Working as a Fresh Produce Picker: 30,000 Steps a Day, 30 Cents an Item
On an ordinary day, you decide to cook a meal at home. You open your grocery delivery app, select your ingredients, and on a whim add a few snacks and a 4.5-litre bulk water bottle. Just as you tap to pay, the bold promise of “Delivery in 30 Minutes” catches your eye. It puts your mind at ease, convincing you that your order will arrive in half an hour.
However, what you might not realise is that behind this “30-minute delivery” convenience lies the relentless running of couriers and sorters. For sorters, “running” is entirely literal: the moment you place an order, their feet must move. They dart and weave through cramped aisles to pick items for customers. Even when carrying a 9-kilogram bottle of water, their pace never slows.
Thirty thousand steps a day, twelve-hour shifts, 0.30 yuan per item, one order every nine minutes: this is the hidden reality of sorters, labouring in the unseen corners of the city.
This episode of Food Talk features He Siqi, a social worker. Earlier this summer, he spent a month working as a sorter at JD 7Fresh, experiencing firsthand the pace of work under its high-pressure front-warehouse system. It is a world that appears ordinary on the surface but is intensely pressurised beneath: new hires must undergo a “psychological assessment” before starting; on the job, they are governed by real-time countdowns on their PDA devices; supervisors monitor them via CCTV, singling them out for criticism for even a single minute’s delay; mistakes result in fines, or they are forced to hand-copy packing guidelines like primary school pupils.
In addition, burning through thousands of plastic bags and ice packs daily, enduring the biting cold of frozen storage rooms, and navigating the noise of the front-of-store area are all part of their everyday routine.
During that month, He Siqi truly grasped what “algorithm-driven labour” means—workers reduced to mere flesh-and-blood extensions of a system, slowly drained by time, data, and efficiency. This invisible labour sustains the “30-minute delivery” service we have grown to take for granted.Algorithms demand that sorters operate with machine-like precision, but humans are not machines. The suppressed frustration and anxiety that accumulate on the job must be silently endured by the workers themselves. Some stay because of social ties; others quietly walk away.
When convenience becomes the norm, do we still see the people living their lives to a countdown? In this episode, we talk about the group of people working behind the scenes of fresh-produce e-commerce to keep the “30-minute delivery” system running. We also explore how, within an algorithm-driven sorting network, human bodies and dignity become mere components of efficiency.
EPISODE GUEST
He Siqi
A social worker long focused on workers’ rights. Has worked as a delivery rider and a sorter. Currently an independent media creator dedicated to amplifying workers’ voices and ensuring those often overlooked are heard.
EPISODE HOSTS
Yu Yang
Editor at Foodthink, focusing on labour issues in a mobile society.
Tian Le
Founding editor at Foodthink and convenor of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market.
EPISODE TIMELINE
01:27 Starting out: how I stumbled from shelf-stacking into sorting, the mandatory “psychological assessment”, and a reality tougher than anyone expects.
04:40 The relentless daily grind: 30,000 steps, 12–14 hour shifts, nine minutes per order, thirty pence per item… Behind the figures is the daily sprint between the dry warehouse and the cold stores.
18:33 Pressure and penalties: supervisors monitoring screens in real time, rushing orders, and calling out names. Mistakes can lead to fines or being forced to “hand-copy the packing guidelines”.
26:22 The daily waste of thousands of plastic bags and ice packs: the environmental price of our convenience.
29:57 Stories from fellow sorters: a sharp 24-year-old mum, a rebellious Gen Z summer temp, and an exhausted “king of orders”.
34:11 The clash between workers and the system: constant buck-passing and arguments between front-end and back-end teams, with deeper tensions masked by algorithms.
43:12 Social security and identity: can sorters really put down roots in the city?
49:06 The consumer’s view of the work: complaints, replacement orders, and a disconnect from empathy.
56:35 As we turn our backs on local markets, what are we gaining, and what are we losing?
100 People Who Feed Us
Behind the rice in your bowl, the vegetables on your plate, and every meal ordered on your phone lies a vast and complex reality. To grasp the true fabric of this world, Foodthink’s podcast Food Talk has launched a new series: “100 People Who Feed Us”. By following the firsthand accounts of one hundred industry workers, we map out the careers at the intersection of food and farming, revealing the authentic human experiences that lie behind what we eat.
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Unless otherwise stated, photos in this episode are provided by the guest
Podcast Music: Banong
Produced by: Xiaojing
Edited by: Yuyang
Contact: xiaojing@foodthink.cn