Are Women Feeling Safe Around Delivery Executives?

The ease of shopping is a privilege some urban city individuals enjoy. Everything is at the tip of our fingers, enhanced by mobile applications promising quick deliveries. The services are too luxurious to whine about the drawbacks of it however what if the concern is not so petty? Several women have been posting complaints about the abusive behaviour of delivery partners and executives and they are expecting the e-commerce companies to take concrete action.

Women have pointed out that the delivery partners ask for specific locations and get access to their personal phone details. The recent complaint was tweeted by a user who works in policy advisory. She claimed in her tweet, "The delivery guy sent me creepy messages on WhatsApp today. Not the first time, not the last time something like this is happening." The woman also uploaded a screenshot of the inappropriate messages she received from the delivery partner. In a series of texts, the man was telling her that "he misses her a lot" and that he appreciates her "nice beauty" among other things.

After a series of tweets on the matter, the woman notified her followers that the food delivery services took notice of her complaint and assured her that strict action will be taken against the delivery partner. Read the tweet here. 

Earlier, a therapist and author Gayatri had also flagged a complaint against a delivery partner. The author made a tweet on June 7 tagging an e-commerce company and asked them to give an immediate callback. She complained that the company's customer services are not working when she had a major safety issue with a delivery person. Gayatri claimed that the delivery person broke down her door when a payment link failed. The author also wrote that her building people had to intervene. "I will file an FIR," Gayatri added.

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Gayatri demanded that the delivery person be immediately fired. She added, "9 pm at night this is how your delivery execs behave? I had to hit his hand from the door and scream for help to get people to come running." She also showed marks of injury on her hand. She elaborated on the incident and said that she had called the delivery person upstairs to make the payment via debit card since her phone did not have signal. On reaching her door, the delivery person asked Gayatri to pay only via UPI. "So I told him because there is no signal at my door I will go to the window and try. I shut the door a) stranger at door b) dog would get out. He began to bang down my door and pulled the security door open as it wasn't fully shut, " she wrote. Read the full thread here.

A PhD scholar named Ananya Bharadwaj had also raised a similar concern. She wrote that when she asked a cab driver to drop her at a certain place away from the designated drop location due to her knee injury, she faced verbal abuse.

Bharadwaj wrote, "He started abusing me. I got scared and got out of the cab saying, ‘If you won’t drop me to my location and on top of that, talk to me like this, I refuse to pay.’ As soon as I got out, he got out as well and charged towards me shouting, ‘Tum apne aurat hone ka faida mat uthao.’" The scholar claimed that she had only asked the driver to drop her 600-700 meters away from the drop location. Read the tweet here.

Violent Delivery Guys Threat To Safety Of Women

Lately, many such posts have been made by Indian women living in urban areas. The threat to safety of women who live alone has always been brought up. Young women who leave their hometowns to make a living in new cities have often been told to live in gated societies as the security services are better in such residential areas. This however does not help the economic situation of newly employed individuals who don't earn enough to pay heavy amounts as house rent. Moreover, as the above stated incidents suggest, women can face abuse or harassment at their doorsteps, on their phone, gated community or not. How are the e-commerce and cab service platforms ensuring safety of these women who will have to open their doors to unknown men? Could they set a safer time shift during which the delivery partners can visit households?

We must also take into account that several reports and accounts of delivery partners and cab drivers have revealed the plight of gig economy workers who are struggling to keep up with the low wages and impractical delivery speed limits. Can it be said that the behaviour of delivery partners towards the end customer is the result of their bad working conditions? Because in this case the e-commerce websites have another reason to bring changes and care about the welfare of their employees.

Have you also had similar experiences of abuse and violence with delivery partners or cab drivers ? Let us know in comments.

Views expressed are author's own.