This article is from WeChat official account:Tsinghua University Fresh Times (ID: qingxintimes), original title “they live progressive fence”, author: Yang Ru Jun, Editor: Han Ruirui, title figure from: Zhang Ting Kai
What’s in the express station? There are neatly arranged shelves, mountains of packages, and couriers shuttle between them.
From the old express station in Bauhinia Building 2, to the shelf in Building 14, to a parcel outside the fence, the express station is constantly changing, and the discussion on the campus caused by the express point has become more heated.
The couriers are witnessing the changes in the express station. They work in the changes and live outside the fence.
Express Service Station
Express life
At six o’clock in the morning, Master Zhao set off from the rental house and went to the SF business office two kilometers away from Tsinghua to sort the goods. He needs to find the goods whose destination belongs to Tsinghua among the large amount of goods sent from the transit yard, put them into sacks, load them on a tricycle, and pull them to Tsinghua Park.
He and his partner unloaded the big bags of goods onto the cart, and then pushed them to the shelves in coordination with each other. one personCart, one person is holding the goods. During the process, even though both of them were very careful, there were still a few packages that fell out, and sometimes even the whole sacks fell directly from the cart.
After “short drifting”, the packages were taken out one by one by Master Zhao and other staff, scanned information, numbered, and placed on the shelves in order, waiting for their final destination in a corner of Tsinghua Northwest.
At nine o’clock in the morning, Master Zhao and the staff at the courier point again verified the receipt information and sent a text message and a pickup code to the recipient. After all this is over, the preparation work of the couriers is completed.
Such scenes are repeated five or six times a day. Nowadays, Tsinghua University’s SF Express Station receives about 2,000 small items every day, which also means that the work of couriers is getting more and more onerous.
The epidemic has slowed down and online shopping and logistics have gradually recovered, which has also increased the burden on couriers. Master Zhao still remembers that at the end of November last year, SF Express only had about 700 or 800 items a day. This year, from the time students returned to school to the present, the number of express delivery remained high. “Especially when the students came back from school, they were all big packages, and I was almost exhausted!” Master Zhao spat out bitterly half-jokingly.
When the fall semester begins, there are many cases of “students arriving first before the goods arrive”. A maximum of 30 or 40 packages are taken away from more than 100 packages every day. Master Zhao can only contact the recipients one by one, and the response is nothing more than “Master, I haven’t returned to school yet” or “You can stay for me for two more days”. Master Zhao could only hang up the phone and take the remaining parcels back to the business point for storage before dusk.
After 11:30 noon every day, it is the peak of student pickup. In order to better cope with the “pick-up torrent”, Master Zhao brought his lunch time to before the peak-went to the cafeteria at 11 o’clock, packed the food and brought it to the express station, and hurriedly finished eating one bite after another. strong>. Sometimes the students come early, so he can only pick up the students first, then take the time to eat two meals, and then hurriedly put down the lunch box to continue the pick up.
“I don’t have a good stomach doing express delivery.” Master Zhao said, “It’s normal not to eat a day when I’m busy.” The couriers are basically not accurate in eating, and often get hungry and full. Sometimes during the daytime is too tight, they can’t have time to eat, so they can only go back to eat hard at night, and they don’t have time to digest after eating, so they fall asleep in bed.
It was past eleven when I got home at night. Master Zhao dragged his tired body back to his rental house, too tired to fall asleep while sitting. Work has “squeezed” him to the extreme, “time and energy have been emptied.”
Different from Master Zhao, who has been in Tsinghua for eight years, Sister Zhou, who also works at the SF collection point, has only been here for less than two years. In just over a year, she has developed a good skill at the express station. The classmate is still several meters away, and she can tell that the classmate is going to pick up the courier from her, and be ready to pick it up.
“Many classmates asked me:’Why don’t you SF Express line up?’ I said:’Because we pick up and get it quickly!'” Sister Zhou said with a smile, “In fact, the main reason is that we have less cargo. Lah.”
Sister Zhou and younger sister are both couriers and they deliver the goods in the same place, and their similar appearance is often noticeable. “Sometimes when classmates come to pick up the package, they will ask, ‘Eh, are you twins?’ It’s very interesting.”
Near Neighbor Service Station
the bitterness in the package
According to the monitoring data of the State Post Bureau, in recent years, the business volume of my country’s express delivery industry has increased from 1.51 billion pieces in 2008 to 63.52 billion pieces in 2019, an increase of 41 times. As of November 16, 2020, my country’s annual express business volume exceeded 70 billion pieces for the first time. However, couriers are getting harder and harder to recruit. According to the data of China Employment Training Technical Guidance Center, in the third quarter of 2020, among the 100 occupations that recruit more than job seekers, couriers rank 9th.
The “2019 National Express Practitioners Occupation Survey” shows that 46.85% of my country’s express delivery employees work 8-10 hours a day, 33.69% work 10-12 hours a day, and nearly 20% of employees work more than 12 hours. . But the salary of most couriers is below 5,000 yuan, and this ratio has reached 75.07%. The proportion of couriers with a “monthly salary of over 10,000” is only 1.49%.
