Working Principles Column
by Chris Howard, March 13, 1998
Think you know the business world inside and out? Imagine how a bikecourier sees it
"We're looking down," Tom Ellis mutters into his two-way radiobefore swooping across Toronto's Eglinton Avenue, stranding me brieflyin the oncoming traffic.
My fault: I'm still learning the hell-bent nonchalance that propelsthe bike courier across lanes, over curbs, around pedestrians. But Ellisis apologetic as I catch him and we turn south onto Mount Pleasant Road:"Sorry I almost got you killed there." We push off on the long,fast descent from the locale of Ellis's dispatch office into the lucrativedowntown core.
Until now, Ellis's world and mine have intersected only in the ways you'dexpect. In the elevator, I'm the one in the business suit, he' s the onein the lycra and reflective tape.
But today I've decided to step out of my world and into his. Maybe becausethose worlds seem so different, but are so entwined. Or maybe because ofthe increasing demonization of the courier: the other night, I watcheda TV commercial in which a couple appear to have succeeded in escapingthe city in their 4x4, only to glance up and spot - eek! - a leering, helmetedfiend through the window. Has it come to this - captains of industry cowedby kids on bikes?
Right now I don't need to be reminded how this is literally an outsiderculture. It's -11 deg C at Bloor and Jarvis - where we share a joke withsome squeegee kids - and the wind gusting around the tall buildings isbrutal.
On our indoor treks to mailrooms and reception desks, thawing our feetand hands, I learn that Ellis, who is 27, has been a courier for only afew months, but a serious cyclist for 15 years. Before this job, he wasa funeral director for six years. He left because the industry could spareno room for the goatee and longish hair he now sports.
But he has no regrets for those years: "I learned more about the humancondition...," he says, shaking his head as the elevator doors openwith a ping. Then it's out the exit marked "Please use revolving door"- we spend our day, it seems, taking routes expressly forbidden by signageof all sorts.
The pace of pick-ups and drops has accelerated: law firm, accountant, lawfirm, non-profit agency, investment company. The economics of the business,as much as the needs of the clients, demand hustling. In the highly nichedToronto market, according to Derek Chadbourne, who produces an outrageouslyenergetic cycling publication called hideouswhitenoise and has been a courierfor 11 years, the courier' s cut on a delivery - usually 60% - works outto between 90[cents] and as much as $18. The average is probably around$3 or $4.
Every courier I talked to prefers the commission set-up. "I like thatwhat I make depends on how hard I work," I'm told by Wal Dickie, alanky Australian who is usually on his bike but today is filling in asthe dispatcher on the other end of Ellis's radio.
Ambition is directed first at "making a bill," or $100 a day,and then maybe at greener fields - Ellis has set his sights on London,England, for example, where the hundred-a-day benchmark, in sterling, isthe equivalent of about $250.
Our last stop is "the dungeon" - an office under BCE Place towhich all couriers are directed - from which we escape with a (forbidden)bravado blast up the steep spiral parking ramp.
"Good work," Ellis says when I reach the sidewalk. "Thereare days when I can't make it."
We're off to a courier hangout, a small cafe a few blocks north where theair is thick with cigarette smoke and the day's war stories. And wherecouriers - unfailingly polite - explain why they love the life: the freedom,the exercise, the camaraderie.
And then our worlds pull apart again. The next time I'm in an elevatorI'll be in my suit. But, maybe if there's a courier beside me, we' ll talkabout maniacal bus drivers, how to dress for winter riding, or the sweetspeed of a downhill right onto Richmond Street: all those little thingsthat make up the kinship of the road.
The pseudonymous Chris Howard toils in the middle ranks of a large Canadianorganization.
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