Delivery Driver Hellscape Nightmare
It’s that time of the year where we think of our families, reunite (hopefully, if possible), and count our lucky stars to be healthy and alive during this tumultuous time. In addition, it is also the time to bow our heads and consider the plight of those less fortunate. In particular, the men and women in the world working at a grueling pace delivering packages to our homes at record speed. Same-day shipping, next day shipping, 12-hour shipping, 24-hour shipping, the order in the morning and ensure it’s there in the evening. You get the idea. Convenience packaged and sold to us for free in multiple ways. The convenience is more convenient than ever. But especially during peak seasons, and COVID seems to be one long peak season for package deliveries.
If you look at how packages are delivered now, it is an imperfect inefficient system that pushes low-skilled labor, often immigrants, willing to take the job and pushes them to make as many deliveries as possible. This involves them shoving hundreds of packages into a van and driving from house to house in their assigned neighborhood. The work pressure, due to the increased demand brought on with COVID-19 and also the increased pressure from multinationals to deliver products at increasing speeds, make for a job that is getting worse year over year.
To showcase one extreme of this job, we turn to China to explain how delivery drivers are currently being treated. This serves as a warning and an example of where we are also headed in the West. In fact, we are very close were it not for labor unions in the United States and strong labor laws in Europe. Delivery drivers in China work 12 hours shifts for six days a week, all while being tracked by automated high tech mobile apps. These track productivity and hand out warnings and fines when customers leave bad feedback. Where China is more extreme is that employees are punished financially whenever a customer leaves negative feedback. Often, drivers have reported earning nothing for a day’s work due to this reason.
Delivery drivers make around 200–300 deliveries a day. The average wage for a delivery driver in China is 800 dollars and this has been dropping in recent years while the fines that are handed out continue to be very high. For reference, the average salary sits at around 1200 dollars a month. Couriers who receive good customer ratings can build up a buffer in case they get a few bad customer ratings. Bad customer ratings can mean losing out on a day’s pay completely, meaning that the courier essentially worked for nothing that day. Often, couriers are punished for mistakes made by customers, such as writing down the wrong details for their apartment, which leads to mistakes during delivery.
Package delivery has become an increasingly stressful job all over the world. Companies are also cutting pay, benefits, and restructuring their business model to further take from employees or gig workers. In China, companies pay their couriers per package, and the rate paid per package has routinely gone down year over year. This was reported from data of five different courier companies. There is a similar model employed by Amazon, which also hires gig workers who can use their own car or van to deliver packages. These employees are also paid on a per-package basis and the payout is far below minimum wage when working full time. They also have no benefits, pay for their own insurance, pay their own employer and employee taxes, etc.
Because the customer is always king, it is never their fault for being unreasonable or unrealistic about their expectations of package delivery. This system is flawed as it leaves drivers at the whims of customers and the many unpredictable things that can happen as you drive through very busy urban streets in an attempt to deliver all your packages. While in the West you cannot directly get fined for bad performance or bad customer reviews, instead you do get docked as part of your performance rating, which can ultimately lead to being fired once that rating drops below acceptable levels. Companies don’t care as the pressure from multinationals continues to rise. They also have targets to hit and the delivery companies are crucial to these targets. Couriers who fall through the cracks are easily replaced by another desperate person ready to take the job.
There are thousands of examples of why we cannot let multinationals operate their business without intervention. Therefore, we should place little faith in their ability to realize what is best for their own workers or for society. Their only goal is profit. The real battle is won by shaping our behavior when it comes to buying products online. It needs examining and perhaps an adjustment.
We have slowly transformed and been pushed into a society that is unable to distinguish want from need. In fact, we are pushed towards believing that everything has become a need. Sure, it is fine to indulge in useless products every once in a while if that gives you happiness, but the convenience offered to you now, meaning that you can get anything you want delivered to your doorstep within two days, is an incredible thing. It’s hard to fathom how much manpower and resources and time was required to get us to this point of instant delivery and gratification. Before free delivery, you paid anywhere from 5–10 dollars to have things shipped to your home. When that changed to free shipping, the costs did not all of a sudden evaporate. The costs are simply being paid in many ways by the unprotected and the less-educated workers who have no choice but to work that job.
And the understanding and compassion from consumers start disappearing the more convenience is offered. It is no longer acceptable or normal for consumers to have to wait more than two or three days and those who have Prime memberships grow restless when packages are not delivered within 24–48 hours. Think about all the times you were frustrated about packages not arriving right now. We have been sold and pushed towards unrealistic expectations based on this convenience that we often do not need. A convenience that is built on low skilled labor being pushed to the limits on a daily basis to serve the customer at all costs.
We must return back to normalcy once vaccinations are implemented because this situation is further dividing our society. Emergency situations usually create a different sort of environment, one where our values and attitudes change and are shaped, often out of necessity. In this case, we have begun to become more irritated, less empathetic, and demand an incredibly fast delivery service that was falsely promised by giants such as Amazon and other large retailers. Amazon didn’t create the idea of same day shipping to save the customers, it created this to serve their interest of market and world domination. Remember that this convenience always comes at a human cost.
Package delivery companies around the world need to implement some sort of code to work by. One that puts the delivery driver first and is backed by labor unions and laws. Two to three hundred deliveries in a day isn’t a realistic amount. Drivers should not be tracked via an application with warnings and fines (like in China) when something doesn’t go according to plans. Delivering packages has many hurdles and unknown factors that cannot be reduced down to an algorithm. These types of uncontrollable factors should not fall on the worker. The issue with this suggested solution is that we cannot place that much faith in large faceless corporations to make decisions that benefit the worker over the consumer. But there must be a balance and this balance cannot be pulled out of equilibrium too much without causing serious social issues.
When thinking of solutions we also run into problems. The first thing that comes to mind is creating AI designed drop-off pods in each neighborhood. A large metal and impenetrable box that stores and scans barcodes and addresses that every citizen of a neighborhood can log into to receive their packages. Citizens can then use an app to pick up their packages. This shifts the burden of responsibility on us again as end-users but is highly convenient and efficient. Those who clog up the system could be fined as they are burdening the storage limits and affecting their neighbors if storage gets full. This creates a sort of joint community responsibility to think about those around you. Perhaps the system is smart enough where packages are removed after a number of days unless specified by the customers ahead of time in case of vacation or long time absence.
There is however a huge problem with bringing more technology into package delivery. It would mean the loss of millions of jobs. Although these are not very dignified jobs, they ensure sure that lower-skilled and less educated members of society can earn a livelihood. The only other solution would then be to instead create new jobs in another sector, but I’m no economist, so I will leave that up to the experts to decide on.
There are a couple of things to consider here. Re-examine your idea of want vs. need. Order things well in advance and stop using this benefit sold to you for free. Avoid ordering too many “wants” during peak seasons. That is already a big help, that if applied to a large percentage of a population, can make huge differences in helping the more marginalized parts of society. As more privileged members of society, the burden falls on us to take on more responsibility and perhaps give up some convenience if that means it lessens the burden to members of society that are less fortunate. And this number of less fortunate is growing rapidly, income inequality is rising faster than you can imagine. In addition, package courier companies need to ensure better working conditions and push back against multinationals who create unrealistic expectations that only robots could meet. Unrealistic expectations created from an algorithm made up by some 25-year-old kid in Silicon Valley.
Practice a little more empathy. Care for your neighbors. But most of all, enjoy your Christmas break and be with loved ones.
Leave a comment and tell me what you think about this issue. Consider leaving a clap or three if you enjoyed the content. Have a great day.
