[VIRAL] China Has New 'Deadly' Job: It's Called Food Delivery

Jamie P., Tech Times 09 September 2020, 05:09 am

Amid pandemic, food delivery is one of the most in-demand services around the globe. Since most of us are encouraged to stay-at-home, we don't have any option but to call our favorite restaurant and hit us up with food. Most companies even have their taglines like 'Faster than you can imagine,' or even 'Always on time.'

The 'dark side' of this concept is that delivery guys are the ones that suffer. Just like how a viral article from China's 'People' Magazine highlighted it.

'Your order is coming'

A viral article written by China's 'People' Magazine is now dividing citizens in China, creating confusion about whether which side they should go.

It turns out, for Chinese food delivery workers, every day is a battle of life and death. But companies refuse to acknowledge it.

According to the report, popular Chinese food delivery platforms like Alibaba's Ele.me and Tencent-backed Meituan have been changing the algorithms of their fast delivery services. Every year, the delivery time is being shorter and shorter.

"In 2016, the 3km delivery distance was the longest. The long time limit is 1 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 of takeaway orders in China's entire industry was longer than three years. It was reduced by 10 minutes before," said in the report.

Once the delivery takes too much time from what's expected, the delivery workers would be the ones facing the punishment.

In order for this not to happen, we can see Chinese delivery guys flying across the streets just to get to their destination in real-time.

Tech Crunch reported that in 2019, Shanghai recorded 325 injuries and deaths involving food and parcel delivery drivers alone.

Nearly 70% of the accidents in the city came from food delivery worker cases.

Within hours since the article was posted, the story had gained over 100,000 views and was shared widely and discussed on different social media platforms in the country.

If you meet a delivery driver acting insanely stressed... it's because they are. https://t.co/zjASgq65qs — elaine (@elaineisxyz) September 9, 2020

Interesting read- I use delivery drivers as little as poss for environmental reasons and hate the "life in china is good cos it's so convenient" angle, as (surprise!) the cost of convenience is exploiting cheap labour. Be kind to 快递小哥, even if they're a menace on the roads! https://t.co/JkTWOI7Eez — hercules morse (@hatapota) September 9, 2020

What Alibaba's Ele.me had to say

After half a day that the article was posted, Alibaba's Ele.me released a new protocol allowing customers to extend their waiting time by five until 10 minutes voluntarily.

In this way, deliveries will have extended time to travel to get to their destination.

Ele.me also promised that they will no longer punish their drivers on the basis of good credit and service history, even if they are occasionally late with their deliveries.

So far, Meituan, its rival, has not yet commented on the matter.