Grabfood Rider Shares Reality Of Delivering Meals & How He Was Treated With Kindness During Covid-19

GrabFood Delivery Man Sums Up Experience Working, Encounters Heartbreaking & Heartwarming Acts

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stress test of sorts on many fronts in Singapore.

The nation’s economy, healthcare, and supply chains all faced challenging emergencies. However, each had measures to buffer the effects of the pandemic — such as $59.9 billion budgets, isolation centres, and stockpiles that can tank for 2 months.

But another thing Covid-19 has tested is the mettle of Singaporeans, as one GrabFood deliveryman sums up in a Facebook post on Friday, 10 Apr.

Mr Ke bore witness to both heartwarming and heartbreaking attitudes of Singaporeans, and spoke candidly about his observations while delivering food during ‘Circuit Breaker’.

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As his post is rather lengthy, we summarise it for you below.

Unfortunate victims & impatient customers

While travelling islandwide to deliver food to customers, Mr Ke bumped into some not-so-pleasant situations that he coined “bad/heartbreaking experiences”.

One migrant worker had to resort to asking him for some food that was meant to be delivered to a customer. Said worker had no money to feed himself, as his employer was unable to pay his wages on time.

Mr Ke setting a good example safe distancing and wearing his mask
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Another incident involved a bad rating when a customer wasn’t understanding about the circumstances of delay. To enter a condominium complex, Mr Ke had to go through temperature screening and contact tracing measures. This, on top of the fact that it was a rainy day, led to delayed food delivery and him receiving a 1-star rating.

For GrabFood deliverymen, this is highly detrimental as ratings are used when calculating their performance.

But kind people also exist

However, the situation isn’t so dismal, as Mr Ke also had his share of heartwarming encounters.

On his first day delivering food, one waitress offered him refreshments when his order took a while to prepare. She shared some kind words with him as well, saying, “It’s tough to be in this line, here’s some tea for you as encouragement!”

Grab riders still delivering food that we order from the safety of our own homes
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Mr Ke also had a kind elderly woman tip him $5 for her order. This was a relatively generous tip, as the granny looked to live in a rental flat. Her tip also cost her nearly as much as her order.

Frustration with irresponsible citizens

In his post, the GrabFood deliveryman also expressed his frustration with irresponsible people who choose to hang outside “for fun”.

He believes that staying at home is a form of privilege that is being abused by people who choose to go out for non-essential reasons. However, he does acknowledge that for each person that goes out for fun, another person goes out as they genuinely do not feel safe at home.

But Mr Ke still advises citizens to stay home if they can, as curbing the pandemic is a team effort. Rather than condemning people straight away, he suggests gently checking in with them to see if any underlying causes lead to them going out.

We shouldn’t judge immediately, instead seek to find out more on how you can help.

Tips on tipping effectively

Before he signed off, Mr Ke also shared some helpful advice on how to tip such that the money goes to workers who need it most.

Firstly, he encouraged tipping delivery riders as it is the only form of income that companies have no say in. And in these dire times, every little bit helps and is more than welcome.

Secondly, customers might want to consider ordering direct from the hawker to eliminate them having to pay middleman delivery fees. This way, the hawker directly benefits from the order.

Hawker centres seeing greatly reduced traffic as many stay home
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Kind of strange for Mr Ke to suggest, since he’s part of the middleman community, but that doesn’t make his advice any less true. Besides, hawkers could really use our help at this time.

Frontline experience puts things in perspective

Even though Mr Ke isn’t a healthcare worker, his experience definitely still puts things in perspective for the rest of us.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlights more than just health and money issues. It also shows the true colours of Singaporeans when the going gets tough.

Do we step on others to survive, or do we hold each others hands and get through the pandemic together?

Let’s aim for the latter, so we can be proud of ourselves when we come out of this as better people.

Featured image adapted from Facebook and AsiaOne. Image on right for illustration purposes only.