Who Is Speeding Us Up? A Discussion Between Fresh E-commerce Picking Workers and Consumers

@A: I worked there for two years. My back and legs hurt. I worked 15 hours a day but was only paid basic pay for 11. If you disagreed, you were told not to do it. Then the pay kept being cut; when things were quiet you were not given shifts, and when things were busy you were not allowed to rest.

@弗兰克: Sigh. People are not machines, and it is impossible to work precisely at every moment. Real-time data assessment, precise to the second, very easily makes people make mistakes under pressure and even forget about safety. I used to do food delivery for a while. The countdown figures on the delivery order page made it very easy to become anxious. What I dreaded most were merchants holding up meals and lifts in high-rise buildings that took ages to wait for.

@来去之间: The major online supermarkets in China are Meituan Xiaoxiang, Alibaba Hema, Jingdong 7Fresh, and Pupu Supermarket from Fujian. All these platforms aim for 30-minute delivery to customers, so the picking stage in the dark store can only be compressed to the prescribed time. For example, with 3-minute picking in Xiaoxiang dark stores, the time allotted to the delivery worker is only about 25 minutes. But the delivery system usually assigns 5–7 orders to a delivery worker, and all of them need to be delivered within about 25 minutes. After a delivery worker has finished an order, whether you are stuck in a lift or waiting at a red light, if you have not returned to the dark store within the time limit, the system immediately assigns you another order. That is why the roads are full of chaotic, reckless riding.

@凛冬廿九星眠: Generally, hygiene in most stores is just like that, but many people still like having the stores peel the durian and cut the watermelon in half for them.

@信啊信Rui: If we did not want platforms, delivery workers and picking workers would be unemployed again; if we do want them, the situations described above would occur. So which stage exactly is the problem? I can neither understand nor make sense of it.

@H.L: This article reminded me of the supermarket near my home. It opened more than five years ago. At its peak it had about ten employees, but now only the owner and one or two people are left. He has to pay the employees’ wages no matter what, even if it means selling his pots and pans. The owner has been making no profit since last year, but now he is in a position where he cannot back out. The investment in the supermarket is hidden in every aspect; it is close to 2 million yuan, and even if they stop, it cannot be handed over to anyone else. I asked whether the other woman I often saw collecting money was his wife. He said it was impossible. His wife works in Shenzhen to support the family; if they both did this, they would be finished.

What stands in contrast to the slump in community supermarket trade is the booming business of online delivery platforms, along with picking workers and delivery workers driven to extreme speed by system algorithms. The convenience of coming into this community supermarket to say hello, chatting for a few minutes, and dropping in at any time to buy something has turned out to be such a heavy, luxurious element of old street life.

@哇塞: What exactly are we all rushing about? Rushing to finish secondary-school subjects in primary school, completing a quarter’s KPI in a single month, and if the work cannot be finished within the scheduled hours, it means overtime, single rest days and alternating five- and six-day weeks—who exactly demanded 30-minute delivery? Wouldn’t it be better if we all slowed down?

@云淡风轻: On behalf of all the front-line picking workers at Xiaoxiang, Hema and 7Fresh, let me say thank you to you—thank you for understanding. I am also part of this system myself. If everyone were like you, our work would be a lot easier.

@星星观察员: All the squeezing has nothing to do with consumers; please take note. It is clearly the fault of platform capital, which is squeezing both customers and employees. As consumers, we have no obligation to understand the platform’s operating rules. The rules were clearly made by the platform itself, so why should consumers have to consider whether they are reasonable?

@15432: If there were an option for urgent and non-urgent orders, perhaps everyone could breathe a little easier.

@L.: Isn’t what capitalists do just squeezing employees? Even if customers are not in a hurry, if lead time is reduced to the minimum, labour productivity will be at its highest. The same amount of work would originally require paying forty people’s wages, but by shortening lead time, it might only require paying thirty people’s wages. Moreover, different platforms compete with one another; when goods and prices are similar, consumers will prioritise the faster one.

@瑞年: I have been using it since Pupu, and later Pupu and Xiaoxiang, for several years now! I have never complained! I always place orders after 8 p.m., and there are plenty of bargains! On rainy days I even leave a message telling the rider to stay safe—I am not in a hurry! There is a comment above that is very good: If you choose to order online and sit at home waiting, you need to wait; you must be able to wait! If you complain about delays, you really need to go to a physical store and buy it yourself.

@海盐柠檬: Recently, delivery from Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Hema has become available near my workplace. I have placed a few orders, and it really is convenient. Before finishing work I order the food I need most, and after work I can take it straight home. What impressed me is how fast they deliver, especially Xiaoxiang Supermarket; it arrives 20 minutes after I place the order. Only after reading this article did I realize what those 20 minutes mean and what they carry. I do not need it that fast; I could accept an hour, and I could accept two hours.

