YOUR COURIER
(PART 4 OF THE RESEARCH FINDINGS)
As I began my fieldwork (spring), it was quite common to see couriers walk into restaurants and collect deliveries. Some, evidently, were instructed to wait outside the restaurant until they were signalled in by a waiter when the order is ready or were handed with the product outside. Nowadays (summer), it is quite common to see restaurants and other establishments that have introduced a separate entrance for couriers. At the front door, such establishments hang a sign that points couriers to a secondary entrance (or backdoor) dedicated to deliveries, eschewing the necessity in walking into the restaurant’s dining hall; ostensibly separating couriers from dining patrons. For illustration, this dedicated ‘hub’ could be the supplier’s entrance, a window sill, or a stand at the end of the outdoors-seating section of the restaurant. This phenomenon was gradually spreading during fieldwork, right after the (COVID19) lockdown was lifted.
During the lockdown, as restaurants were unable to host clients, some opted to food-delivery platforms to keep their heads above (or just below) the water. Once the lockdown was lifted along with hospitality restrictions, some establishments reckoned that they had to find logistical solutions for deliveries (if they kept using the platform), the one illustrated here (separate entrances for couriers) is one of the visible ones (adaptations in labour division on the service floor and in the kitchen remain invisible in this study).
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1. A division between patrons and couriers.
2. Various notices on a dedicated entrance signal 'no entry' and instruct couriers to wait outside for the order to be placed on a stand. The restaurant's procedure is outlined in one of the notices and suggestively encourages couriers to not interact with the staff.
3. The same pick-up stand; because of the 'no entry' signs, the restaurant consequentially creates a logistical zone outside.
4. Couriers crowd a pavement waiting for their pick-up.
5. A sign instructing couriers to the back entrance;
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When I asked Dror about separate entrances, he appreciated this solution as helpful and efficient. A dedicated entrance, he says, reduces the time he has to spend in venues during pick-ups. Most often such entrances are signposted and easy to find; eliminating the previous need to fish the managers’ attention in order to fulfil the pick-up — this is solution is instrumental to Dror’s productivity. While I had to mention, here, how this is perceived by one participant, at least, more interested is this study in this separation’s benefit in illustrating the couriers’ dual position as both (a) residents and beneficiaries of the city they inhabit, and (b) as employees.
In emphasis of this duality, Dror mentioned (in another conversation) several restaurants that mistreated him when he came to collect deliveries; this treatment, he says, is quite rare. He added that there is a group chat on Telegram composed of couriers in Tel-Aviv appropriated to warn each other about restaurants that mistreat couriers or those that constantly delay pick-ups. I could not help but remark on how strange it is to treat couriers badly: irreverently to social etiquette, restaurants should remember that couriers reside in Tel-Aviv and are their potential clients. Dror approved of this absurdity. For him, a courier’s dual social position is much clearer than to restaurant managers who neglect to consider them as potential clients and take no issue with giving couriers a treatment lesser than what they would give to dining clients.
Due to this study being an anthropological one, I cannot categorically state that the nature of the couriers’ job and the structure of it (digital P2P platform) creates a wider dissonance between positions of ‘on-duty’ and ‘off-duty’ than any other kind of job. I can only state that my participants experience a vast dissonance between the position of (a) being residents who enjoy the city and are a part of it, and (b) the position in which they serve and work hard so others could enjoy themselves. In addition, I have found that participants who strongly experience such dissonance do associate this dissonance with the nature of their job.
Another interesting finding that may illustrate how this experience could have been materialised is the fact that both Dror and Adam each have two pairs of bicycles, one manual and another motorised (electric). They do not (according to them) require a motorised pair to cruise the city and to get around in their free time when manual bicycles suffice — Dror personally prefers his fixed-gear bicycles (and devotes much to customise them). On the job, however, their productive aspirations require more speed (which their body could not manually provide for the amount of time they wish to work) and therefore require a motorised mode of transportation (Adam even tried using an e-scooter sharing app). Therefore, being ‘online’ (on the job) means that these two participants will not just commute differently from the way they do when they are ‘offline’ but will even use a different vehicle.
Photograph provided by Dror
Photograph provided by Adam
(left) Dror's fixed-gear bicycles; (right) Adam's gear with a shared e-scooter he hired via an app.
Selfie provided by Adam
Because of their branded gear, P2P couriers are always recognisable as couriers; even when they are taking a break. Such brand awareness might be a result of the recent lockdown, during which food-delivery apps' popularity soared.
When keeping our attention on their gear, it is worth noting that couriers use branded, thermal boxes/backpacks to store food during transit, some even wear branded shirts — the brand being, of course, the food-delivery platform via which they work. Also, since they use bicycles to commute, the brand is visible to all. Ipso facto, couriers may feel that they — in addition to parading the brand — parade the fact that they work as couriers. Their employment having such visibility may consequentially result in certain attitudes directed at them: Adam says that when he is carrying the thermal bag, people treat him with more reverence. Inversely, when I asked him about the challenges of his job, nonetheless, he somewhat discarded the ones he listed by saying that being a courier on the platform is ‘already a type of a concession’ — alluding to how he finds his job (what it symbols) unattractive, how every challenge (posed by his job) pales in comparison to it, and how he could amount to a more attractive state of employment.
Dror, too, remarks on how people are ‘surprisingly gracious’ to him when he is wearing a shirt with the platforms’ logo or carrying the branded thermal backpack; interestingly, in another interview conducted much later he makes an opposite remark. Albeit how these testimonials may seem inconsistent, and whether the participants say that people treat them kindly or rudely, one thing remains consistent — my participants associate the treatment they get (whatever the sort) with the fact that they get recognised as food-delivery app couriers.
People, Dror says, know better than before the lockdown to recognise the brand’s logo and thereby understand what it is that he does without knowing him: ‘you are completely anonymous (a stranger), but you are X [noting the platform’s name] on the other hand’. This awareness, to his certainty, is relatively new and is the result of the lockdown (when the app’s popularity grew). When people were not familiarised with the brand nor with the concept of P2P food-delivery apps, Dror — in his uniform and with his gear — ‘felt embarrassed to pass by fashionable areas’ (naming a popular café near Habima Square in particular).
Experiencing such clashes with the environment to the tune of embarrassment or else, as if he is separated from the city in which he resides and the societies that occupy it, Dror strengthens my understanding of his dual position by saying that working as a courier facilitates a desired escapade from his personal life. It is the necessity to constantly be moving, he explains, that promotes such escapade. He says he feels integrated into society both when he is working and when he is not but adds that strangers who see him working still categorise him separately from them. So much so that he avoids taking deliveries from restaurants where women he wishes to date with work. Kindred to this is Adam’s shrugging off of personal notifications that appear on his phone while working, his view of his position as a courier to be a concession. Michael too, talks as if he copes with what he describes as ‘clashes’ between his job and his personal life by conceding to his job.
Albeit their position being experienced to a considerable duality, I would like to reiterate at this point that couriers appreciate their job for the great independence it allows them and the sizeable income it makes possible for them to earn. How their position is experienced negates nothing of the things they value in their job, and it is mostly understood (and experienced) by how they think strangers see couriers rather than by how couriers see themselves.