Catherine Meechan 

You’ve probably seen the viral video of the Deliveroo driver collapsing. This is the reality for couriers like us

This incident sums up Britain: some get gourmet food in minutes while others lie in the cold waiting for an ambulance, says Catherine Meechan, a food delivery courier
  
  

A Deliveroo rider cycles through central London.
A Deliveroo rider cycles through central London. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

You may have seen the pictures and videos already. Last week, a Deliveroo rider collapsed in front of a building in London where he was making a food delivery. The concierge initially denied him access to the lobby, so the driver was left in the cold, on the pavement, drifting in and out of consciousness waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

During this time, the customer came downstairs to complain that a food item was missing and wanted to complain to him. Eventually, the rider was allowed into the lobby, but the whole thing was was caught on camera by James Farrar, the general secretary of the App Drivers & Couriers Union.

Somehow the scene sums up Britain in 2023: some people can summon gourmet food to their doors in minutes, while others must wait, lying unconscious, on a cold pavement for an hour for an ambulance.

I work as a food delivery driver. I stumbled into it a few months before the pandemic. The childcare provider servicing my school closed overnight which meant I had to quickly find a job that could accommodate the school hours for drop-offs and pick-ups, as well as the 13 weeks of holidays.

I remember the excitement when I got the first notification on my phone that I could start working. With a few basic instructions and my delivery bag, I set off on my first journey. I headed to the local pizza shop, where I smiled at the staff and gave a cheery “hello” as I collected the order, then delivered it to a customer two minutes around the corner. It was exhilarating to have completed my first run and I soon became addicted to the beep of the app to see what the next offer was. For a while, at least, I enjoyed the gamification of the job.

In my eagerness to provide a great service for the customers, I was honest in my communication with them via the app and apologetic for frequent mistakes made by restaurants with their orders. At first, I would often return to restaurants to collect missing items and deliver them to the customer in the hope of maintaining a good rating and earn a tip. I had no idea that the extra time and mileage expenses would not be recompensed by the delivery company I worked for. I tried mostly in vain to resolve customer complaints via the app, but quickly became frustrated at the automated responses I received.

Fast-food chains are the most difficult restaurants to deliver for. There are rarely suitable waiting areas and staff often want drivers to wait outside. Often when you accept an order with them, by the time you arrive at the restaurant you will be assigned a double order with two deliveries to make on the same run. Too often this means waiting an extra 30-40 minutes for the second order while the first one is slowly going cold.

If you accept the work, you lose money; if you don’t accept it, then you may find you are offered less work later. Customers are often angry with us couriers when the food arrives cold and late, and we are an easy target on the doorstep.

Some apps have dynamic or surge pricing, which changes according to demand. A recent Harvard Business School paper warned of the dangers of such technology – which include potential collusion between competing apps.

For drivers like me, it means constantly variable pay – I feel as though I’m kept more and more in the dark about how much work I will get on a given shift and how much I might take home at the end of it.

When I think of that driver on the pavement waiting for an ambulance, it brings home to me even more that in an app-ruled world, we know not the price, we know not the cost, we know not the value. We have all been diminished by technology.

  • Catherine Meechan is a food delivery courier based in Manchester and a member of the App Drivers & Couriers Union

  • A public meeting and rally in response to the incident involving the collapsed Deliveroo rider is being held at the Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel Road, London E1 at 2pm on Friday 3 March 2023

 

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