On Algorithmic Time and Daily Contingencies in the Lived Work of Food Delivery Service

Abstract

This study takes a praxiological perspective (drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis) to examine the working practices of food delivery service workers in China. The analysis explicates how delivery drivers deal with daily algorithm-generated information and contingencies through the production and mobilization of tacitly assumed conventions to maintain their flow of work. In other words, while the logic of the algorithm-generated information is a phenomenon exhibited in the app’s delivery itinerary, actual delivery work is a reality on its own, not just a surrogate of a company’s administrative designs. Three intertwined phenomena are identified: (1) coordinating pick up and deliveries involves a high degree of practical interactional work; (2) the job is practice oriented around routine contingencies of time, travel, and waiting, and (3), the job is collaborative and organized through a moral order that involves the mobilization of resources which operate alongside, but separate from the technology. The study shows how a detailed analysis of the lived work of couriers provides a powerful tool to highlight and examine what is often hidden (and lost) in studies of food delivery service.