Two days later, the murder of Meituan's takeout rider is still at the forefront of public opinion.

On the afternoon of December 22nd, a netizen posted on Weibo Corp that a Wuhan takeout delivery man was holding a knife in a shopping mall. Since then, distributors in yellow rider suits have sparked a heated debate on social networks.

It is understood that an accident occurred at the Baigang City supermarket in Wuhan on the 22nd, Meituan takeout Weibo Corp said in a statement on December 23. When Meituan's delivery clerk went to the supermarket to pick up the goods, he quarreled with the shop assistant, which eventually led to a tragedy. "none of the merchant users for this order have any bad review information and no complaint phone records."

The tragedy has already happened. Whether it is a "bad review" hotly debated by netizens, or a quarrel, the truth is waiting for the police to announce.

However, for Meituan, who believes in the growth theory, pursues "giving everything quickly" and has a huge group of 3.7 million riders, what is really worth asking is, what planted the seeds of the tragedy? Is it the unfair distribution of internal benefits under "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", or is it an operating mechanism blindly pursuing speed and scale under the influence of capital?

Judging from the interview and understanding of the zinc scale, the root causes of the tragedy may lie in many aspects:

First, after Meituan's takeout rider's income declined, the rider had no channel to complain about the across-the-board high fine in the face of poor reviews, as well as Meituan's lack of psychological and humanistic care for the rider.

Second, in the rapid growth of Meituan, in the fierce market competition, in the face of businessmen, consumers, riders, the market growth pressure "difficult to ride a tiger" after the rough transfer of high pressure.

"A rider who cannot bear the pressure."

"over the past two days, a lot of riders are still talking about it, and they are afraid that one day this will happen to them." On the evening of December 23, Meituan takeout rider Zhou Wei (a pseudonym) said to the zinc scale, "although we do not know the specific cause of the attack, it is recognized by the rider that there is too much psychological pressure for a long time."

"in fact, the psychological pressure of many riders is already very great, and it is even difficult to bear." Zhou Wei said bluntly that such pressure mainly came from the Meituan platform: "to put it simply, the managers do not care about the riders at all, and they are not very responsible, and they only know how to use the high-pressure management style of fines."

In 2018, Zhou Wei became a special delivery rider for Meituan. According to Zhou Wei, Meituan riders are divided into two categories: full-time and part-time. Part-time riders generally earn one income after completing one order, as well as a reward for punching orders, so as to encourage more work and more pay. The income of full-time riders is composed of guaranteed wages, the number of orders sent, and the reward for making orders, which is equivalent to Meituan employees. Their income is higher than part-time work, but they need to work full-time, and poor reviews need to pay a larger amount of fines.

"at present, in my city, the income per unit is less than 5 yuan, and the income of the new rider is slightly higher than 6 yuan." Because he did not catch up with the wave of dividends that Meituan wantonly subsidized takeout, although Zhou Wei is now a full-time special delivery, in this second-tier western city, he runs more than 10 hours a day and earns 4000-5000 yuan. In the city's income, it is calculated as the lower-middle level. "at most, it is only 7000-8000 yuan, because the subsidies from special weather are already very few."

Zhou Wei said, "it is a legend of the past that Meituan riders earn tens of thousands of yuan a month." in January this year, Meituan released the "2018 Meituan Rider takeout Employment report" which also confirmed this point: in 2018, more than 2.7 million riders earned income from Meituan takeout, and only 29% of them earned more than 5000 yuan a month.

"income is only one aspect, and more importantly, some management and practices of the company make me feel cold." Zhou Wei said that this is not only the current discussion of the buzzing issue of poor reviews, but also the lack of psychological and emotional humanistic care for employees.

On the issue of bad reviews, Meituan's view is that the platform lacks the rider's complaint channel-as long as it is against the rider's overtime, complaints, poor reviews, and so on, he will directly deduct 10 yuan, and the rider does not have any reason or channel to appeal.

"at least on our rider's side, we don't see any channel through which the rider can complain." Zhou Wei said that on several occasions, there were clients who gave poor reviews for no reason. After being angry, they asked the leaders to reflect on them, and the leaders asked him to produce evidence: "the problem is, Meituan himself does not have a complaint channel for poor reviews. How can we produce evidence?"

