After a day of picking goods in the warehouse, programmers who once talked about 'product thinking' and 'middle-platform strategy' were exhausted. Someone joked: This is harder than 996.
The community told driver Qiu Keli: If you enter, don't leave; if you leave, don't come back. He indeed never returned home and now sleeps in his car.
From epidemic prevention, nucleic acid tests, permits, and dealing with ever-changing community rules, to the fact that charging the car is more important than sleeping, delivering groceries is like passing through five gates and slaying six generals.
At Hema, Chen Yuan was the first to call on colleagues to use their private cars for delivery.
Half a month ago, Shanghai implemented nucleic acid screening by zones divided by the Huangpu River, then static management across the city. Soon, reports of insufficient transport capacity kept coming from various Hema stores to the headquarters. Warehouse workers, pickers, and delivery riders were locked down in their residences. Some stores with a full capacity of 100 people had fewer than 20 able to report for work.
Chen Yuan now recalls that it felt like being in the command center of a war movie, with the front line reporting emergencies everywhere and phones ringing non-stop with requests for support.
In today's Shanghai, it's not an exaggeration to describe supply guarantee as warfare. Ordering groceries online, which used to be as easy as a finger tap, has become a daily arms race for millions of families—it's said that some people use a fascia gun to press down on their fingers, holding the purchase button on their phone screens at maximum power, just to beat others by milliseconds or even microseconds.
The food itself is not in short supply; what's lacking is logistics. Before an online order reaches a resident, it must pass through four stages: cross-province transport, central warehouse, store, and community. If any link is blocked, the entire chain stalls.
In the first link, cross-province transport, most vegetables are blocked outside the city. Freight yards, warehouses, and distribution centers on the outskirts are all piled high.
Food that manages to enter the city relies on intra-city logistics. This vast network, serving 25 million people and normally generating 10 million packages daily, has seen its capacity reduced to less than one-tenth due to constantly quarantined delivery workers and extremely limited permits.
Shanghai's sudden supply pressure falls on the shoulders of delivery riders.
As the front line loses personnel, the rear—staff officers, clerks, signalers, even cooks—must step up. Chen Yuan gathered a few local Shanghai colleagues to discuss, and they set up a DingTalk group named 'Those with cars, go deliver groceries.' Before she could even speak in the group, notification sounds rang non-stop.
Within five minutes, over a hundred people joined, spanning nearly 20 different roles from technology, product, HR, to admin reception and office drivers. Most were only nodding acquaintances, with nothing in common except working for the same company and owning Shanghai-plated cars.
The common point was that none of them had frontline delivery experience. Initially, everyone thought about 'optimization.' It seemed everyone believed that their accumulated product thinking and organizational efficiency methodologies would surely be useful in delivery. Some even proposed a 'middle-platform strategy,' with delivery as the front end and dispatch and procurement as the middle and back end. In short, they were raring to go.
Soon, an Excel sheet was thrown into the group, breaking down tasks and links in detail: procurement, dispatch, order optimization, handling, and delivery. Everyone just needed to fill in their names for each position. Normally, such people would be criticized as 'involuted,' but at this moment, everyone feared not being involved enough. The Excel quickly filled up, except for HR Fan Xiaojie.
Fan Xiaojie asked three questions: 'Have your 48-hour nucleic acid results come out? Is your community all negative? Have you obtained the permit issued by the Commerce Commission?'
After the city-wide static management, all motor vehicles in Shanghai were prohibited from the roads unless all three conditions were met. These three questions instantly stumped the vast majority, and in the end, only 16 vehicles met all conditions and could move.
Sixteen vehicles, compared to Hema's user base in Shanghai, seemed like a drop in the bucket, but for urgent supplies like medicine and baby formula, each additional vehicle could solve problems for dozens of families.
The dispatch sheet for the fleet on April 6 showed 16 vehicles on the road that day.
