The viral video that showed a delivery agent of Zomato eating food out of a customers order has revealed deep fault lines within the Indian society. While some users have maligned the rider for his lack of professionalism and made him the subject of caustic jokes, a few users have come forward in support of the man, shaming the privileged for demonising him and instead blaming Zomato for its reprehensible business model that underpays its delivery agents.
Here’s what happened
It all started on social media when a user shared the now viral video and tagged Zomato, asking the food delivery company to account for its service providers “unacceptable” behaviour. The two-and-half minute video showed a man wearing a red Zomato t-shirt pulling out a food package from his bag, taking a few bites, and resealing it before presumably resuming his delivery route.
Zomato was virulently attacked and mocked in online comments for its failure to ensure food standards and safety, as netizens, outraged by this breach of faith, felt the need to call the delivery agent out in the most callous possible manner.
The media attention soon prompted Zomato to acknowledge the incident, launch an investigation, and affirm the authenticity of the video. After revealing that it was shot in Madurai in a blog post on Monday, they immediately terminated the delivery executive’s employment, instead of addressing the root cause of his actions and the larger impact of theirs.
Arguments against the rider’s behaviour have ranged from concerns of food tampering to unhygienic handling of food to a certain expectation regarding the quality of service. All these arguments have one thing in common they do not take into account the hierarchy of privilege that exists between such service providers and the users who make use of such services. In such a scenario, the delivery agent is absolutely dehumanised and reduced to being a mere agent catering to the users’ demands.
This incident has also highlighted the inhumane working conditions that food aggregators such as Zomato, Swiggy and Food Panda subject their logistical executives to. Yet, instead of working on its policy to provide delivery agents a stipulated lunch hour, or improving the incentive model to raise their commissions, Zomato decided to focus their resources on coming up with tamper-proof packaging material to prevent incidents like this in the future.
“Additionally, we will educate our delivery fleet of over 1.5 lakh partners to highlight or escalate any such deviations to us, while also encouraging our users the custodians of our platform to highlight the smallest of anomalies to us,” the company added in its blog post.
Zomato’s policy for delivery execs
According to a former campus brand ambassador for Zomato, Zomato pays its delivery executives a paltry Rs 60 per delivery, even after 11:00 pm. Their fuel and bike maintenance expenses are not reimbursed, and bonuses are given as incentives for completing a higher number of orders. It takes 8-12 hours to execute 21 deliveries, with no lunch breaks and no provisions for inclement weather.
There is no official lunch break. Delivery boys are supposed to take out time to eat right in the middle of work. And thats the problem. Imagine you are about to eat your lunch and suddenly you get a delivery request? There is always a shortage of time in this job. However, most delivery guys are well trained and well behaved, I think this is a one-off case, a delivery agent told Hindustan Times.
They also have to pay out of their own pockets for any damaged food items, and there is no tipping policy since delivery charges are often included in the bill or, as in Zomato’s case, you can only tip online.
He who dared to take a bite
But Zomato isn’t the only culprit. Food tampering, despite its ubiquity across the spectrum, doesn’t seem to bother anyone as long as it isn’t caught on camera. In the Zomato case, however, the act appears to have brought privileged Indians face-to-face with the rising economic disparity and the wage gap that is the cornerstone of gig economy.
Gig economy, which lies at the heart of most digitally ordered services, offers convenience to the privileged at the cost of denying basic humanity to those who provide the actual service.
Many defended Zomato’s decision to sack him. ”It’s his job to deliver the food to the customer, that’s what he is getting paid for. This is such a disaster, you can’t defend this act. If he was hungry[,] he could have bought something to eat with his money. It’s unhygienic & a big question on professionalism of delivery guys. I never thought about it, seriously. After seeing this video, I guess it would be very common,” wrote one Facebook user.
This also explains why a protest led by food service delivery agents after two Zomato riders died in road accidents in Nagpur this year didn’t gain as much momentum as this damaging video. A similar video of an Uber Eats delivery agent taking a bite from a customers order in Australia also went viral along a similar narrative.
By exercising our right to social media irresponsibility this time, we have focused on consumer rights but completely denied the humanity of the person who was in all probability compelled to act in such a manner by circumstances that we have perpetuated. At the end of the day, our outrage over the Zomato rider should serve as reminder of how we are cocooned from the harsh reality of the gig economy that privileges our convenience over everything else.
Prarthana Mitra is a staff writer at Qrius