Courier truth: “There are also clients who drag you into bed”

The greed of the customer ruined

My acquaintance courier Alexander periodically sends me sheets of his correspondence with clients, quietly freaking out at their impudence.

To be honest, me too. You need to know how to bargain for every penny.

Here is an elderly grandmother complaining about her small pension and asking to bring her medicine for free. Well, what are you, it’s a pity, or what? You feel sorry for your grandmother, of course, if you don’t know that she lives in an elite house and does not deny herself anything. And it turns out he saves on couriers.

Another regular customer haggles over several tens of rubles.

“Alexander, good evening! Tell me, could you get delivery for tomorrow morning in the center for 430 rubles? I remember that you said that your deliveries cost 500. But the other courier refused at the last moment, and the client had already agreed on this price. You would help us out a lot.”

“And this is how it is most often – for 50-70 rubles they are ready to literally hang themselves,” my interlocutor is perplexed at the boundlessness of human greed.

They ask you to transport everything – not only impersonal orders from grocery stores or electronics stores, but also documents, things, and even… a cat. The cat was accompanied by an elderly owner, who had to be taken from Moscow to Anapa for the same price of 4 thousand rubles. The children were too lazy to accompany the old woman, so they found a way out. Moreover, gasoline (it was assumed that the courier would drive his own car) was not paid additionally.

“It’s strange, if people feel so sorry for money, why not get up from the couch and go pick up the order? Or, together with my grandmother and the cat, we won’t all get to the resort together,” I ask Alexander.

But I think I already suspect the answer. The money is yours, but the time is someone else’s. People firmly believe in the established legend that couriers are so unhappy and poor that they took this job out of complete hopelessness and therefore are ready to grab any offer. Alas, this has not been the case for a long time. Experienced couriers are selective and know their worth.

“Yes, at some point, many delivery services decided to reduce prices for customers and therefore recruited couriers to the maximum and for the lowest cost of orders. They explained this by saying that if there are a lot of clients, then due to this we will take in quantity. But, you understand, a day cannot have more than 24 hours, and the courier needs to sleep and eat, he is also a living person. And when you don’t get anything for your work, motivation drops to zero. So the couriers began to leave, it turns out that there is demand, but there are no performers. Therefore, due to the greed of aggregator services, our services began to cost much more,” explains Alexander.

The crises of recent years have really changed the cost of delivery, it has increased. Only migrants were willing to work for pennies. Although customers prefer “persons of Slavic appearance”: they have more trust, and they don’t even know Moscow from a navigator, and some visitors don’t even speak Russian.

Now newcomers who work for themselves are slowly leaving this business. After all, you need to give a large part of your earnings to intermediary employers. They don’t even agree to a stable salary of 30-40 thousand, which is used to lure them to their place.

In addition, the same residents of Central Asia who previously worked in this field are leaving our country due to the tightening of migration policy. So it turns out that there are fewer couriers, but more orders, and the same Slav Alexander is in great demand. He often returns home after midnight.

I’m my own boss

“I can choose orders,” the man confesses. “If they start lowering the price and making people look poor, then I simply put this person on the black list and don’t answer him anymore. To be honest, they’re annoying.”

Alexander is 42 years old. He works for himself as a self-employed person, because the conditions on third-party services are not satisfactory, and he is used to freedom. Currently not married, we can say that he is a promising groom.

He says that it happened a couple of times when he brought orders to women, and they dragged him into bed. This is straight out of an adult movie: a plumber, a gardener, a courier…

“These are decent women. I don’t know, maybe they are lonely or hungry. They usually offered me a drink, and then they pestered me. Believe me, I did not provoke them in any way. My time is precious to me, and sex takes it away,” he says.

In general, with female clients, he says, you need to keep your eyes open. Especially when they try on clothes from online stores. So they try to change it, you have to double-check it all the time, Alexander is indignant. He recalls a case when it was possible to recognize the deception only in the store. “Such a decent girl, she ordered boots and a blouse. I didn’t like anything. Only later did it become clear that she had exchanged the blouse for her own – exactly the same, only washed and spoiled by whiteness. By the way, the model was not cheap and a rather rare one. I can imagine how many sites she had to look through to find the same one.”

He also recalls the most exotic orders: for example, flying to Spain with documents and to Dubai for perfume. The flight, by the way, is also at your own expense.

“They said they were looking for someone on their way. How strange people are, after all, as if they don’t even suspect that couriers don’t fly to Dubai, and those who fly don’t sit on courier websites and don’t take orders,” he is surprised.

Recently, another popular service has appeared – to remotely deregister a person from the military registration and enlistment office, so that he does not have to appear there himself, they ask a courier by proxy.

Alexander recalls how he once had to buy a powerful medicine from a pharmacy with a prescription, but it turned out to be counterfeit. It turned out by chance. There was a signature of a doctor who did not work in this clinic. The pharmacist didn’t like something and checked the information.