But at the time, group members couldn't hide their disappointment. After chatting excitedly for a long time, the vast majority couldn't go to the battlefield, and no one spoke for five minutes. Procurement specialist Wei Wei finally broke the silence: 'Sixteen is sixteen, let's send out all we can. Get the moving cars moving and deliver the first order first.'
These days, 'do everything possible' has become a high-frequency phrase, but Wei Wei didn't yet understand that 'possible' and 'do' are hard to equate.
This is a photo of my fridge; I really went to deliver groceries.
On the first day the volunteer fleet started running, these office workers suffered multiple blows. Previously, they thought delivering groceries meant pulling packed goods to the community, but just picking goods alone exhausted everyone to the point of questioning life.
At that time, Shanghai's material shortage wasn't as severe as today. White-collar workers were used to drinking bottled water and placed large orders. A case of water weighed 10 kilograms. Bending to carry it to the car was fine for a trip or two, but after more than an hour, your back wasn't your own.
A programmer in the volunteer fleet was known for not being like a typical coder—he lifted weights daily, had eight-pack abs, and hair worth six figures. While carrying, he loosened his grip, and a box of oil dropped, swelling his instep. He could only sit aside with his muscles, watching the porters casually stack rice bags on the car, so angry he wanted to uninstall Keep.
Fan Xiaojie is usually a step-count fanatic, always dominating the leaderboard. After a day of picking, she walked over 40,000 steps, which was above average for her record, but after finishing, touching her legs felt like touching someone else's. She said walking on open roads and shuffling back and forth in a warehouse are completely different; the former is slow aerobic, the latter is HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training).
During a break in picking, someone mentioned the 'middle-platform strategy' and 'product thinking' that product managers and programmers had talked about when the group was first formed. Everyone smiled bitterly. Someone joked, this is harder than 996.
Colleagues didn't let the women do heavy lifting, so Fan Xiaojie picked live fish. She loves cooking and has killed fish before, so she was quick and earned some praise. But after the fish were loaded into the car, they almost all jumped out because the packaging wasn't tight. When Fan Xiaojie opened the trunk at the delivery point, the fish were lying there looking at her. For the first time in her life, she checked each fish's breathing one by one.
The car smelled fishy for days. On the first day, as she was about to go home to clean it, Qiu Keli, a driver from the president's office, sent a message in the group that stopped her.
When Fan Xiaojie asked her three questions in the group, Qiu Keli was the first to answer. After all, he drove the president's office car, so of course he had all three certificates. But he never expected he'd almost fail to get out of his community. The security guard also asked three questions: 'What are you going out for? Are you going to buy groceries? Are you telling the truth?'
Qiu Keli thought of the joke about 'proving your mother is your mother.' With just his words, he absolutely couldn't prove he wasn't going to buy groceries.
After thinking it over, he went home, opened the fridge, and took photos of each shelf—freezer and cold storage—with close-ups. After going out, he felt it wasn't convincing enough, so he went back, stuffed some fruit and drinks in to make each shelf full, and showed the photos to the guard: 'See, there's no room to put anything even if I bought something.'
The guard saw the timestamps on the photos and had nothing to say, but still warned kindly: 'Don't blame me if you can't come back after going out!'
The warning was indeed a warning, and the kindness was genuine. After the city-wide static management, the rule-making power for personnel entry and exit was dispersed to each neighborhood committee, and the rules changed frequently. They might recognize your permit in the morning but not in the afternoon, and you couldn't find anyone to reason with.
Qiu Keli indeed never returned to his community. Three hours after going out, a positive case appeared in a nearby community. The property sent a text message with hundreds of characters, but he only remembered one sentence: 'If you leave, don't come back; if you enter, don't leave.'
To this day, he can only sleep in his car. Every night, the streets are empty. He can see convoys carrying medical staff from other provinces entering the city, and transport convoys carrying close contacts leaving.
As for the cars parked on the roadside, 'often, supply guarantee personnel are sleeping inside.'
Qiu Keli folded down the back seat of his car—carrying goods during the day, sleeping at night.
