This article comes fromWeChat official account: Vista World School (ID: dailyvista), author: Chen Jinsong, title figure from the visual China
Sabrao(Excelso Sabulao) is a Mexican immigrant living in Houston, Texas, USA. He can hardly speak English, but he got a decent job. Working four days a week, ten hours a day, the hourly wage is close to $20. With these wages, he supported a family of seven people, which is a remarkable miracle during the new crown epidemic.
Sabrao got the Amazon prime package
Picture source: reuters
Sabra is one of hundreds of thousands of Flex drivers on Amazon. Flex drivers are an almost unknown labor force. Many users don’t know that for the past two years, it is not Amazon’s own logistics employees who have sent orders, but them. In theory, these people are independent, completely temporary couriers, operating through an APP-based project-Amazon Flex.
Similar to deliverymen and couriers in China, these seemingly independent couriers are actually firmly nailed in the system and trapped in the algorithm. In the United States, the competition among delivery staff is equally fierce. Full-time delivery staff like Sablau must scramble for orders and deliver orders, and everything must be speed-oriented in order to obtain a salary sufficient to feed the family.
In this speeding contest between couriers, many people do everything they can to compete with each other in all kinds of weird, crazy, and even dangerous ways.
From seven to eight, a day for ordinary American couriers
As an independent Flex courier for Amazon, Sablau delivers about 160 parcels to Amazon every day, and to deliver all kinds of packages to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. All kinds of goods, from dumbbells to cereals.
At 7 o’clock on Monday morning, Sablau drove to the Amazon distribution center in Stafford on the outskirts of Houston, put on a mask, parked the car in a dedicated parking space with Amazon Flex logo, turned on the phone, and grabbed the “Block” of the day. After confirmation, loading starts.
He picked up two cart parcels at the center, the parcels were printed with the Amazon Prime logo. Sablau put these packages on the trunk and seats, and soon filled his Accord. Sablau took off his mask, scanned the first package with his phone, and drove toward the RiverStone community five miles away according to the address.
Sabrau who is dispatching orders in the wealthy area
Picture source: reuters
The route is automatically generated by Flex according to the algorithm. Of course, Sablau can deliver the goods without this route, but most drivers will follow it.
Because according to the designated route, customers can always know the location of the delivery driver. The map used by Amazon Flex is Nokia’s HERE, not the most popular Google map in the United States-this is because Amazon does not want its data to be obtained by competitors.
At nine o’clock in the morning, when Sablau arrived on Mogo Creek Street in the RiverStone community, Flex reminded him that he had reached the address of the first customer. He took out the package and scanned the bar code, which showed “no recipient needed”, which means that the package only needs to be placed at the door, and no one needs to sign for it. This is true for most of Amazon’s orders, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. One more contact is more dangerous.
Sabra put the parcel at the door, then took a photo and uploaded it to the APP. He also needs to fill in the APP whether the parcel was placed at the front door or the back door, and if anyone came out to wait. After filling in, Sablau drove to the address of the next client, which was an apartment in First Colony, 4 kilometers away.
Sablau doesn’t like apartments, because unlike House, apartments are closed. It is troublesome to drive in and out, and you will have to find a specific house number after you arrive. Sure enough, after stopping the car, it took Subraudo 10 minutes to find the specific address. Fortunately, this was also a package that did not need to be signed, which saved some trouble.
In this way, Sablau returned home at 8:00 in the evening. He delivered a total of 141 packages today. Flex shows that his total income is $215. Of course, this does not include his gas and toll road tolls. , These are borne by Sablau himself. Even so, it was a good day for Sablau.
The promotion is very good, but the reality is inconsistent
The Amazon Flex project, in the eyes of many people, may violate the labor law, but it is very important in Amazon’s “last mile” delivery.
When Amazon adds a certain distribution center to the Flex project, the company will first publish advertisements on various websites, known as “a good opportunity to be your own boss”, recruit drivers everywhere, and then provide each delivery The center develops a unique code, consisting of three letters and one number. The code name of the Stafford Center where Sablau is located is STF5.
After the interested drivers pass the online preliminary screening, they submit an application in the APP, and then an Amazon outsourcing company will conduct background checks on the drivers. Some drivers passed the investigation within 4 hours, while others waited for more than a month.
Sabrau is scanning the express
Picture source: fashionweek
According to the contract provided by Flex, the conditions for approval are very loose: you are over 21 years old, have a smartphone with Flex application, and have convenient transportation.
The Flex project does not provide vehicles and uniforms for couriers, only an ID badge without a photo.
