Somebody is working today

The riders are at the lights, the same as any Tuesday. A few have a green flag taped to the box, which somebody in an office thought of, and a full screen of orders, which nobody had to.

That is the National Day I see from the operator's side. The celebration is delivered. Somebody cooks it, somebody carries it through the traffic, somebody answers the messages when the order is late because half the city is ordering at once. Many of them are guests in this country themselves. None of them are in the post.

The post is the expensive document. The film, the green logo, the caption in the right Arabic, four rounds of approval. The rota is the cheap one, and the rota is what decides how the day goes. Who is in the kitchen. Whether the phone is answered by someone who can say the greeting back. Whether the rider carrying the green box is paid a holiday rate for it, or the usual rate, or a little extra in cash from the manager because nobody upstairs decided. Who gets Wednesday off.

The brands I have watched run this day well settled all of that on Sunday. Not because they are generous, though some are. Because a day when the whole city orders at once is an operations problem wearing a flag, and the people making it happen can tell, precisely, whether anyone thought about them before it started.

The customer never sees the rota. The customer gets the food, on time, from someone who was told what today was and what it was worth.

The post took a week and the rota took an evening, and only one of them is read by the people who make the day.