Victims of scammers

“Thank God, couriers are not responsible for the cargo they transport. I don’t have to know what it is or why. Drugs or bomb, it doesn’t matter. Of course, scammers take advantage of this and hire a courier to transport something clearly prohibited so as not to get caught.”

We recall a recent high-profile story: a guy returned from the North Military District, having received multiple shrapnel wounds, found a part-time job in one of the telegram channels.

The scammers decided to use it to transport money fraudulently obtained from pensioners. The scheme is well known: grandparents withdraw money from an ATM and give it supposedly to the bank’s security service, which supposedly catches the criminals.

The only new thing about it is the use of cash and couriers. Moreover, along a chain, several, so that the latter does not in any way connect the old woman, who gives her hard-earned money, with the end customers.

But the first courier girl realized that something was wrong here and reported to the police. Having received the box, the guy in question saw the police officers, got scared, threw the package with money and tried to run away, but they caught up with him and detained him. It turned out, of course, that he was also used.

“According to the law, the courier is not responsible for what he carries. But, of course, if I understand that something is suspicious, I will definitely inform the law enforcement agencies,” Alexander swears.

Unfortunately, as he states, there have been a lot of deceivers recently. It happens that people ask to bring a parcel that they ordered online from private individuals, but such an address does not exist. Or they try to deceive on the spot. Or even the latest trends: mobile phones are hacked and requests for financial assistance are sent out. “Of course, it’s funny when the owner of some large company with which I have been working for a long time asks me to send 50 thousand rubles “by tomorrow.” Sometimes I correspond with people like that for fun; I have to do something on the road.”

Yes, Alexander’s day consists of continuous movement and dashes. Metro, buses, trains… You can’t do without a monthly pass. By the way, the cost of the order already includes transportation costs.

“Therefore, it is very strange that people haggle over ten rubles, but at the same time I have to come to them in the distant Moscow region, spending half a thousand on the trip there and back.”

There are couriers with higher education. Alexander himself has nine classes.

“The main thing is experience and the ability not to get lost in the area, but no one looks at the diploma,” says my counterpart. — But in principle there are many educated people. Once I worked as a delivery man in a pizzeria, they asked those with higher degrees to raise their hands. About every third. Once I even had a chance to talk with a colleague, a drunken mathematics professor. He found his own algorithm of activity, paid extra for the fattest and most delicious orders, so they were given to him first. I’m not sure the customers were happy. Still, alcoholics are the most reliable contingent.”

Courier Wars

The entire 2022 was marked by strikes by couriers and the arrest of leader Kirill Ukraintsev, who fought for their rights against the dictates of aggregator services.

The police detained him on April 26, 2022. Investigators alleged that Ukraintsev “published calls online” for couriers and taxi drivers to “take part in protests” against violations of labor rights, including long delays in wages. On this basis, the head of the courier trade union was accused of “repeated violation of the procedure for organizing or holding a rally” under Art. 212.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (implies punishment of up to five years in prison). The courts extended the activist’s arrest several times; the prosecutor eventually demanded a year and a half in a penal settlement for him.

However, in February 2023, Ukraintsev was given only four months and was released in the courtroom, counting 10 months in pre-trial detention for serving the full term.

The case had a wide resonance; many politicians and human rights activists came out in support of Ukraintsev. And what seemed like a formal defeat (the verdict was still pronounced) turned into a strategic victory. Since prices for courier services have risen, and aggregators no longer download rights. “In the end, couriers are not slaves or serfs,” explains Alexander. “Yes, newcomers were forced to agree to poor conditions, but since there are now much fewer migrants, we dictate the rules ourselves.”

The couriers are probably happy with the way things are today. Because in 2023 nothing is heard about new strikes.

“To be honest, this is still a solitary profession. We, like wolves, are fed by our feet, and we see competitors in everyone,” the man is sure. Therefore, it will not be possible to unite only on professional grounds. Everyone has their own orders and interests.

“Attitude towards couriers? — the interlocutor thinks about my question. – It happens differently. There are those who are normal and those who are dismissive. Forgetting that it is they who need us, and not the other way around.”

The most disgusting customers, in his opinion, are private confectioners and florists. “These are the real cheapskates, they lower the price until the last minute. People either agree to work with them out of desperation or are newbies. And then they are surprised that customers are unhappy because they waited an extra few hours for their order.”

Regarding the salary of 200 thousand, Alexander advises not to believe rumors. “On average it comes out to three thousand a day. That is, about 90-100 thousand per month minus taxes for the self-employed,” he roughly calculates.

However, couriers also have a busy time, like actors have a Christmas tree. “We work full day on December 31st. And on the night of January 1, too,” he reflects. “The cost of holiday delivery depends on many factors, primarily urgency and distance.”

It’s strange that they haven’t yet made a series about the work of a courier, because it’s a treasure trove of stories. Maybe a comedy, or maybe a drama.

This profession, like no other, provides a school of life and impeccable knowledge of human psychology and shortcomings. Perhaps this is why people infuriate Alexander. According to him, recently there have been much more bad, angry and dissatisfied people than good ones. And this is wrong. But, as they say, c’est la vie.