Food delivery couriers with bright blue and green box-like delivery bags zooming around on bicycles, scooters and cars is common sight in Riga. They are very visible, yet in a way they remain invisible. Due to the fast pace and contact-less manner of their work we never actually meet them. The platforms advertise the flexibility and independence of their work. Xenophobes grumble about many immigrants among them. Most of us simply receive what is delivered and do not pay attention to the person who makes the delivery. In fact, couriers are not a faceless mass. They vary in their views and life experiences and they have interesting stories to tell. One of the goals of our project is to daylight diversity of people working as couriers, listen to what they think, what their work experience is and how they see the city and our society. With their help, we want to find more clarity in what gig-work really is and we want to show it from the point of view of the couriers, because who else knows it better than them.
In the course of the project, we met and interviewed many Wolt and Bolt couriers in Riga. Here we will share some excerpts from the stories we heard. Also, we present photo series “A human behind the box” by photographer Aija Melbarde, where she spent a couple of days photographing couriers in the streets of Riga. The names of the couriers in all stories have been changed and none of the narrators appear in the photos. This is because our goal is not to highlight specific personalities, but rather to illustrate gig-work everyday realities with the help of their stories. With this, we strive to make visible a human being behind every “box”, a person with thoughts, opinion, concerns and emotions. Many thanks to all the couriers who got involved and gave us a little glimpse into their everyday life.
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.
COURIER WITH A SAX
Let’s call him Sergey. Sergey was born in Riga. Until the 10th grade, his primary language in school and at home was Russian. From all his family members only grandad spoke Latvian. After the 10th grade, his grandmother encouradged Sergey to study music, and he transferred to Latvian-language high school with a music major. His instrument was saxophone. He finished his 4th year in Covid conditions, but then decided that he did not want to be professionally associated with music and applied to the electric engineering program at the university. To support himself, he got a part-time job as a car mechanic. Now Sergey has finished his studies. He works as a courier and occasionally plays the saxophone. The skills of a car mechanic come in handy in courier work – he does not need a car service and can make small repairs himself.
At the moment, Sergey has a full-time job and works as a courier when his day shift is over. He makes deliveries as long as there are incoming orders or as long as he feels like working. By now he has developed substantial experience and feels like he can get the most out of the gig-work. He can tell which orders to refuse and which to accept, how to maximize his income but not fall bellow the acceptable activity rating of the platform. It is not that simple – you have to calculate non-stop in order to be profitable.
Sergey has worked on both Wolt and Bolt platforms and can compare their advantages and disadvantages. For example, the advantage of Bolt is that you get paid for your work every week, while Wolt pays every two weeks – in the middle and at the end of the month. On the other hand, Wolt takes more care of its couriers by offering insurance. Wolt also adjusts the number of couriers registered on the platform to the expected number of orders, thus trying to reduce situations where the courier has to wait for a long time without receiving any orders..
Sergey thinks couriers should be paid more. Especially, since fuel prices and car service costs have increased significantly. At the same time, he is skeptical about ability of Latvian couriers to join a union and demand higher pay. He believes that Latvians lack rebelliousness. “For something like that to happen, there must be a person who initiates and organises it. It is typical for locals to think – in principle, it’s a completely normal job, no one is violating my rights, no one is forcing you to do anything illegal. Therefore everything must be OK”. Immigrants, on the other hand, do not have much choice where to work – couriering is nearly the only job they can get, therefore there is a little chance of them joining a union or taking part in a strike.
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.
TO LOOK OVER YOUR LEFT SHOULDER
Let’s call him Noa. Noa is 35 years old, and as he says, “an ordinary person”, although it is enough to mention that Noa identifies with a non-binary gender and is one of the activists of the Latvian drag king movement for many people to find him pleasantly unordinary. He lives in a Riga suburb with his partner. They take care of a cat and a chicken, as well as their partner’s three children from a previous relationship that stay with with them on holidays.
