The Zomato Delivery Man Incident Isn’t Easy to Digest

To be honest, this whole controversy has been more difficult to digest than a plate of greasy cholla bhaturas.

Humanity versus professionalism

(Photo: The Quint)

Keep your isabgols, triphlas and hajmolas ready... because the Zomato delivery man kahaani won’t be easy to digest.

For one, it involves two heavy topics: first, a breach of trust, and, second, a rude reminder of your own privilege.

Truth be told, this whole controversy has been more difficult to digest than a plate of greasy chole bhature.

Seriously, why did this video have to surface at all? Before it, we were all blissfully unaware – ordering meal after meal – while being tucked away in our people-like-us islands. Without having to remember that a gritty machinery of sweat and labour was behind our last ‘happy’ meal.

And so, whether we like it or not, this ‘foodgate’ has left us all with a bitter aftertaste.

In fact, look closely, and you will find many aspects of this story rather unstomachable. Right from the mass consumption of the video aka its virality, and the subsequent public shaming on social media of a man whose story we have no context to, to the sacking of the man, which although organisationally was the right thing to do, left us – the passive audience who had merely contributed to his misdemeanour’s virality – with a strange sense of guilt.

There was also the reductive binary of professional ethics versus humanity to deal with. While supporting the former made you an assh**e, the latter made you a buffoon who had no sense of the gravity of a ‘breach of trust’.

For a big food startup to get a social media jolt like this must have been a bitter pill to swallow. But Zomato says it is now going to introduce tamper-proof seals. Which means we will all have to carry Rampuria chakus in our bags to open those damn seals! 

After all, in a capitalistic system, trust is sacred. Because earning it in the first place, and maintaining it day after day is how companies earn their prasad, aka profits.

But here’s where I recommend you to take out your hajmolas: The capitalistic system is no less than a karela. Its bitter truth is squeezing labour out of people, and compensating them with what ‘it feels’ is the worth of that work.

And we, the customers, have no interest in that. Just pick our order from a restaurant we were too lazy to go to, and deliver it to us in thirty minutes, will you? Did you just ask us about how much petrol was spent/ the collective cost of the labour of people involved in preparing our ‘heavily’ discounted order? What a pathetic question, in such poor taste.

Because the only time we like to share our food, is on Instagram. Get me my #foodgasm now, I have no time for this #foodporn.