Compared with crowdsourced riders, another place where full-time riders are easily fined comes from "logistics responsibility".

The so-called logistics responsibility means that the order is cancelled in the process of rider distribution after the customer places the order and the merchant accepts the order.

"each pair of riders will be fined 500 yuan." Zhou Wei said: "crowdsourced riders have no logistics responsibility, generally referred to as poor reviews and high compensation, all refer to full-time riders."

"more importantly, under the long-term accumulation of stress, although many people have psychological emotions, it is impossible to have any psychological counseling." Zhou Wei said: "for the rapid development of Meituan, it is impossible to take care of the mood of millions of takeout riders."

Using speed to "increase revenue and reduce expenditure"

Growth theory is the corporate culture that Meituan founder Wang Xing believes in. The most important thing in growth theory is fast-"for startups, speed and growth are very important," Wang Xing quoted Silicon Valley famous saying Keep growing,fuck everything else (keep growing, don't worry about anything else).

The worship of speed can be seen from the slogan "everything is fast" for Meituan takeout. This shows that Meituan takes punctuality and fast arrival as the biggest trick to seize the market, although behind this, there are sometimes traffic hidden dangers such as speeding, road occupation, fatigue, food delivery and so on.

"Speed" is very important to the development of Meituan. Some people in the industry believe that from early group buying to takeout, wine travel, travel, fresh and other scenes, Meituan opened the way with speed, and then played low frequency mode with high frequency. It is precisely because of this that Meituan's share price doubled in 2019, with a market capitalization of nearly HK $600 billion, making it the third largest company on the Internet in China.

This kind of fast, in the takeout business, is passed on directly to the rider. One Meituan rider described it in a post entitled "Meituan Speed": "after running 18 kilometers in 59 minutes, excluding turning on navigation, waiting for traffic lights and traffic jams, the speed should be above 60KM. I wish I could drive an electric car like a plane."

Meituan's pursuit of speed is also described in a new report by Xinhua News Agency. "doing more and getting more became the motto that a Meituan rider remembered, and he began to run 'crazy' from then on. He volunteered to work overtime, took the initiative to take part in the duty, he was running during the lunch break, and he was running on vacation. "

On the surface, it is because the riders "do more and do more", but in fact, it has something to do with the operation mechanism of Meituan takeout which has been changed frequently in the past two years.

Zhou Wei said that the distance of Meituan takeout orders is estimated according to a straight line, which means that the actual distance often exceeds the estimated distance.

In addition, in 2018, Meituan Takeout changed the original order-grabbing mode to dispatch mode, which also makes it impossible for riders to refuse-- the so-called preemptive order mode, that is, in the dispatch mode, full-time riders have no freedom to choose an order and must accept it unconditionally regardless of whether the order is far or near.

"No matter how far away the rider is, the rider has to speed up the delivery, because according to Meituan, once the delivery time is exceeded, it may be a bad review from the user, as well as punishment from the platform." Zhou Wei said.

To make matters worse, Meituan shortened the original 30-minute delivery time to less than 28 minutes in 2018-judging from the above two changes, it is not difficult to understand the yellow riders who are frantically shuttling through traffic regardless of their lives.

Xie Pu Notes, a well-known commentator, said that the killing of riders in Wuhan should be related to the high-pressure management of Meituan Company. "without high pressure, how can tens of millions of orders be delivered on time"?

However, behind Meituan's change in the operating mechanism, is it really just for the consumer experience?

Some people in the industry said that the deep binding of bad reviews, complaints and fines, on the one hand, can form a deterrent to riders, but also through this high-pressure measure, it can save distribution costs in disguise and achieve "open source" revenue. On the other hand, various measures, such as reducing the unit price of each takeout distribution and changing the rush order mode to the dispatch mode, are to achieve Meituan's cost savings.

Using the method of "increasing revenue and reducing expenditure" to "reduce cost and increase efficiency" is also proved from the data of Meituan's Q3 financial report in 2019: catering takeout is the basic plate of Meituan. Meituan delivered 2.5 billion takeout orders in the third quarter of 2019, and its food takeout revenue accounted for 56.7% of the total revenue. GMV increased from 80 billion yuan in 2018 to 111.9 billion yuan, and the guest price increased to 44.76 yuan from 44.44 yuan in 2018.