Noa holds a degree in engineering. He completed undergraduate studies at the Riga Technical University. About this choice of education, he says: “I just kind of went with the flow. The government said that engineers were needed and provided funding for these programs. I chose to go with the funding, not where I was actually interested in. I was interested in architecture, but did not get a scholarship. And, unfortunately, I didn’t try again”. After graduation, he continued for masters in the Netherlands, specializing in engineering networks of water systems. After his studies, he returned to Latvia and immediately got a good job in his specialty in a Dutch company. Although the work was well paid, it did not feel satisfying. The work turned out to be rarther administrative with a lot of paper-work, whereas Noa was interested in actual design. He became a junior engeneer at the municipal enterprise Rigas Udens. His task was to review applications and issue technical instructions to those who want to connect to the municipal water infrastructure. Noa has quickly realized that this is not his calling: “It was paper work again. Everything was kind of cool. In the morning you have a huge pile, in the evening it is smaller. But I saw that there was no growth for me there. And I had the feeling that my wings were being cut off.”
Through various Erasmus activities in Netherlands, Noa realized that he wanted to change something in his life and finally entered a master’s program at the Latvian Academy of Arts. Currently, Noa no longer considers himself an engineer, but a performance artist, comedian and drag king activist. Wolt’s courier work is useful for earning extra income between studies and creative work.
Noa wolts mostly in summer and, if there is no snow, also in winter. Initially he used a regular bike, later switched to an electric bike. He works up to five days a week during, so called peek hours. Some days he works in the morning from 11:00 to 14:00 and then again in the evening from 18:00 to 21:00. Other days only in the morning or only in the evening. Asked why he does not work more, Noa admits that he gets very tired. “Although one courier told me that you get used to it, I find it is not true. I can try to eat as well as I can – morning porridge, mixed nuts on the way, etc. – but I get very tired anyway. Even now with an electric bike, I still get tired. Sometimes it happens that you have to climb high stairs or a heavier delivery happens. And in general, the stress of this job tires me down.” Distancewise, Noa drives from 40 kilometers a day, if he works only mornings or evenings, or about 80 kilometers, if he works all day.
Why not work with a car? Noa says that it is not acceptable for him to “drop the car on the road”. “It makes me mad. If I’m riding a bicycle and someone has left half of it on the bike path, it really pisses me off. I don’t do rude gestures, but I am often close to it. I get it – often a car courier does not have much choice. He has to drop the car, put on the emergency lights, and run after the order. Well … I don’t have it in me to do something like that.”
Noa feels good on the bike, although he has something to say about the local traffic culture. “The Netherlands definitely helped me a lot,” he says. “The cycling culture is completely different there, but I learned a good and important thing there – to look over the left shoulder before any maneuver. I think a lot of people here don’t look at all, they just jump out and do it. Insanity! You wouldn’t be able to drive like that there in the Netherlands. I feel very safe, I show all the turns, I show other road users what I’m going to do. I really don’t like cars that don’t show turns, because I really watch what the car will do, because I also respect all road users. And if I see that he does not show the right turn, then I try to guess. Often I have to brake at the last moment because my guess has turned out to be wrong.”
Noa has not been involved in any serious accidents, but there have been separate episodes that vividly illustrate the culture prevailing in Latvian society. Noa says: “I’ve slipped on the tram tracks, fallen off my bike. The car is moving, I’m down there, slowly getting up. And the car window goes down, and the man looks down on me and says ” Very good delivery!”. “Instead of stopping the car and asking if everything was okay, he laughs, because it is so funny that a Wolt fell”, Noa sounds very bitter. In general, he says that when the courier falls there are a lot emotions and the biggest one is shame – who saw how I didn’t get there? Then the main concern is to collect yourself and not to think about what you really hit.
