Riders in app time: Exploring the temporal experiences of food delivery platform work

Abstract

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork among bicycle food delivery riders in Brussels who worked through the digital platform Deliveroo. The article engages the riders’ specific temporal experiences of platform work. Platform work through digital apps creates an image of aspatial real-time. However, using the notion of the ‘data double’, we demonstrate that the riders not only have to navigate the cityscape of Brussels on their bikes. They also have to cope with unwanted waiting time caused by the frictions between the data doubles in the app and the spatiotemporal structure of the food delivery economy. We argue that the riders manage to bridge the gap between the logic of the app’s real time and the spatiotemporal and economic constraints. They do so by employing different tactics for manipulating the temporal structure of the app as well as their own experience of time. Drawing on Michael Flaherty’s work, we call these tactics ‘time work’. Most of the interviewed riders did not envision working through the digital platform as a career. Instead, Deliveroo provided a temporary and flexible way to cover their expenses while preparing for other, more important issues such as finishing their education. Studies of digital platform work often highlight the extremely precarious working conditions of food delivery riders, but they have lacked a closer exploration of the platform workers’ own temporal experiences of work. This article brings new empirical insight to studies of digital platform work and, particularly, demonstrates that Deliveroo riders in Brussels are both ‘victims and architects of time’. Overall, this article contributes to a better understanding of the experience of time under platform capitalism.