The training is also pitiful. In the distribution center, there is a 1-hour training for drivers to participate voluntarily. In addition, drivers who are new to Flex can watch about 20 videos on their mobile phones to learn about the company’s requirements and rules and agree to them.
The driver grabs “block(task package)” from the APP every day to perform work, billed by the hour, and also considers related Route and cost. The “block” on Flex covers various Amazon businesses, including fresh food and restaurants, etc., but the two most common businesses are ordinary logistics and Amazon member logistics.
Amazon’s advertisement says that subsidies vary by region. With subsidies, Sablau’s average wage is US$20.50 per hour, which is not too bad according to gig economy standards.
Amazon’s Flex, similar to Uber, is good for extra money. For many drivers, they really have the mentality of making extra money, and it doesn’t hurt. But for drivers like Sablau, this job is all their livelihood. How to get more packages is directly related to the quality of life of their family.
Speed, non-mandatory recognized “iron regulations”
Unlike domestic courier brothers, Amazon’s delivery drivers do not have mandatory work speed requirements, but for express delivery jobs, the world is the same, speed is everything. In order to better achieve speed first, couriers need to use Amazon’s express order application Flex to plan a rough route.
Different from the 30-minute delivery of short-distance delivery in domestic cities, in the United States, most Flex planned delivery routes last two to four hours, and one delivery will arrange several orders on the same route. This setting allows Every order is more important. Missing an order can cause heavy losses.
When Sablau logs in to the app, he will repeatedly click a large orange refresh button until the delivery order appears on the screen. Once the delivery order page appeared, drivers began scrambling to grab every order.
They have a few seconds to pass the verification and then click the “Accept” button on the screen to get the order, first come first served. New orders appear in the APP at random time intervals. If the speed of sliding and clicking is not fast enough, the order will disappear.
Competition is cruel, because hundreds of drivers will compete for several orders at the same time.
Sablau often can’t grab others because many drivers use plug-ins to grab orders. The order-grabbing tool is a mobile phone APP that can be refreshed repeatedly, and can also imitate a finger to click the “accept” button, thus shortening the time from a few seconds to a few milliseconds, which makes Sablau can get fewer and fewer packages.
“We all have to struggle hard for a meal. We have to manually type on the keyboard a few times every second, and keep typing until we see an order.” In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Sablau Say.
At present, the most commonly used plug-in APP is Flex Utility. This APP uses the auxiliary function of the Android phone to simulate clicking the accept button on the Flex application. The Flex Utility tool can automatically refresh the page, filter out the dispatch information that does not match the user’s search criteria, and then help the driver quickly confirm the order.
This app is on GoogleThe store price is 22 dollars. Of course, the use of plug-ins is illegal, because the Flex Terms of Service prohibit them from using programs or scripts “for investigation, operation, or data mining purposes.” Once cheating is discovered by Amazon, it is possible to stop their Flex driver qualifications.
Despite the risks, plug-ins have become an increasingly common tool used by Flex drivers. Many drivers have been frustrated with this fierce and often unpredictable order-hunting phenomenon. Sablau is one of them.
The plug-in allows him to see less and less dispatch information, but the economic crisis caused by the new crown epidemic makes him more dependent on this job, because his original cleaning wife has no customers, and now no one wants to be unfamiliar People come to the home.
After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, many people lost their jobs, but Amazon thrived. During the epidemic, the number of orders soared, the driver’s income became more important, and the order grabbing became more and more intense. In Amazon’s various logistics businesses, there has been a phenomenon of order grabbing.
In September, Bloomberg reported that in the vicinity of Whole Foods Supermarket in the suburbs of New York, a strange situation appeared: many mobile phones were hung on trees. These phones are also linked to by Amazon delivery drivers, in order to better grab orders.
Whole Foods Supermarket uses another system “Instant Offers” developed by Amazon. This is a fully automatic order dispatching system that detects drivers around based on the distance and dispatches orders according to the distance, with an accuracy of 0.5 meters. In this case, the mobile phone hanging on the tree will help the owner to get more orders.
The cell phone hung on the tree to grab an order
Picture source: twitter
After the incident was exposed, Amazon stated that it had noticed this phenomenon, and they had modified the code to prevent this kind of illegal order grabbing.
However, these have nothing to do with Sablau. He has not passed the review of Instant Offers. Now he is more concerned about how many mission packages he can see tomorrow. The more people who join FlexThe more he came, the fewer and fewer mission packages he got. Now, he is also considering whether to install a plug-in.
This article is fromWeChat official account: Vista World School (ID: dailyvista), author: Jinsong