all their orders to finally get to you.
They are also parents; they are also students; and they are also ordinary people trying to make ends meet. We should give some respect, whether it be a cup of water or a thank you. And, sometimes, we maybe should be just a little kinder.
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