Eleme's plan to relax meal delivery time sparks debate

Two leading online food delivery service platforms announced on Wednesday measures to give workers more time to deliver meals.

Eleme, one of such platforms, announced on Wednesday it will release a new feature that will allow diners to give delivery workers more time to deliver meals.

The announcement came after an investigative story published by China's People magazine on Tuesday that sparked intense debate on Chinese social media. The story revealed how delivery work has become a highly dangerous career driven by tight delivery times assigned by the algorithms of these tech platforms.

Eleme said in a statement that the new feature will add a button on the consumer's page after payment saying "I am willing to wait five or 10 more minutes". If the user is not in a hurry, they can click on the button to give the delivery person a little more time.

At the same time, the platform will provide an incentive mechanism for outstanding delivery workers. Even if they fail to deliver meals on time, they will not be penalized.

"The system is set, but people are flexible," the company said. "On the basis of ensuring the punctuality of orders, Eleme hopes to do better. Everyone who works hard is worthy of being respected."

The statement is the company's response to the article that aroused wide public attention on delivery workers' safety.

The article pointed out when a delivery worker receives an order, the platform's system will automatically calculate a delivery route with a time limit. If the delivery person fails to deliver the meal on time, they will need to compensate the consumer or face punishments such as salary cuts or job termination.

Often allocated with a number of orders and pushed by tight deadlines, delivery workers frequently violate traffic rules, potentially endangering themselves and others.

The article also pointed out that the more quickly delivery workers manage to reach users, the tighter delivery time assignment limits become due to data sent to the terminal server. Further, the server often fails to take into account many other factors that would affect delivery workers' speed, such as when the restaurant is ready to serve the food, elevator waiting time and extreme weather conditions.

Additionally, the system suggests the shortest delivery route, overlooking traffic flow, red lights or footbridges.

Delivery workers are often selfless in their quests to do their jobs, the story explained.

"The first reaction of all delivery workers after a fall is to get up quickly and check if the food is spilled. Then they call the customers to explain. No one cares about themselves… Personal safety is never their focus. How to deliver meals to customers on time is their focus," the article said, quoting a traffic police officer.

Police data also showed that in Shanghai, one delivery worker was injured or killed every 2.5 days in the first half of 2017, and in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the traffic police dealt with nearly 10,000 illegal workers, along with 196 related accidents and 155 casualties during a seven-month period in 2018.

After the story was published on Tuesday, the topic "How Food Delivery Service Has Become a High-Risk Occupation" became one of the most discussed on Sina Weibo, with many netizens raising doubts against the "inhuman" algorithms and expressing that they are willing to wait longer to ensure delivery people's safety.

Meanwhile, Meituan, another leading food delivery giant, issued a statement on Wednesday, saying it will optimize its system to provide delivery workers with eight minutes of "flexible time".

"They can have more time to wait for elevators and lower their speed at crossroads," said the statement. The system will also extend the compulsory delivery time during bad weather, according to the statement.

Many netizens were unimpressed by Eleme's response, with many seeing the company's new directive as a way to shift the responsibility of delivery workers' safety to customers.

"If I give them five more minutes, they would not use the time to ride slowly or obey the traffic rules. They would only use it to take one more order. This is not the ultimate cure to solve the problem," Shanghai resident Tian Bei commented.

"The platform is not willing to give its employees more time but it wants customers to pay. Is this even reasonable?" a Sina Weibo user named Shuizhiyinyuan posted.

Another user going by the name Hundecaitang also commented under Eleme's statement that instead of asking customers to wait, it would be better to optimize the platform's system.

"Stop setting such an extreme delivery time," she wrote.

Yang Wenzhan, a civil and commercial lawyer at Zhongdun Law Office based in Beijing, said Eleme's move is implying that the conflict lies with consumers.

It is the platform that makes the rules and forces delivery workers to take risks and violate the rules. When the topic became widely discussed, the platform announced the new "humane" feature, but it is suggesting that consumers should be the group with more tolerance, he said.

"This is the normal act played by many service companies," he said. "While exerting extreme pressure on front-line service workers, they also try to retain consumers by giving promises. Once they can't keep those promises, they will punish the front-line workers, pushing the conflict they created to front-line workers and consumers," he said.

Under such conditions, service workers still have no right to be engaged in company rule-making or the time-setting; they can only choose whether to continue working or quit, he said, adding that platforms should make more reasonable rules instead of "showing fake kindness".