YOUR LOCATION
(PART 2 OF THE RESEARCH FINDINGS)
As I asked my participants about whether (and how) they choose the locale of where they work, it seemed that they employ a gain vs. loss sort of scheme. The gain, naturally, is derived from the number of deliveries they can complete within the timeframe they choose. The loss, interestingly, is considered a bit more amorphously. Or rather, my participants are crystal clear in noting what invested factors may be considered, at a certain threshold, as lost. The threshold itself, however, is set according to either amorphously flexible parameters or to trialled parameters which change to refinement with every experiment. In this article, I (they, actually) will show that even in questions focused around location in its most geographic terms, other factors such as time and energy (electric, physical and mental) are considered in much attention, too.
The evidence of such a ‘trialled threshold’ (if you will) is especially present in discussions themed around productivity. In the closest dialogue with the app’s interface, — though, without referring to the interface directly — Dror says the app ‘is like a game that earns you money’, and that choosing when to go ‘online’ is like ‘betting’. Dror found ‘betting’ useful to illustrate two things about his position when choosing to go ‘online’: (a) his position allows him of independent decision making and (b) he is aware of his unawareness of factors that affect the productiveness of the work-session he chooses to take.
I went further and asked him if there is a way to make a ‘safe’ sort of bet, and he listed factors that all, if active, will affect the fruitfulness of the work session: weather (if it rains, Dror says, fewer people will go out and there will be more deliveries), holidays (restaurants are closed on some holidays, and the couriers will have no deliveries to make), and day phases (there are peaks of orders in midday and the evening; working off-peak, though, at times means that there is less competition because other couriers will wait for the peak, according to Dror, and is more worthwhile). This certainly shows that while the participants’ job is somewhat fixed, in a way, their workplace is not.
To elucidate, the workplace of the courier is not fixed and this projects onto their position: instead of simply going ‘online’ (or going to the office, for some others), they try to negotiate (‘make’) the conditions of their workplace (‘neighbourhood’) using enhanced decision-making schemes — such that considers certain factors toward a decision. Nonetheless, since he is aware that some affective factors relevant to the fruitfulness of the planned work session are unpredictable in themselves, Dror went on to consider his decisions as bets.
Back to how the platform’s app, and their work itself, may seem playful or even annoying, Adam and Dror mention an element posed consistently by the app that they find as highly significant to their decision making. According to them, each time the app offers a delivery task, it shows the offer in some sort of a pop-up window and allows the courier only 10 seconds to confirm the task, the window is then replaced with the next delivery option if there is one (remember, at the time of this research, offers of ‘single’ deliveries feature the recipients’ address in advance, while ‘bundles’ only reveal each point’s address as the delivery progresses from one point to the next).
As the focus of this research is the couriers and not the app, the reasons or the role such a timer is supposed to fill shall not be examined. The only possible role of the timer that shall be explored here is that which participants say they have experienced. Adam says, for instance, that one has to know the city well in order to decide which delivery (offered by the app) should be confirmed and which should be declined. A courier has to know the city in order to confirm worthwhile delivery tasks; this is not an accidental repetition, but another, similar remark made by Dror. The benefit of such familiarity at this crossroad is one (both participants reason it the same): a courier only has 10 seconds to confirm, being timed as such makes it hardly possible for couriers who do not know the city well to search the address over on a maps app separately, consider it, and confirm.
To clarify, the extent of familiarisation my participants find crucial for wise task taking here includes the ability to consider where the pick-up is located against the drop-off and gauge the distance they should travel between them. The distance, all participants find, mostly consumes four resources: time and energy. Why are only two items listed on what I introduced to consist of four resources? Well, my participants have referred to (at times vaguely, at other times clearly) three kinds of energy their work consumes: (1) the energy required to cycle, which can be electrical or physical (out of three participants, two use motorised bicycles and only one uses the familiar, manual bicycles); (2) physical energy that is not devoted specifically to cycling or walking but is appropriated to more general tasks we humans take, the loss of which results in fatigue; and (3) mental energy which allows the couriers to stay alert and safe en route. Evidently, deliveries of short distance are preferable for the couriers, they wish to keep their resources and take as many deliveries as possible (they also, if lucky, get tips. Such seem quite insignificant for them in value compared to what they earn, and they are also unpredictable). Time (4), as noted, is also a resource; the more deliveries one completes in an hour, the more productive their session has been; long deliveries require more time and therefore challenge the couriers’ productivity scheme.