Sometimes encounters in restaurants turn out not the best. For example, Noa tells a story about one of well known restaurant in the city center Cafe Osiris: “It is fancy place – after all, John Malkovich has lunch there with Andrejs Zagars (the Director of one of the largest theaters in Riga)”, Noa says, with certain irony. “The application shows us when the food is ready. I see the signal in the application and wait outside at a pick-up table for couriers, but nothing is there and nobody is coming. I think – ok, I’ll go inside. I enter and immediately get a remark – you don’t need to come here, there is a place for you outside. I apologize of course, but I feel like a lower class. It wasn’t very pleasant. I realized that they clearly put their clients in the restaurant before me. I quickly got out and thought – everything is fine, everything is fine, hang on, self-confidence, hang on. Because it’s such a stupid feeling when you are shown your place behind the doors. Plus, I didn’t come in there somehow obtrusively. I carried the bag very quietly, carefully so as not to touch anything. I know where the courier’s place is, but then don’t mark that the food is ready, because that’s our green light. It is our job. We are in a rush. We want to make money.”
Summarizing what he dislikes most about being a courier, Noa says that it is probably the moments when he is not perceived as a human being. “When we – the couriers – are perceived as a faceless mass that drives at a red light endangering other road users, mostly those who walk on the sidewalk. Often, children or very young people objectify in a positive way and say – oh, here a Wolt coming. It is better, but at the same time … I am Noa – a person. Once upon a time there were young men who thought it would be funny to play out a joke on me. They were hanging out in a group and one came behind me and tried to open my bag. I turned around and exclaimed, what are you doing? I guess I shocked them with this. They immediately appologized, but it was not funny. Sometimes, passers by shout out – give me pizza or give me what you have. Those situations, of course, sting. It hurts that we are looked at as one mass, about which there is an opinion that you cant affect. We are, after all, human beings.”
On a more positive note, Noa remarks that a courier has a great opportunity to see places that are not accessible to ordinary “mortals”. Also, for a creative person like Noa couring provides a lot of material performances and art projects. Noa says: “For example, I love architecture and design. When I get inside private properties, I always explore everything, take pictures of some stained glass windows, enjoy elevator rides to the 23rd floor. These are spaces that an everyday person does not see. I remember, there was a house that had a whole a wall with pictures of cats. It made my day. These are views that the everyday person would not find or know about.
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.
"RIGA TEXTILE", "LIDO", "BOLT"
Even though food delivery couriers are mostly man in their twenties, there are also women among them. Let’s call him Dzidra. He is sixty years old and has raised children. She’s been working as a Bolt and Wolt courier for more than a year.
Before that, she has had a long and colourful work experience. Right after the high school her mum insisted on Dzidra’s training as a tailor. Dzidra attended a vocational education program. Dzidra reflects, “I couldn’t stand tailoring, but complied. I wanted to specialize in dresses and costumes, but the only opening was in coats. I studied for eight months and left. There was a period when I did not do anything, and then I learned cotton-spinning and started working in a factory of “Riga Textile””. Working there, she met her husband with whom she has been together for almost 40 years. She gave birth to her children and worked in “Riga Textile” until it was closed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her salary for the last three month was paid in yarn.
In early post-Soviet years, Dzidra worked in a small grocery store. At some point she realized something needed to change. “Don’t think bad of me, but one day I realized that I have developed general hatred towards people. One day, I remember, a man comes in my store and keeps squeezing a potato. Why would anybody do that? At that moment, I realized that I had to leave before turning completely bitter. I got a job as a dishwasher at a hotel. Worked there for four years, but gave up because of pressure from my husband. He got fed up with me coming home in the middle of the night at three or four a.m. There were many banquets that ran late and I had to clean up. Also, my arms and legs started to hurt. My husband said, “Give up this job, take a break. You don’t have to do anything, just stay at home.” But I was restless and looked for other jobs.” She looked through job ads and noticed that Lido was looking for food delivery couriers. All one needed was a car. She worked at Lido as a courier for three years, but finally got bored – these were the same addresses and the same customers. Then she left Lido and started to work as a Bolt courier.
