Linyi University teachers experience food delivery： 10 yuan per hour is the norm, 20 yuan is the limit
Xing Bin, born in 1976, is a lecturer at the School of Literature of Linyi University. His main courses are modern Chinese literature and contemporary Chinese literature. At a recent sharing event at Linyi Dongyi Academy, Xing Bin recounted his experience as a food delivery rider in Linyi last winter, which immediately attracted attention.
Xing Bin, Lecturer, School of Literature, Linyi University
Xing Bin said that he has his own job and can only do amateur crowdsourcing. "These days I work from morning to night on holidays, running for two hours in the morning on weekdays, and then running to one or two or three o’clock at night after dinner. Give more money at night, and those who can earn money are all remote places. In the middle of the night, I ran to the village east of Xianggong Town, to Fangcheng, to Lanling Village, and to Yinan Mountain. It was all country roads, all riding motorcycles. It was too dark, and the lights were not far, and sometimes I rode into a ditch. As soon as I passed Changchun Road, big trucks passed by at night, and my heart was terrified. After delivering the goods and riding back, I felt that my hands were numb and I felt freezing. Once I was too cold, so I parked my car in the field and ran around for a while. I looked at the Autonavi map. It was nine kilometers north of Linyi University, and it was still a long time to get home. "
According to his statistics, in a month, he delivered more than 2,000 orders, contacted hundreds of merchants, and knocked on more than 2,000 doors. On average, he rode a motorcycle 210 kilometers a day, walked 32,000 steps, and climbed 110 floors. Overall, an hourly income of 10 yuan is the norm, and an hourly income of 20 yuan is the limit.
Specifically, the average order is 3.5 yuan, it needs to be picked up and delivered 2 + 3 kilometers, the average waiting time for pickup is 5 minutes, the bicycle is 8 minutes, and the average delivery to the door of the community is 7 minutes, a total of 20 minutes. 3 orders an hour, 10.5 yuan. Send 3 orders at a time, and arrange the order well, you can save 1/3 of the time, but you will be urged. You can send 4-5 orders an hour, 15.75 yuan. Send 5 orders at a time, which is suitable for the centralized delivery time of lunch and dinner. It is difficult to arrange the order without being urged. Basically, it is the limit value. Slightly increase the income per unit time, and still send 5-6 orders an hour, 19.25 yuan.
"I don’t want to investigate, I just want to experience it." Xing Bin mentioned in his sharing that 2022 is very special. One report said that in Shanghai, riders can earn more than 1,000 yuan a day for food delivery. Another report said that a deputy director of the Beijing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau personally experienced being a food delivery rider and earned 41 yuan for 12 hours of food delivery. Which one is true?
After working for a week, Xing Bin felt that the data provided by the latter report was more accurate.
The bills recorded during Xing Bin’s experience with the delivery staff
In this experience, Xing Bin said that his main concern is what kind of situation the "identity" of the delivery staff is, and how people feel, cope and regurgitate these encounters during this work process. Physical suffering is one thing, although it has not been such an experience for a long time; the main thing is to be abused by others.
According to his recollection, almost no one took seriously the delivery of takeout, the merchants, customers and especially the security guards. "None of my real-world friends knew that I was doing this recently, only the security guards in our community knew. They saw me leave early and come back late at night every day and wouldn’t let me in. I said I was the owner, and they rode me downstairs to watch me go upstairs, saying that you can afford a house here even if you deliver takeout, and you are a person. Many customers look at me like beggars. I used to hate these people, but I slowly forgot about them."
He is more willing to recall the warm moment, "This month, I sent more than 2,000 orders, and three people sincerely thanked me. One was a woman from the ancient city community of the relocation community. She said that the child wanted to eat wontons in the middle of the night, and it was so cold. Thank you for sending it. Later I found out that she rewarded me with 2 yuan. Another, also a lady, was from the village northeast of Xianggong Town. They were afraid that I would not be able to find my way in the middle of the night, so they sent me to the intersection with flashlights. There is another couple, the elderly live in Building 5 of the People’s Hospital, the Center for Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases. I spilled some of their meals for the elderly, and later I bought another one to send. They both refunded me the money for the second meal and rewarded me with 10 yuan."
In his personal experience and observations, Xing Bin noticed several issues.
"This order was completed very well and was perfect. Then when you continue to deliver, the software prompts that the previous order did not click Delivery. You have to stop clicking. You will be fined the next day: click Delivery in a different place, or click Delivery after timeout. You can complain that there was no timeout, and you have already clicked Delivery at that time, which is a problem that the software jumped out again. The complaint is invalid. There is still a chance to appeal. If you appeal again, it will be returned in seconds, which is invalid. If you call manual customer service, you will be lucky to be contacted within an hour. If you get in touch, it will still be the same reply."
Xing Bin said that he encountered such a situation twice a month, and the procedure was exactly the same. The three appeals were useless and completely staged. "I finally told the manual customer service that you can directly contact the customer to see what the real situation is like. It’s useless, and the money is still deducted. And the money deducted is not returned to the customer, but goes to the headquarters of the takeaway company."
In this month of delivery, Xing Bin met three female delivery workers and several elderly delivery riders. In Xing Bin’s opinion, "They can’t afford such intense labor 14 hours a day, all year round. I estimate that they can earn three or four thousand yuan a month. After the Spring Festival, I left the delivery team, but I still noticed them first on the way. In recent months, I have seen more and more female and elderly riders racing against the clock. No matter how dangerous and hard they may be, they can’t live without the income of three or four thousand yuan. The children at home, the elderly in the hospital bed, the mortgage repayment text messages from the bank… all remind them: run, run quickly!"
In Xing Bin’s view, these food delivery companies are very special. With the blessing of big data and artificial intelligence, all its designs have become more sophisticated and accurate, "just" can acquire the right amount of labor, and "just" can allow riders to maintain the most basic life, so that they can not accumulate a little capital to recuperate and support money with money.
"What I did was just a small thing. I didn’t tell my parents or my students," Mr. Xing said in an interview with Beijing Youth Daily. "This time, I decided to share this experience with you because the lecturer, Wang Zhaojun, invited me."
"I think as a literary worker, if you don’t have any pain in life, everything you write is light and light," Xing Bin said. After this experience, he has a better understanding of the delivery staff and how hard it is for them to make money. "When I was writing in the past, I saw that the delivery staff might answer the call later, but now I will definitely answer it as soon as possible, because I know that they may be talking on the phone while riding a bicycle, which is very dangerous. I also hope that the society can understand the difficulties of the delivery staff more, and show more empathy to them, so that the society can be better."