This means that each takeout Meituan earned 6.20 yuan in 2018 to 6.24 yuan, earning 4 cents more, while the cost of sales fell to 5.04 yuan from 5.16 yuan in 2018-in Meituan's business model, the cost of sales is mainly used for riders' income.

Cancel the "conspiracy" behind the bad comments

At the Meituan takeout industry conference on December 18, Lai Youwei, vice president of Meituan and director of Meituan Research Institute, revealed that 3.7 million takeout brothers have received income from Meituan this year. The question is, after the tragedy, can the high-pressure psychology and even some mental disorders of these millions of Meituan takeout riders be valued or even alleviated by platform fees?

The result may not be optimistic.

In 2019, the operating income of Meituan's Q3 catering takeout business reached 15.6 billion yuan, an increase of 39.4% over the same period last year. However, it is worth noting that although catering takeout revenue is still growing in the third quarter, it is not difficult to find that the growth rate of the business is gradually declining year-on-year.

This decline is not accidental. First, the competition from the market is more fierce, and second, the growth rate of the industry as a whole is also slowing down. For Meituan's future, it will only become more and more difficult to gain new market share.

This is unacceptable to Meituan.

Starting from last year, Meituan began to raise the commission of merchants. By 2019, Meituan will continue to raise merchants' commissions, and some preferential activities also require merchants to make profits, but it is becoming more and more difficult to improve the slower growth rate.

As a middleman for businesses and users, collecting commission from merchants is the core of Meituan's four major revenue channels-in the third quarter of 2019, the increase in Meituan's gross profit margin is essentially an increase in commission income, accounting for 67.6% of the total income, reaching 18.57 billion.

The difficulty is that increasing commissions will not only be vehemently opposed by a large number of merchant platforms, but also not a long-term solution.

Therefore, in the earnings call in the third quarter of 2019, Wang Xing said that Meituan takeout has become the number one brand in the market, but it still needs to gain more market share, so the investment in this area will be relatively low in the future. will also continue to improve the efficiency of riders.

This means that "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" and "speed first" are still the main directions for the future development of Meituan's takeout business. For riders, they need better service attitude, faster delivery time, and more standardized operation procedures-is it important whether they have psychological and humanistic care?

When it comes back to the takeout and catering industry, should the "bad review", which has been hotly discussed, be abolished?

"the person who says this is either stupid or bad." An e-commerce observer said to the zinc scale that when consumers buy things, it is a basic right to give bad reviews. "Foreign e-commerce companies Amazon.Com Inc have bad reviews, domestic Tmall and JD.com have bad reviews, and DiDi Global Inc. has bad reviews, so why can't consumers have legitimate rights and interests?"

In the observer's view, as long as there is a transaction, in the face of different tastes and personalities of a large customer base, there is bound to be poor reviews. "the platform should not and need not care too much about individual bad reviews. And in the face of a full screen of positive reviews, moderate bad reviews may instead make customers have a stronger sense of trust. "

"of course, this may be more applicable to merchant platforms." The observers said that accepting bad reviews does not mean connivance or inaction, because for a large group of 3.7 million riders like Meituan takeout, each bad review is like a shell.

After all, no one wants a repeat of the tragedy.

This view has also been agreed by the science and technology business observer "Jin Chuo Dao": "Bad reviews are the platform's bottom line rule for safeguarding the rights and interests of diners." There is nothing wrong with the rules themselves, but the problem is how to exercise this right reasonably. This is not only a problem of the platform, but also a matter of self-discipline for diners themselves. "

Therefore, we must take a clear stand: no matter what the reason for the tragedy of Wuhan takeout riders, we should not abolish the bad rating mechanism, let alone the catering industry itself and millions of takeout riders.

What really needs to be examined is whether Meituan's current "operating mechanism" is reasonable when it becomes a consensus to be kind to takeout and distribution boys. For example, should riders be given a channel to complain about bad reviews? Instead of imposing high fines across the board and indiscriminately every time? And, from the perspective of psychological counseling and emotional care and kindness to these employees?

I hope Meituan, who "gives everything quickly", can be a little slower, a little slower. Only in this way will it be possible for consumers to "eat better and live better (Eat better live better)".