@麦子: At the end of 2023, I worked part-time at Xiaoxiang Supermarket for a while. Once, I took an order with 89 items; it took me four minutes to pick them all, and I nearly died of exhaustion. Another time, an order of 9 items included both food and toilet cleaner. I forgot to pack the toilet cleaner separately, and the complaint covered all 9 items, with a deduction of 90 yuan. My part-time pay for four hours was only 80 yuan to begin with. I was upset for two days. The following evening, the station manager successfully appealed on my behalf, and only 10 yuan was deducted. It was terrifying. I had been thinking that, if I did not want to go out for a run in the evening, I could run around at Xiaoxiang Supermarket and still earn money. I was too naive. Since then, I have not dared to think about the prospect of a complaint again.

@麻麻雷: It still counts, because that means there was a problem with the order, and the picking worker or delivery worker is required to take responsibility for it.

@1: Picking at Xiaoxiang is relatively a little better. Customer complaint deductions are around 10 yuan. When a delivery rider receives a customer complaint, the deduction is basically 50 to 300 yuan. Since the average pay per order is only a little over 3 yuan, it can sometimes take several days of work to earn back the amount of one complaint.

@宇宙督查员: I have also complained before because I received the wrong item. Although they were different types of product, the packaging was strangely similar, and at the time I was annoyed that this could be delivered incorrectly. Next time I will have a little more patience and understanding about situations like this. In the face of the platform’s oppression and alienation of people, what else can we do?

@WR: This is probably to compete with other platforms. Consumers may empathise with the hardships of picking workers and delivery workers, but when choosing a platform to place online delivery orders, they tend to favour one with bigger discounts and better service (fast delivery and fewer errors). As a result, platforms that allocate time reasonably lose out in cutthroat competition, while platforms that squeeze employees’ time in exchange for customer satisfaction are more favoured.

@初到海拉鲁: I usually use Ele.me to buy groceries. Previously, a single purchase of 20–30 items took an hour and a half to be delivered. Starting last year, the delivery time has been shortened to one hour, and this year even to less than 50 minutes. So the industry has already reached this point.

@We十: With Duoduo Maicai, if you buy mineral water, it arrives at the station the next day. At least Duoduo Maicai uses a van to deliver, even if there is some distance. There is a small trailer on the van. Then, some station managers will deliver it to your door.

@纯情女大声: I am a Xiaoxiang Supermarket customer, and in a certain month, out of curiosity, I went to a Xiaoxiang Supermarket to apply for a part-time job. During every peak period, fast-paced songs are played loudly in the warehouse to encourage employees. I know that Pupu’s grocery service assigns trolleys to picking workers, but the Xiaoxiang branch I was at did not have any. Picking workers often carried heavy items, panting as they moved among the shelves. Their time was compressed into these 3 minutes, and the PDA in each person’s hand was their way of surviving in this system.

@水瓶春天: So that is how it works. I can see now why Xiaoxiang’s deliveries are always so fast! But giving only 3 minutes is far too little; when I buy a lot, it definitely is not enough! It would be reasonable to add the appropriate amount of time according to the number of items! If I had not seen your article, as consumers we really would not have known how it works. Next time I will order a little less in each order, and add a note in the remarks saying it is not urgent and asking the delivery worker not to rush—would that work?

@棘草籽: Today I still have to buy a large bottle of mineral water on Hema, with a guilty conscience. This seems to be the only thing I have to buy on a fresh food platform. I never buy more than two large bottles of water at a time. My earlier concern was that delivery workers found it difficult to carry them up the stairs, but now I have realised that, for picking workers, large items are also a very heavy burden. If I have to use the platform, are there any strategies that could make things a little easier for picking workers? For example, ordering off-peak? Buying fewer items in one order? But as long as the platform does not take workers’ conditions seriously, consumers’ little tricks are a drop in the bucket.

@偷菠萝油的女鬼: My only form of resistance is to try not to place orders on the platform.

@旺财来福: I remember that on the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve, someone ordered from Dingdong Maicai. Because most delivery workers had gone home, the remaining delivery workers were overloaded and running around, and people who had ordered kept urging in the Dingdong group, while those who had received their deliveries kept complaining. In fact, there is a supermarket within 10 minutes of my home, so if I were in a hurry I could cancel the delivery and go straight to the supermarket. It turns out that before delivery services existed, people could live just fine without them. Once, when a typhoon came, someone posted on Moments saying that they had ordered delivery and it was not delivered until two hours later. After hearing the weather forecast, I had already bought frozen dumplings and instant noodles in advance and kept them at home.