Monthly income distribution of express employees. Picture from “2019 National Express Practitioners Occupation Survey”
The “excessive work” of the courier brings “less gain”. Master Zhao also feels the same. His salary does not have a basic salary, and it depends entirely on a commission on delivery. “Earn more if you have more pieces, and earn less if you have less.” The commission for delivering an express delivery is between 0.8 yuan and 1 yuan, and this figure was 1.6 yuan when he first joined the company. Master Zhao said that the money that could be earned by sending out 100 pieces in the past may not necessarily be earned by sending 200 pieces.
Before coming to Beijing, Master Zhao worked in Guangdong as a worker on the factory assembly line. In 2008, Beijing was enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the Olympic Games, and Master Zhao also came here that year and began his life in Beijing. In the beginning, he was doing catering in Chaoyang District. Later, when someone said that express delivery made money, he decided to switch to express delivery.
Compared with working in a factory, being a courier makes Master Zhao feel more free. “At least there will be no leaders staring at you behind you.” In the factory, all the time is strictly calculated and planned, and even the toilet must be replaced by someone before leaving temporarily.
After really entering the express industry, Master Zhao discovered that relative freedom is true, and it is true that he is busier. He has no time to eat, and his rest time is reduced. Once, the electric car and the goods to be delivered were all stolen and never recovered. It was an unforgettable moment in Master Zhao’s eight-year express delivery career.
When the express industry is busiest, count the annual “Double Eleven”. Master Zhao feels that every time he finishes Double Eleven, he feels like being “stripped.” Since many couriers are short-term part-timers, some of them will choose to resign before Double Eleven to avoid the huge pressure during the peak express period.
During Double Eleven, Master Zhao has to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning and can only go home at 12 in the evening, and sleeps up to three hours a day. And there shouldn’t be any problems with the delivery, onceAny problems will be questioned by the leader. Basically all couriers believe that Double Eleven is a double torture for couriers: torturing both the body and the spirit.
Sister Zhou’s shopping promotion policy on Double Eleven is as precious as she knows: “The pre-sale will be shipped on November 1st this year, or else we will still be busy with Double Eleven at the end of November.” But neither she nor Master Zhao Love spends online shopping on Double Eleven. The former is too busy, and the latter thinks Double Eleven is a consumption trap. “First raise the price for you, then lower it, it’s not much cheaper.”
In the past eight years of Master Zhao at Tsinghua, his partners have changed a lot. Some people switched jobs to other jobs, some returned to their hometowns to start a business, and he was the only one who remained in the express delivery industry. At first, among the more than 100 colleagues who stayed in the same area with him, now only six or seven are left.
“The young people nowadays may not be able to bear this kind of crime. There is no time all day long, and no object can be found.” Master Zhao paused, and then said: “We are married and have a family. A little bit.”
Talking about the reasons for perseverance, Master Zhao only said one sentence: “Because the wife and children at home are waiting to eat, if you mess around, you can’t make money.”
The life on the back of the express
In 2012, Master Zhao came to Tsinghua University and stayed there for 8 years. Except for returning home during the Spring Festival holiday, at other times of the year, he used the parcels he sent to deal with the people in the garden.
He is very familiar with the work and rest of Tsinghua students, and can skillfully tell the time of each get out of class. He has eaten all over the student cafeteria and has his own set of evaluation criteria for the dishes: “Bauhinia, peach and plum are more delicious, and each layer of taste is different. Qingfen is not very good, and there are not enough dishes.” He is also familiar with it. Throughout the Tsinghua Park, I have been to the Second School Gate, the School of Journalism, and many experimental buildings to the north of the main building. He often goes to Heqingyuan, which is unfamiliar to many students on campus. There are many academicians and professors who live there. Part of it.
During the winter and summer vacations, Master Zhao’s children will come to Beijing and spend some time with their father. One of the two children has just entered junior high school and the other is still in elementary school. Speaking of the two children, what Master Zhao worries most is the reading problem: it is unrealistic for the children to go to school in Beijing. If you want to transfer back to the exam, you have to take time to adapt and relearn the textbooks from his hometown.
“I heard that this year’s Henan test scored more than 600 points.A lot, but it may be difficult to read all of them. “Master Zhao looked around at the students who came to pick up the package, and continued, “So, those who can go to Tsinghua University must be excellent. “
Master Zhao is on duty at Near Neighbor
Sister Zhou’s child will go to the entrance examination next year. She will go back to her hometown every winter and summer vacation to accompany her children to do homework and make up lessons. She dreams of sending her children to Beijing to study.
During the holidays, she and her child complained about being tired at work. The child smiled and said to her, “Do you really want to slap yourself when you were ten?” She replied, “Yes, hate I didn’t work hard at that time.”
