Who Is Making Us Speed Up? A Discussion Between Fresh Food E-Commerce Pickers and Consumers

@觀宸奕: I used to work at Meituan Xiaoxiang. No social security, and the work was exhausting. No rest on weekends or public holidays — if you needed time off it could only be Monday to Friday, and you basically got four days off a month. Go over the time limit and you’d get shouted at. In most cases you had to pick two orders within three minutes. Some orders were all frozen goods, and you’d be searching for items in the cold storage, freezing to death. You also had to give 30 days’ notice to leave, with no option for immediate settlement of wages, and you still had to keep working your shifts before you actually left. Working hours were basically eight to 12 a day. No matter how long you actually worked, the Xiaoxiang Supermarket employee app only counted 11 hours a day, yet the roster scheduled shifts of more than 11. Anything beyond 11 hours didn’t count as working time, and all you could do was wait to clock out, or you’d be marked absent and forced to work for free, with only a few cents in commission.

@Quella Lin: I’ve done part-time shifts and can share my experience: 7 to 8 hours a session, 4 pm to midnight, an average of 25,000 to 30,000 steps a day (and I was only part-time — I can’t imagine how full-timers cope with 10- to 11-hour shifts!). If a customer complained the produce wasn’t fresh, you got a 10-yuan deduction (when picking vegetables and fruit in a hurry you have to check especially carefully — blueberries, strawberries, loquats and similar take a lot of time). If an egg was broken and it wasn’t the delivery rider’s fault, you got a 20-yuan deduction. After just three consecutive shifts I caught a mild cold — running back and forth between the frozen zone, the chilled zone, and the ambient-temperature zone. The ambient zone only had fans, so you’d be drenched in sweat, then rushing into the chilled and frozen zones would freeze you to death. That’s exactly why turnover in this kind of job is so high — they’re always recruiting.

@热情华夫饼: You often see delivery electric bikes on the road with external bass speakers blasting music at full volume. I used to discuss this with a friend and guess it was perhaps a way for delivery riders to assert their presence in urban space. But then I heard a rider who had this habit say himself that it was because the delivery time pressure meant he often had to run red lights, and playing the music loud let cars going the right way at intersections spot him from further away, reducing the chance of a collision.

@蒹葭: Pickers on fresh food e-commerce platforms are perpetually under the high pressure created by algorithms, data, and piece-rate pay. Mis-picked items and missed items are inevitable structural problems — just as scrapes and collisions are nearly unavoidable for every courier. My uncle does this work. He’s been at it for at least a decade, through several rounds of technological change. He eats like a whirlwind. Before I’ve even touched my chopsticks, he’s finished. He’s actually quite a reserved person by nature. But one rainy day last year, while delivering a package, he collided with someone. He fractured his thigh and is still recovering at home. Low educational attainment and a lack of public voice have left this group, crushed under the weight of daily life and algorithms, reduced to a silent underclass.

@Anonymous: I’ve never used a grocery app. Out of environmental concerns, I’ve been opposed to them since the day they appeared. I always reuse plastic bags for my grocery runs, but fresh food e-commerce delivery just hands you a whole pile of non-recyclable plastic.

@来去之间: They’ve killed off physical stores. Haven’t you noticed that brick-and-mortar supermarkets are getting fewer and fewer?

@6: As a consumer, this life-or-death three minutes is probably just the time it takes me to zone out once. From what I’ve seen, Xiaoxiang does deliver fast, but honestly, if it were a bit slower — five minutes, ten minutes — I don’t think consumers’ perception would change much. What I mainly care about is quality and getting the right quantity, and I believe most people are still willing to understand one another. Turning people into machines and machines into people is a twisted value system. A little slower, and the sky won’t fall, will it?

@露mio: Why do people have to let algorithms squeeze them? Sigh, I’m being squeezed too. It’s suddenly so moving that someone actually spoke up for us.

@cora: Why does it have to be picked in three minutes? The platform is really squeezing its employees too hard. If a customer is in a real hurry, they shouldn’t be placing an online order in the first place — they should go downstairs and buy it themselves. If you’re happy to wait for someone to deliver it to your door, that means you can wait.

@来去之间: The platform won’t give you that chance to catch your breath. The system is loaded with all kinds of performance reviews — your pressure is their KPI.

@暮夏之后: Honestly, as a customer, I’m not in a rush for those ten-odd minutes. I’m buying fresh produce, not something to eat immediately — after it arrives I still put it in the fridge and take it out when I need it. That 30-minute delivery target was set by the platform to grab market share, and then they squeeze ordinary employees to meet it.

@G: Saying you’re not in a rush doesn’t help. The platform’s algorithm doesn’t care whether the rider lives or dies — it must deliver on time, full stop.

