Photo source: Jerry Toh

While the people are being confined to their homes following the ‘circuit breaker’ measures in Singapore, food delivery riders across the country are working hard to ensure Singaporeans get their food at home in rain or shine.
However, food delivery riders often find themselves in stressful situations as they have to deal with customers’ complaints and rude response from the restaurants.
Food delivery rider, Jerry Toh in a Facebook post on Saturday (9 May) expressed the rude response that many food delivery riders have to deal with when picking up customers’ food at the restaurants. He noted that most of the restaurants are hardly cope with the online orders and walk-in customers’ orders due to the lack of manpower.
Mr Toh described how food delivery riders often get shouted by the restaurant staff with a common reply like, “You can, you wait. If you cannot wait, cancel!” especially during peak hours.
Walk-in customers, on the other hand, will be greeted with a big smile and get to be served first.
“Yes. We do have the option to cancel the order but at the very least, restaurant staff should let us know how many orders there are in front of us before we can decide right? Nope, some choose to shout at us yet greet their walk-in customers with a big smile and serve them first before proceeding with our orders. And when we checked our orders again? They would simply reply “Preparing! Preparing!” he asserted.
Noting that food delivery riders will always encourage each other to wait patiently, Mr Toh stated that they usually get more orders during peak hours, while other times they just wait for orders from customers.
Meanwhile, some restaurants will take in online orders from customers even though they are still not ready for operation. Mr Toh shared that he went to a restaurant to pick up a customer’s food but was told to wait for 30 minutes as the restaurant was not ready for operation yet.
“Not only we riders need to wait, their customers would also have to wait. So, who gets the blame when your orders are delayed or you waited too long for ur orders? Us. Riders,” said Mr Toh.
He stressed that food delivery riders never intended to delay customers’ orders, instead, they want to quickly clear the current order they received to obtain the next food delivery order. Their common goal is either to reach daily targets or to gain incentives.
Mr Toh also shared the experience when he had to deliver food on a rainy day. The food was packaged in a big box and was unable to fit into his thermal bag. Due to the rain, the box ended up wet but he claimed that the food was intact and dry.
“I ended up at the customer place with his order, rain drops on the plastic bag but food was intact. He asked me. ‘How come the bag so wet?” “Er.. Because it is raining Sir?’ Most probably, he gave me a 1 star rating,” he noted.
Nevertheless, Mr Toh noted that there are kind people who will remind him to ride safely and not to rush when delivering food. He advised people to be patient and tip delivery riders with a small amount of one or two dollars.

“Restaurant staff are doing their best too,” said some netizens

Upon reading Mr Toh’s post, many netizens praised food delivery riders’ efforts amid the coronavirus outbreak and offered encouraging words to them.
Some netizens expressed their sympathy towards food delivery riders as they noticed that while restaurants are taking too much time to prepare food, food delivery riders have to put up with the customers’ complaints.


Meanwhile, some netizens pointed out that restaurant staff also struggling to prepare the food and advised riders to be more patient. Some said that food delivery riders always click to accept the orders and expect the food to be prepared immediately.



One restaurant owner commented on Mr Toh’s post and claimed that restaurant staff also get shouted by food delivery riders. He noted that sometimes food delivery riders have to wait for an hour to get the food, but he insisted food delivery riders to be more patient.

One netizen, who works in a restaurant, hinted that some food delivery riders were also rude to restaurant staff, adding that riders don’t have to “show black face” when they were asked to wait outside. He went on to suggest riders to cancel the order if they think that the order is taking too long to be ready.
Another netizen opined that riders should understand that restaurant staff are also doing their best to prepare the food quickly, adding that when riders keep asking about the food, it will further slow down the process of preparation.

One netizen explained that some restaurants cannot reject orders from customers and advised food delivery riders to be more sensible when there are too many food orders to prepare.

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