Now she works as a Bolt courier almost full time, sometimes seven days a week. “I usually work when Bolt has a bonus time [i.e. at certain times when there are a lot of orders and Bolt raises delivery rates], for example, from eleven to two. Then I go home for an hour because I have to take care of my sick dog. If my husband is at work, there is nobody else who can do it. Then I work again from about four to nine in the evening. On Saturdays and Sundays, when my husband is at home, I can work until evening. Weekends are good, because people are at home and orders come more often. I work full day, when it is raining, because there are more orders.
Dzidra reflects: “I have that age when I don’t want to sit hours from until. It’s hard for me. I’d better work one day for 10 hours at Bolt, but I’d be home for lunch and work in the evening, or vice versa. I’m very happy about it,” she says.
While couriers are self-employed and platforms only serve as mediators between a customer ordering food, a restaurant and a courier, platforms have their own ways of influencing couriers. One of them is blocking an account. If the courier has violated the rules of the platform or acted inappropriately, his account can be blocked and he loses the chance to work. Unfortunately, this blocking is not always perceived as fair by the couriers. For example, Dzidra tells a story, where she was locked for five days, even though she did not feel guilty: “I had a case of taking my order to the client, I called at the door, but no one opened the door. Three calls – silence. I put the bag at the door. We can do it, and then we mark that the food is delivered. The customer will see it delivered, open the door and take it. Just as I put the bag down and started to descend, a man came out of the apartment and asked why I’ve dropped the bag. I said, sorry, I called you three times at the door and I didn’t throw the bag but put it down. Two days later I was blocked. The client had complained.” “The client was right, of course. I couldn’t prove anything,” she adds bitterly.
There are also unpleasant encounters with clients that had not led to a block. “I often get alcohol out of the Bolt Market,” she says. “We have been told in the system that delivering alcohol needs to check the age of the client. “If I see a client being very young, I ask for documents. Once, I delivered beer to a group of apparently drunk young guys. Luckily, I didn’t have to go into the house, but delivered to the entrance of the house. They protested against showing their IDs. Who are you and why do we have to show you something, they asked. I said that I can’t give them the order without a document. They “sent” me everywhere you can imagine, but at the end, one of them showed the document, and I handed over the beer. I turned and walked away, but then could not help myself – turned and said everything I thought of them. Then I called Bolt and reported the address. I don’t know how it would be if I had to deliver to the apartment. These were five drunk guys … ‘
Dzidra says that many believe that couriers are almost millionaires, but it is far from the truth. You can earn some money, but there are also a lot of costs – fuel, car repair. She works for about 10 hours a day, earning €60, of which she still has to pay for the fuel. When she pays the tax, there’s very little left over. She even considered organizing a strike and asking for higher rates, but did not get any support from other couriers. “I realized they’re just scared. They don’t want to put themselves forward because they can be blocked,” Dzidra says. “I’m not afraid of getting blocked. I’ll find another job. I’ll go to another place, because driving is mine. I love being behind a wheel. There is nothing to fear. You just keep moving.”
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.
FROM TEIKA TO KENGARAGS AND A BURGER FOR FREE
Let’s call him Ansis. He has been working as a Bolt courier for more than a year. He grew up in Jurmala, a sea side resort town a half an hour ride from Riga. Throughout his childhood, Ansis played football, and later even worked as an assistant coach. After graduating from high school, he started studying law. He worked as a Bolt courier mainly because there were few other jobs available for a full-time student. The job did not require any special knowLedge or experienece, all one needed was knowledge of Riga and its geography, as well as a means of transportation. Recently, he has managed to find a job in his field and courier work has become a supplementary option – it is subordinated to the rest of the weekly schedule, with an average of 16 hours work per week.
Ansis has worked with both a bicycle and a car. His initial choice was bike, but he quickly realized that is physically very demanding and not profitable enough. He recalls his first working day: “I left Teika. It took me half an hour to receive an order. First, I made a small circle around the local cafes. I was not sure how the orders algorithm works. Only when I drove closer to the city center the orders started coming.”
