Tag: work

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Glorification as Exploitation: Chinese Food Delivery Workers’ Image and Labor Conditions

delivery driver on bike

By Xixi Jiang 

They are easy to spot in their bright yellow or blue heavy-duty jackets; they deftly weave through rush hour traffic on their quiet electric bikes; they are an indispensable part of Chinese urban life today. They are food delivery riders, most likely working for one of China’s two biggest competing online food delivery service platforms, Meituan (美团外卖) and Ele.me (饿了么). This relatively new branch of the service sector has seen a tremendous expansion in market size over the past decade, from 21.68 billion yuan (3.31 billion USD) in 2011 to an estimated 664.62 billion yuan (101 billion USD) in 2020.[1] Following the industry boom, there has also been an increase in attention devoted to the working conditions of delivery riders, who are the backbone of this lucrative business. In this essay, I will consider the public perception of food delivery workers, which range from friendly strangers to civilian heroes; these glorified images, produced consciously and unconsciously by corporations and consumers alike, have come to mask the dangerous conditions of their work and, more importantly, to supplant real benefits in wages and protection for the workers. The construction of public personas is certainly not the entire cause of their present predicament, but studying it may give way to larger investigations into the positive stigmatization of certain kinds of work, and call for more direct ways of being in solidarity with workers.

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Filling Empty Shelves

grocery store shelf

By Jared Skoro 

A Search for Normalcy

It was a year ago when I was last in New York. The memories I had of the City at the start of the pandemic were not ones too unfamiliar to all of us: I was squished in a Trader Joe’s. Why was I there? I never shop at a Trader Joe’s. I wasn’t there to shop or stock up, so there was no good reason for being there. Perhaps in the chaos of newly masked shoppers zipping through the aisles, the screaming and hissing of the shopping cart wheels as they darted from one empty shelf to another, directed like car traffic by tired, worn employees; I was there in search of normalcy. I would be returning to Texas soon, and all the hum and buzz of what was the City, with its colorful characters and architecture, would retreat into memory and perhaps never be seen again. This could be the last taste of what was New York. I remember writing about this moment a month later to try to understand this feeling I had, but all that came up was one word, Souviens, a very gustatory swallowing sort of word in French. Souviens. Remember.

When I returned to Texas, classes for the spring semester ended and the chaos in supermarkets still reigned. I decided to work at one until I could return to New York. I didn’t do it for some sentimental recollection wherein by being in a supermarket, I could harken back to that time where I stood in one in New York, desperately clinging to a normalcy that could never be had. That would be stupid. I only did it because it was one of the few places where I could work overnight and not talk to anyone, not get sick while on the job, and not deal with any customers. So, an overnight job at the supermarket was perfect, just listen to music on my earbuds, go into some aisle, and stock empty shelves until daylight. I applied at one nearby and easily got the job. When I went for an interview, the pay they offered was good despite still being Texas wages, and the work seemed manageable, so with everything lined up, I began working within the week. Continue reading “Filling Empty Shelves”

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