Here we go back to the gain vs. loss scheme my participants use for decision making on their job; the one through which, incidentally, a remarkable part of their independence as P2P couriers is manifested. It is here we shall see that my participants have developed it seeking to make a safe enough decision within 10 seconds. Further, what they developed might illustrate that they needed something additional, more ‘made’, something apart from knowing the city well, something that I see as ‘neighbourhood making’. Considering their resources carefully and having had themselves familiarised with the city (mostly through to their work, but also thanks to the fact they reside in the city they work in; most participants, by the way, have moved there from elsewhere), the participants went on to define geographical boundaries (‘radiuses’) beyond which they will not make deliveries.
Screenshot provided by Adam
Adam knows his 'radius' and imagines it in front of the map. His seems invisible there, but he associates it with what is visible — major street roads.
Here too, the digital aspect of their work takes a central position on stage. The boundaries participants define rely highly on the digital means that visualise the city, mostly Google Maps’ app. This app helps the couriers to define a ‘radius’ better than the map featured within the food-delivery app because it is much more informative. Participants especially value the visual demonstration it provides of the city, its interactivity, and the estimation it presents on how long (in temporal terms) will it take them to get from one point to another. And yet, my participants still have shown to infuse information taken from digital apps with their offline experience of the city. Dror said once that ‘we navigate between reality and infinite information (such provided by digital means)’, and that ‘couriers process the concrete world (with some of that infinite information)’, the better one does that, he says, the better they will earn. This, though, is not clear-cut. Adam, for instance, says that this ‘strategic decision’, as he calls it, means that ‘you have to choose such a large zone (narrating a screenshot of a map he sent me during a video meeting)’, and then he stipulated his decision by saying ‘this zone is not that big’.
Screenshot provided by Dror
A geotagging feature in Google-Photos allows Dror of a photographic, personal, augmented visualisation of the city; map apps thus further demonstrate the city by the inclusion of captured memories, and uses information familiar to Dror.
The ‘radius’ defined by my participants, of course, is of conditions that align the best with the interest they keep vis-à-vis productivity and resources investment (outlined earlier) and it is kept in association with geographic borders. I find their process of ‘radius’ definition illustrative of ‘neighbourhood making’ because this ‘making’ conceptualises a place of conditions and of opportunities. True, its concept is utilised by the couriers to make 10-seconds decisions as they see a delivery opportunity popping on the deliveries app. If your location is within the radius they have defined, which they do independently and not through the app’s settings, the more likely they might bring it to you. However, their ‘making’ incorporates the consideration of conditions other than just distance, such as demand, weather, and others that were mentioned earlier; this ‘neighbourhood’ that they have ‘made’ is where they work. Ipso facto they ‘make’ not just their city, but their workplace (their place of employment, their working environment).
Couriers in central Tel-Aviv, taking a break or waiting for worthwhile delivery tasks;
the city's outdoors is their workplace.
Even though they live in this city, and most radiuses include their home (but are not centred around it), they certainly feel that they are ‘at work’. Adam says that working does not feel like taking a ride around his block because the location of his home is too central to feel like a small neighbourhood. Dror and Michael, too, will intentionally cross the same area in a work session repeatedly (which is their ‘radius’), but will be in terms with the fact that they are on the job (or rather, ‘online’). Participants reason this with the fact that the ‘radiuses’ they define are centred around areas with many restaurants. I.e., couriers centre not in consideration with where ordering clients live (in some areas there might be more people who can afford food-deliveries), but closer to the first point — the pick-up. In a ‘radius’ with many restaurants, their resources are economised (less to spend on travelling to point number one), and there is a fairer probability, they say, to find a delivery opportunity attractive; the ‘neighbourhood’ though, is more than a ‘radius’, it is built from more than the location of restaurants (even if is centred around them), but from conditions (as explained earlier) that make the couriers’ workplace what they want it to be.
