Last March, I signed on with Caviar, a food delivery service similar to Postmates and Grubhub that is utilized by restaurants that do not employ their own drivers and cyclists. Bike couriers, also known as cycle couriers or bike messengers, have been around since the creation of the velocipede in the 1860's, and are most often employed in large cities where the prominence of traffic jams causes travel by bicycle to often be much quicker than travel by car. When I took on the job with Caviar, I was given an 18-inch bright orange thermal box that I was to wear as a backpack, and an app that would track my location and through which I could receive new jobs was downloaded on my phone. I figured being a bike courier would be easy enough: bike to point A, pick up food, bike to point B, drop off food.
Couriering is dirty, dangerous, tiring and low-paying. I often come home covered in dirt and chain lube. I often have a grapevine of purple crawling up my calves from knocking them against my pedals. In colder weather, I have started rolling up the right leg on my jeans in order to clear the chain after ripping one too many pairs. There will always be rude people both in restaurants and homes, and people yelling out their car windows. I get cut off by taxis and cars coming out of nowhere, and the sliver of fear when aggressively navigating motor-dominated traffic is ever-present. My tires have trouble gripping Philadelphia’s trolley tracks when they’re slick from the rain and there has been more than one occasion when I wiped out in the middle of fast-paced traffic. I come home with jelly legs and the desire to sleep for a day. I could deal with all of that just to bring home $40 to $70 a night. I can’t deal with courier culture. Or the catcalls.
The courier industry is a cis-male-dominated, bringing with it all the stereotypical societal characteristics of a physically demanding “man’s” job. The couriering community allows for male posturing in a lot ways: who’s got into the most risky situations, who’s got the coolest bike, longest distances and hardest routes, etc. They tease each other with feminine-gendered expletives such as “bitch” and “pussy” if they ever express fear. However, considering the fact that there are quite a few (yet significantly less) females successfully competing with males on the job, conclusions to these tests on macho insecurity add up to nothing.
Being rather small on top of being female, there has been more than one occasion when a restaurant employee or fellow (male) courier has asked me if I’m capable of taking “this big (and heavy) of an order." I get comments and propositions to race if I ever pass a man on a bike. And the worst, I get catcalled at work. Every day. At least 30 to 40 times during a shift, and one shift is three hours long. I wish I was kidding.
A couple weeks ago, I had become entirely fed up at just how sexist this job can be and confided in a courier friend I ran into while taking a break in Rittenhouse during a lull in orders. Biking all across the city for hours on end makes you sweat a lot, and in 90-degree heat, couriers can’t exactly afford to wear clothes that won’t keep them cool. When I voiced my concern in catcalls, he replied, “Well, they can’t very well help it. You’re a pretty girl on a bike dressed like that,” gesturing to my outfit. I was wearing a muscle tank and shorts.