The main tool in courier work is, of course, a phone. Ansis explains logistics of couriers everyday work: “Your phone starts vibrating, a melody plays. I have about 15 seconds, if I’m not mistaken, to decide whether I approve the order. When I confirm, the address from which I need to collect pops up. I have just arrived at a restaurant or cafe, I press a button indicating that I have arrived, and it shows me whether the order is ready and can be collected or if it still has to wait. As soon as I receive the notification that the order can be collected, I collect it, press “start delivery” and then the address to be delivered to appears. Give it to the buyer and that’s it.”
The paid part of the delivery work is from the restaurant to the customer, and sometimes when delivering it from one place to the next, the courier is taken far away from the place where he started the work. Then you have to get back yourself. It happened to Ansis on the very first day when he worked with a bike: “During the day, my orders took me all the way to Ķengarags [a residential neIghbourhood about 10 km from the city center]. After that, I had to get back to Teika where I live. I cycled 20 kilometers that day. Then the next day, I was so tired. Now I drive mostly by car.”
Each vehicle has its own advantages and disadvantages. “With a bicycle, it is harder to keep food intact – french fries scatter, drinks spill,” he says. “It is different with a car. At the same time, by car there is an issue of parking and also the fact that you need fuel.” But in general, according to Ansis, it is still more profitable with a car. “
Ansis likes that you can do the courier work at the time and place of your choice, but it also requires some self-control. The rating of each courier is affected by the number of orders accepted. How exactly the courier rating is calculated and how it affects the orders offered to the courier is known only to the managers of the platforms. Ansis shares his observations: “The more orders you accept, the higher your rating will be.” If you accept less than 80 percent of the orders that come to you, your rating drops. The faster you deliver, the higher the rating. People can star them just like taxis. If you spill something there, bring a curled pizza, of course, you will be given a negative review or the customer will make a complaint to Bolt, and this will lower your rating.”
Finding the customer’s place of residence often takes more time than the delivery itself – you have to find the right entrance and to climb the highest floors of houses. This, of course, reduces the courier’s income. There are also misunderstandings that occasionally provide you with a free lunch. Ansis tells about one of such incidents: “Once I arrived at a restaurant to pick up an order. The application showed me that the food should be ready in 5 minutes. In 5 minutes, the food was not ready. In another 10 minutes – still not ready. Another half hour passes – no progress. About seven Bolt and six Wolt couriers were waiting with me. All in one place. I arrived first. They all came and went. After 45 minutes I was thinking “WTF, I’m the only one left!” and I went inside fuming just to see that one box was standing on the counter. Looked like something I should deliver. I asked if the burger was ready to be picked up, and the guy at the counter looked at me and said: “Yes, it’s ready, but I probably didn’t press the button that I you can come and collect it… OK, I’ll make a new one, you can eat this one if you want.””
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.
IN A MAGIC MAZE
Let’s call him Ali. Born and raised in Azerbaijan, he came to Latvia three years ago to study computer science at Riga Technical University. Both of Ali’s parents are entrepreneurs. They live in Baku along with Ali’s five-year younger brother. Ali is trying to help them financially as much as he can. When he arrived in Latvia, he worked in restaurants at first, but then noticed the couriers on the streets and decided to try. Started with a bicycle. Then got a driver’s licence and from then on delivered only with a car.
Ali believes Latvia is a great place to live and work. There are not too many people here, and, important for a courier, very few and minor traffic jams. In mornings, Ali can reach the city centre in barely 20 minutes, which is really fast. Life is relatively cheaper, as in other European countries. And studies at the university are not too complicated or expensive. According to Ali’s estimates, you can survive in Latvia with about €600 a month, which isn’t too much. The visa regime is also more hospitable in Latvia. For example, Italy grants visas only for a short period of time. In Hungary, it is very difficult to acquire a visa at all. Latvia is hospitable. Then again, Latvians are not eager to tip. Ali is friends in Lithuania who earn more than €20 a day in tips. It does not seem a common practice here.