Fan Xiaojie and Qiu Keli live close to each other. She guessed her community committee might use the same policy, so she didn't dare go home. She got a bottle of disinfectant and wiped everything down, but the fishy smell wouldn't go away. She had to sleep in the car, so she sprayed perfume all over herself.
The next day, all charging stations in the city stopped working. Her Tesla had less than 10% battery left, and she'd be stranded in half an hour. She had no choice but to go home.
After charging, she had to rush out quickly. She didn't dare sleep at home, fearing she'd wake up to a positive case in her community. She complained in the group that before, low battery was range anxiety; now it's positive-case anxiety.
No one, including Fan Xiaojie herself, expected her to be able to come and go from her community every day. Four days later, her Tesla became the only electric vehicle left. Now everyone jokingly calls her 'lucky koi.'
Wei Wei thought her approach was too risky. Like Qiu Keli, he hadn't returned to his community since the first day he left. Later, seeing Fan Xiaojie escape unscathed repeatedly, he was tempted to go home during the city-wide nucleic acid testing to grab some things.
Just as he loaded his stuff into the car, he received notice that his community had an asymptomatic positive case and immediately entered 7+7 management (7 days of centralized medical observation + 7 days of home health monitoring).
Wei Wei said he's starting to believe in fate.
From epidemic prevention, nucleic acid tests, permits, and dealing with ever-changing community rules, to the fact that charging the car is more important than sleeping—for these 'scholar soldiers' suddenly thrust onto the battlefield, delivering groceries is like passing through five gates and slaying six generals. But none of that is the hardest part. The hardest part is avoiding 'non-combat attrition.'
After that, no one dared take any more risks. On average, each fleet member drove over ten hours a day, nearly 500 kilometers. Losing one person meant others had to drive dozens of extra kilometers each day to make up for it. No one shouted 'no retreat without wounds,' but with countless mouths waiting to be fed, what could 'serious wounds' do?
Except for supply guarantee vehicles, Shanghai's roads were empty of other cars.
But non-combat attrition still occurred frequently. Vehicle conditions varied—some burned oil, some leaked coolant and the engine wouldn't turn. Normally, finding a mechanic took minutes, but now, with no one to turn to, they had to withdraw from the battle. They also had to pray that their own community, or even nearby communities, didn't have positive cases. If one appeared, they couldn't get out.
Then there was Schrödinger's nucleic acid test—previously, getting results took a few hours. During the pandemic, medical resources were strained, and tests got slower, often taking 24 hours or more. A test theoretically lasted two days, but in practice, it only covered a few hours.
Fleet members had no choice but to take a test whenever they saw one on the road. One person set a record of five tests in a day.
In emergencies, there's no algorithm.
In the second week of the volunteer fleet, the number dropped from 16 to 6. Meanwhile, the number of store or warehouse employees locked down in communities and unable to return to work increased daily. On one hand, the city's transport capacity continued to shrink; on the other, residents' basic living needs and urgent material demands surged. This fleet of 'remnants' saw order volume grow faster and faster.
Chen Yuan, the initiator, felt a heavier responsibility. She asked colleagues around in circles for any available cars but found none. One night, a colleague locked at home sent her a screenshot of the remaining fleet members. Chen Yuan replied with an exclamation mark.
Hema President Lao Cai (Hou Yi) had somehow joined the group. He had read all messages but never spoke.
Chen Yuan and Fan Xiaojie discussed and decided to send the 'lucky koi' Fan Xiaojie to make a move. She shouted a slogan: 'In extraordinary times, the boss is a resource, and the boss's car is even more so.'
The emphasis was on the second half. Lao Cai's car was good. During the pandemic, he went out almost every day to coordinate work, had a city-wide permit, and it was an SUV with plenty of space.
After a few seconds, Lao Cai replied with an 'mm.'
The next day, Lao Cai indeed went to the Qibao membership store, loaded a car full of goods, and delivered them to a nearby community. Someone in the community recognized him, took a photo, and posted it in the owners' group. Some were puzzled: 'Even the Hema boss is delivering in person?' Others commented that this showed how tight transport capacity must be.
