A recent incident of a Zomato food delivery staff consuming a customer’s food took an unexpected turn. The delivery man was eating food on the road and, based on first impressions, Kiran Verma, a man from Delhi, assumed he was eating someone else’s order. However, after confronting the man, Verma found out that this was a practice permitted by Zomato under certain conditions.
On his LinkedIn post, Verma explained that he was going to park his vehicle in a space that was already taken by the delivery man. He waited for him to complete, and while doing so, he snapped a photo of the scene. When he went near the delivery fellow, he saw that the man was eating what was a missed order after their customer had missed picking it at the drop place for a pretty long time. Zomato allows delivery partners to flag these orders as “delivered” and eat from them if left unclaimed by the customer, as per the delivery man.
Verma’s exchange with the delivery agent showed that the young man was a graduate who had been forced to accept the delivery work after failing to get a job elsewhere. In awe of the explanation, Verma admired Zomato’s policy and the considerate mindset of its management. He also asked others not to judge individuals without hearing their whole story.
Verma posted the incident on the internet, and it immediately went viral, evoking varied reactions. His post stated, “Thanks Zomato for this nice unethical deed! Yesterday, I was parking my vehicle in Noida when I noticed this biker having food on his bike. Since that was the only spot to park the vehicle around, so I thought to wait for him. That’s when I took the first photo and I thought he would be another delivery boy having someone’s food.”
He said that in Hindi, but he was speaking like an educated guy. I asked him his name, and he mentioned ‘Vishal’ (name changed). For curiosity, I asked him why are you having food so late (it was 5 pm). He said, ‘Sir, I took this order at about 2 pm and I headed to deliver the food, but no one arrived to take the order.’ Zomato individuals instructed him to mark it delivered.
The delivery man continued to break down the process, “Technically this occurs to prevent further tries to cut cost to company on orders. If the order wasn’t delivered, but to allow payment to the delivery guy, the system should flag the order as delivered. Then he can do whatever with that food technically.
Verma’s three-day-old post, which almost reached 1,000 reactions, spoke about the intricacies and nuances of such incidents.