Ali would love to get a job in his field, but visa conditions allows works for no more than 20 hours a week. Most employers do not want part-time employees, so Ali has to wait until graduation. Then, he plans to continue his studies in the master program, where visa conditions allow to work full-time. Master students have wide opportunities to get an internship and, if you prove yourself as a valuable employee, you have a great chance of getting a full time position. Hope looks forward to it, but plans to keep Wolting and Bolting to earn extra money if needed.
Ali likes the flexible schedule of a Wolt and Bolt couriers for a number of reasons. First of all, he says, he can sleep. Secondly, he can adjust his hours to his study schedule. Finally, he can travel. Ali travels a lot, and he likes to be able to leave for a week or two at any time without asking any boss for permission. As a courier, Ali works for an average of six hours a day, sometimes – even twelve hours, but sometimes he works only a few hours between lectures. So far, he has carried out 322 deliveries and driven about 2000 km.
Ali is very familiar with the self-employed status, because he both of his parents have been self-employed throughout his childhood. But the fact that you’re not an employee is both pluses and minuses. The main plus is that no one can tell you what you have to do and what you can’t. Minus, in turn, the fact that growth opportunities are much more limited and the way forward is going much slower.
The streets of Riga are like a labyrinth. At first, when Ali did not know the city so well, it was both challenging, and interesting. Even Even though the application marks the shortest route, it is often requires creativity to find exactly the right address. “Just like a magic maze” Ali laughs. One of the biggest challenges for work is to find a place where to park his car. Ali even has an idea how to make couriers parking easier – he suggests introduction of labels one could place on a car to indicate the police that the car belongs to a courier who is currently working and has parked a car for 5 minutes. It would make his day-to-day a lot easier
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.
"WAITING ME ON THE STREET IN A BATHROBE AND SLIPPERS"
Let’s call him Claus. He comes from a small town in central Latvia, where he attended local gymnasium. Later enrolled in a university, but did not graduate. There were not many job opportunities in the his local town – two most common options were to work either in livestock farming or logging. Neither seemed appealing. Claus liked to repair cars. A friend suggested Bolt, and now Claus had been a courier for nearly three years, combining it with a day job and an occasional auto repair “gig” time by time.
The best about Bolt, according to Claus, is that you can receive your income every week and if it is cash, you receive it even in advance. That means that if you need money, you can make some deliveries and get cash right away. You keep it and then you have to work to make it even with the platform. But even if you do not work with cash, Bolt pays for what’s done neatly every Monday.
While couriers are clearly associated with one or the other platforms, they are not employees of these platforms, but rather partners. That, Claus says, was not clear to him at first. This means that the platform only provides information to the courier, but the delivery payment is made directly by the customer to the courier. The platform receives a fee for each transaction. So couriers are self-employed, not employed.
Claus says, the most important part of the work is to get into a rhythm, and the best day is one where the orders are coming throughout the day and you do not have to sit still. When you have decided to work but there are no incoming orders, the feeling is unpleasant. He says: “When you’re in such a rhythm, everything is easier. You keep moving and everything runs smoothly. And then suddenly there is a silence – no orders coming. You’re sitting for twenty minutes, you’re relaxing, and then an order comes. You have to restart. I don’t really like this kind of ‘tugging’. I don’t like when there’s no flow and orders don’t come after each other, or when restaurants have to wait abnormally long, even for a whole hour ‘.
Interactions with people vary, but in general, those waiting for deliveries are happy. Claus says: “People are usually happy. They are hungry and almost run after you! You come and see that they are waiting for you on a sidewalk in slippers, socks and bathrobe in mid-winter. When called they say “I’m behind the corner and I’m waiting for you!” And they seem very happy to see me! Sometimes there are people with movement disabilities who are really thankful if you bring food up the stairs! It’s a pleasant thing to do. It’s also great if you see people you’ve already seen while driving, and they recognise you and greet you or nod. It is a minor thing, yet makes me happy.”
Aija Melbarde. Photo series “A Human Behind a Box”. Riga, 2023.