Sister Zhou has to go through the Sixth Teaching and Wentu after get off work every day. When you pass by, you will see the lights in the classroom, the teacher is still in class, and the students are still studying. At this time, she always sighed: the more powerful people are, the harder they are.
Sister Zhou is not always “stationed” here like Master Zhao. Like a migratory bird, she “migrates” back and forth between Beijing and her hometown of Qianjiang, Hubei. She returns to her hometown for two months during winter and summer vacations, and returns to the express station of Tsinghua at other times.
Qianjiang, Hubei, is famous for breeding crayfish-this is a poverty alleviation project promoted in the city. Sister Zhou also raises shrimps at home, but the work is now handed over to her parents-in-law. In her time at home, she works as a tailor and part-time job in a nearby garment factory like many women in the village. Sister Zhou had agreed with the boss of the factory that she only worked as a temporary worker and left after a few months. Due to the impact of the epidemic, Zhou Jie returned home during the Spring Festival this year and did not return to Beijing until October and returned to Tsinghua.
Many people in my hometown think that working in a factory is not bad, and there is no need for Zhou Jie to travel between places like this. But she herself enjoys this kind of “migratory bird” life: “I like to run on both sides like this, I don’t feel tired.” This kind of “migration” not only brings her relatively higher income, but also brings her relative free life.
outside the fence
Master Zhao witnessed the “history of change” of Tsinghua Express Station.
When he first arrived at Tsinghua, the courier was standing near Building No. 2 in Zijing. One year ago, the school did not allow courier companies to enter the school. The couriers could only arrange the goods outside and “airdrop” the packages to the students through the fence. Throwing express delivery has the risk of injuring students, so this semester the school built a temporary delivery center near the small forest.
The conditions of the temporary express station are not so ideal. When it rains, the couriers have to build a simple shed with plastic sheeting, and use bamboo poles to top a plastic sheet from time to time to let the rainwater on the roof flow down and not crush the plastic sheet. When the wind blows, the dust will fly. In the words of Master Zhao, “You have to drink the soil when the wind blows.” “Concentration conditions are too poor, and I feel that it is detrimental to Tsinghua’s image.”
With the innovation of the express delivery industry, more and more self-service express cabinets enter the campus, which also brings new challenges to traditional couriers like Master Zhao.
On January 13, 2020, students obtained a deal with courier service facilities, and Zhongke Fuchuang won the bid, and the smart express cabinet “Nearby” entered Tsinghua. After that, the Nearlinbao express service station was established, and the Nearlinbao express cabinet also appeared in the southeast corner of the Bauhinia basketball court. In front of the neighboring treasure express cabinet, students can operate self-service pickup through a small program, which shortens the waiting time for pickup.
Master Zhao said that Nearlinbao’s entry into Tsinghua University has brought a lot of convenience for students to get express delivery, but it has also brought a lot of pressure on various express delivery companies. Nearlinbao hopes to reach cooperation with various express companies, and the express company will supply the goods, and Nearlinbao will be responsible for the delivery within the school. This worries many couriers, including Master Zhao: First, the commission will be reduced by half, and second, many couriers will face unemployment.
In order to avoid such a situation, some express companies chose to withdraw from the campus and returned to the “old place” outside the fence. The delivery of express delivery also returned to the previous “airdrop” mode.
The courier delivers packages to classmates
On November 20, the high fence once again separated the pickup team from the courier. Students stood inside the fence, watching the parcels climb over the fence, “falling from the sky”, and quickly took over the large and small items that were dropped by the air. There was noise among the classmates: someone was hit by a package that was thrown in, and someone almost fell off the fence.
Nowadays, there is no better agreement between Neinbao and various courier companies, and the couriers can only return outside the fence.
On November 27th, regarding the delivery problem at the express station, the Health Rights Department of the Student Union of the school communicated with relevant teachers in the student community. The school community center promises: It will take measures to ensure that no express delivery will be lost over the fence; it has been determined that express delivery cabinets will be installed around the dormitory area, which is under construction; the express delivery company outside the school will temporarily return Will not enter the school.
Will the express station usher in a new look? How will the problem of students’ difficulty in picking up documents be completely resolved? “Fresh Times” will continue to report on issues related to express delivery points.
Although work and life are always facing various new difficulties, Sister Zhou has a set of her own life philosophy: a good mentality and a happy life. She feels that if she thinks more openly, she will live happily; if she takes all the pressure on her body and always feels annoying, then she can’t.
When it rains, the cleaning union comes to the courier station to deliver brooms, so that the couriers can sweep away the water in the pit and the fallen leaves that have been trampled on. Sister Zhou picked among the three broomsticks that looked exactly the same, and picked a red handle, decorated with ladybugs and butterflies. She smiled and said, “This one is a little more beautiful, making me happy to look at it.”
The original shelf “disappeared”
This article is from WeChat official account:Tsinghua University Fresh Times (ID: qingxintimes), author: Yang Ru Jun, Editor: Han Ruirui, photography: Zhang Ting Kai