@Lzx: I worked five and a half hours yesterday and got hit with seven complaint deductions. Truly something else.

@尤利西斯: If I receive my order and find an item missing, and I contact the store manager directly, would that not count as a complaint?

@哦喔: If a customer files a product complaint and the reason is valid, the picker has to bear that too. On top of that, pickers face two other sources of pressure. One is that the three-minute picking window cannot be exceeded — if you go over regularly, the station manager will have words with you; you have to protect the station’s order fulfilment. The other is that if you’ve just finished picking and immediately tap “packaged,” the delivery rider will complain about you, and the rider’s station manager will too. But if you don’t tap it in advance, the station manager will say you went over time.

@Freya: This made me a bit sad. I rely quite a lot on Hema and Dingdong, and I had no idea the convenience came at such a cruel cost. It reminded me of a few days ago when the delivery rider spilled the meal box — some of the sauce from the chopped chilli fish head had leaked out. He kept apologising and offering to compensate. I said it was fine, I’d just transfer it into a bowl at home. I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t expect that the next day I’d see on the delivery platform that he had left a message at the time, asking me not to leave a bad review and not to request a refund, because he would face serious performance penalties…

@范范: I’ve been buying from Pupu and Xiaoxiang a lot this past year, especially since there’s a Pupu right downstairs from my home. I’ve also seen the part-time recruitment notices they put up — I had no idea the picking part of the job was so exasperating. The algorithm itself isn’t designed to exploit employees, but capitalists use the algorithm to create “time management” that allows no “accident” to happen. Anyone who regularly uses time management to plan their schedule can tell just how impossible that is. But the author doesn’t need to feel guilty about past complaints — it’s the capitalists who have tied complaints to working people’s pay. I’ve also filed complaints twice myself, for example when I received produce that wasn’t fresh or was underweight. Consumers’ needs need to be met too.

@油菜花: Reading this article really hit home. Last year I was having trouble finding a job and ended up going for a part-time interview at Pupu Supermarket — their model is basically the same as Xiaoxiang’s. On the day of the interview, I could feel the tension and pressure the pickers were under. They were racing against the clock, having to memorise where products were located and also the address zones, all denoted by codes. Once you’re proficient, you have to pick multiple orders at the same time, carrying several bags, and a lot of the items are heavy. It’s genuinely a “brain plus brawn” job, and it’s really exhausting for a woman. I kept asking myself whether I could actually handle it, and in the end I didn’t go.

@观花: Last week I bought soy products, yoghurt, and fruit at Super Fa on Taobao Flash Purchase. I hit send on the order, and three minutes later I could see a delivery rider being summoned. I told my dad, “The platforms don’t need to push this hard, do they?” If you’re cooking and happen to be short of a piece of ginger and need it urgently, they won’t even deliver a single piece — I’d have to go down to the little vegetable stall in the courtyard myself. What I buy from them is stuff I don’t need in a rush, so there’s no reason to scramble over like that.

@jam: Duoduo Maicai also needs pickers to sort the orders, you know. They allow six minutes and eight seconds per large item.

@黄映红: I did part-time work as a picker at Walmart. It was 30 fen per item. Sometimes an order was just one or two items, but you still had to pack it before you could move on to the next one. Regardless of how many items were in the order, you had to finish within 10 minutes. Some items you’d search for forever (the store was out of stock), and then you’d have to call the customer to confirm a substitute brand or size. It worked out to an average of only 10–15 yuan an hour.

@来去之间: That won’t work. Once an order is placed, it just flows through the system. If you call the rider and say you don’t have time to receive the delivery and they can sign for it first and bring it over slowly, the system monitors call records. If the rider actually dared to sign for it, there’s an immediate fine. And if the rider signs for it but you haven’t received the goods, and you call the rider or customer service — the moment the rider picks up, that’s a day’s work for nothing. A 300-yuan fine!

@芽口: Peak hours are 4:30–7:30 pm. You can try ordering outside those windows; don’t order too many heavy items per order; and try to shop offline more, reducing your reliance on fresh-grocery platforms.

@yyyyyyyyyyyy: Actually, it’s reducing online shopping and increasing offline spending that can make a real difference for the economy. Otherwise, all the physical stores will close, and with no competition, online e-commerce prices will just keep going up.

@殷羽sama: Consumers should band together and boycott platforms that squeeze pickers and couriers past the point of reason. There should be a platform where employees can anonymously rate these companies — those that abuse staff, withhold wages, or maintain high-pressure cultures would get low scores, which would lower their standing in the public’s overall assessment. We shouldn’t have to wait every time until someone is killed before people start boycotting a particular brand.