The work and pensions secretary Mel Stride caused controversy on Thursday by suggesting over-50s should take up food delivery work, after Deliveroo recorded a 62% increase in couriers over 50 since 2021.
Stride, on a visit to the firm’s London headquarters, said flexible jobs offered “great opportunities” and that it was “good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of” in an interview with the Times.
After the controversy – which saw the TUC accuse Stride of “glorifying the gig economy” – the Guardian spoke to Chris, a 57-year-old courier based in London.
“I started riding for Deliveroo in 2019 after a contract ended. I’m just constantly tired. Mel Stride made it sound like you can just log on and find an order, but there’s so much waiting around that you don’t get paid for. Often I’m waiting on my bike an hour for an order. I’ll be sitting there next to 17 other riders. It’s like a waiter or waitress only being paid when they deliver food to the table,” he said.
“My mum’s 82 and doesn’t live in London. I don’t get to visit her enough because even missing one day of work hits my income. Yesterday I made £15.75 in three hours at lunchtime. I don’t earn enough for the hours I work. I live in social housing and my rent is £150 a week. Currently I’m behind on that and my council tax. I know that Marks & Spencer puts reduced stickers on food at 5.30pm and Co-op at 6.30pm so I try to go then. It’s just a constant struggle. We get no national insurance contributions, no pension, no holiday pay.
“I’m 57, I’m just shattered. When I first started, I’d feel it in the legs and hips and shoulders. Those boxes are heavy. But now it’s just my whole body. At the end of the day you just slump down. Sometimes I just go to the pub on my own, and I just think: ‘Please no one talk to me.’
“That’s the real toll of the job – its impact on your mental health. I’m usually an exuberant and confident person. But I just feel worthless. It’s hard to hold your head high. Most customers are fine, but a significant minority treat you like a personal servant. They don’t even look at you when they take their food. It has an impact on your esteem – I’ve lost respect for myself, I assume people must think: ‘Look at that old git doing Deliveroo.’
“On one delivery, in 2019, I arrived at a block of flats in London. The guy at the door said: ‘I’m fucking sick of you lot.’ Maybe he’d been waiting a while. He started walking towards me, so I started filming. Then he hit me in the face and knocked my phone out of my hand. I told the company not to send me back there. But a few weeks later I recognised his address on an order. I gave it back to the restaurant. It’s made me wary of deliveries – sometimes drop-offs feel tense.
“Mel Stride’s comments were so naive. It’s like Norman Tebbit’s ‘get on your bike’ again. Believe me, I’m on my bike. Six or seven days a week. He’s advocating for a return to Victorian working practices, with workers queueing up hoping they’ll be picked. I’m retraining to be a HGV driver, hopefully getting my test in the autumn, so that’s my light at the end of the tunnel.
“There are parts of the job I enjoy. I like riding my bike, especially along the river, and it’s great to have the freedom of no boss breathing down my neck. Sometimes I’ll stop for 10 minutes and just look over the London skyline. But when I stand there, I’m usually thinking: ‘When’s my next order going to be?’”
