By Sophia Yufei Wang
The car is arriving in one minute. I looked up from my phone. It’s here. As usual, I pulled the door to the back seat and shoved my groceries to the inner side and ducked into the car. After a classic how-are-you-doing opening, I shifted my eye to the outside of the car, staring at some random street views and then turning to my entertaining phone for a break.
“So you did a little shopping in Trader Joe’s eh?” asked Anthony the Uber driver. Wearing an apricot woolen jacket, my uber driver was a black man in his late 50s. I used to just say yes and then rest in lasting silence. It’s not that I don’t enjoy talking to people, but I tended to think a one-time conversation with a stranger was empty of meaning. But at that night, for some reason, I added a little bit more, “Yes, and Trader Joe’s is always my favorite one stop shopping.”
So we began talking about our favorite groceries. I kept going on about my reasons to side with Trader Joe’s, a California-based nationwide chain of grocery, and brought up Whole Foods Market, an supermarket chain known for its organic food, as my second top. “Yeah, you know, the integration of Whole Foods within Amazon is quite something,” he said. “It’s a good deed.”
He later explained that he worked as a farmer before. Back then, he only supplied his harvest to a few groceries in the neighbourhood. Now, many small independent groceries are facing shutdowns. I asked if he thought those shutdowns were bad signs for his farm business. “Well, I mean, those independent stores are squeezed out of the market, but Amazon indeed did a better job than those stores,” he said. “And the magic card Amazon plays is the logistics.”
After the integration, Amazon has made its way by connecting local suppliers and products with a wider range of city dwellers. Relying on a giant e-commerce platform, Amazon offers its prime members grocery delivery on Amazon Fresh and online pickup at Amazon Lockers. There are also Prime Pantry and Prime Now targeting household essentials delivery and same-day delivery for everything you can imagine and need.
“I am happy to see that the food I grow can reach out to such a considerable number of people,” he smiled.
Afterwards, Anthony also mentioned his amazement towards Chinese e-commerce platforms like Alibaba. Millions of merchants and businesses were springing up on Alibaba, he said, and it took only several searches before putting an order on food you have been craving for weeks. “That’s the power of logistics,”he concluded emphatically on the last word.
When I came to New York for the first time, I felt overwhelmed by seeing hustle and bustle everywhere. I always received a series of “excuse me” whenever I made a sudden stop. My first impression of D.C., however, goes to the other extreme. Near the NYU DC campus, you have to go out during lunch time to spot large gatherings of people. No matter the size of the city, opening up a friendly conversation between two strangers can be challenging. You just don’t know whether it’s worthwhile venturing an icebreaker with little chance of reciprocal kindness.
We’re living in a paradox. We all have been taught when we were kids to not talk to strangers. Meanwhile, we are imagining what could have ever happened if we said hello to the person standing next to us on the line at Starbucks or the person sitting beside us on the train.
After talking to Anthony that night, I have tried to be more engaged in a lively conversation with my uber driver. And soon after, I met a retired lawyer who encouraged me to not fear for those so-called experienced senior legal consultants in the future and to show my young charm; another time, a musical lover played the soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child after we exchanged our latest musical viewing experiences.
Once you put your pick-up location and destination on the Uber app, you tend to think that’s the end of the story. But for that route connecting two locations, there’s always so much untold beyond what shown on the map.
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