In early April, Hema President Lao Cai delivered goods in a community.
Chen Yuan and the others had initially eyed Lao Cai's car, but after Lao Cai actually made a delivery, he solved a problem that fleet members hadn't voiced: transport allocation.
Basic necessities were getting harder to bring into Shanghai, but non-essential items like drinks and snacks occupied a significant portion of transport capacity. That day, Lao Cai carried a lot of cola and tissues. When he returned, he held a meeting, requiring that the priority of drinks and snacks be lowered, focusing on grain, oil, rice, and flour. At the same time, urgent supplies like formula and medicine should be prioritized.
Before the Shanghai outbreak, Hema rarely faced a choice between emergency and algorithm. New retail mainly solves efficiency. Algorithm engineers' main task was to write the optimal solution for order allocation and let the computer calculate. They dealt with code, not people. In the supply guarantee battle, the few urgent supplies were placed first, and the algorithm had to make way because lives were at stake.
On April 5, fleet member He Yanjun was delivering in Huangpu when she received a dispatch notice: a newborn baby nearby was allergic to milk protein and urgently needed special hydrolyzed formula. A Hema store had it, but it was in Pudong. She changed her route temporarily, crossing the river for dozens of kilometers round trip to deliver it.
'My daughter just turned one. When I see someone in the group needing formula, I think of her. This order is like delivering it for my daughter.' She had to make an extra trip for the orders she missed.
Sometimes, for a can of formula, the fleet had to go to the other end of the city.
The fleet also received an urgent order: a fishing boat at the dock in Yangpu had been anchored for seven or eight days, out of food and water, and wasn't allowed to leave the dock, so they ordered for help.
Fleet member Li Jiuquan looked at the map—over 100 kilometers round trip—and said, 'This trip is a bit far,' but still stepped on the gas and drove off.
One day, Qiu Keli drove over 600 kilometers, delivering medicine in Pudong and hearing aid batteries in Puxi, crossing the Huangpu River more than a dozen times. His soles were numb, and he was rubbing his feet in the car when a phone notification made his hair stand on end.
The security guard who had refused to let him out sent a text: 'Are you tired out there? Do you want to come back for a shower and a change of clothes?'
Qiu Keli's first reaction was that it was a trap, but on reflection, he thought the guard had no reason to trick him into coming back. Then the guard called, showing constant concern for five minutes. Qiu Keli couldn't take it anymore and asked if he needed something. The guard then hesitantly said that an elderly person in the community urgently needed bananas. They had been arguing with the neighborhood committee for days, and the committee, after checking the community's resources, remembered there was a supply guarantee worker sleeping on the street.
Qiu Keli stretched his feet and made a special 'trip' home. He placed the bananas at the community gate, didn't dare go in, and returned to sleep in his car.
In fact, no one could get a good night's sleep. Daily deliveries were already overwhelming, and with urgent needs, they had to set off immediately. The volunteer drivers basically all had heavy dark circles. Chronic sleep deprivation made them emotionally fragile. The female colleagues simply made video calls to cry together, then pulled themselves together after five minutes and continued on the road.
Epidemic prevention first: supply guarantee vehicles entering warehouses or communities also had to be sealed.
Just when everyone felt they couldn't hold on, the internal and external situation seemed to show some hope. On April 7, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Government issued a notice supporting supply guarantee enterprises in coordinating resources nationwide and introducing new supply guarantee personnel. It allowed delivery workers locked down in communities for non-epidemic reasons to leave the lockdown areas and return to their supply guarantee posts.
The next day, platforms including Hema, Ele.me, RT-Mart, and Cainiao announced they would jointly add 3,000 anti-epidemic supply guarantee personnel to Shanghai. Among them, Hema sent 300 people, many of whom had experienced anti-epidemic work in Wuhan, Xi'an, and Shenzhen. Compared to the volunteer fleet, they were the ace troops of the regular army.
But unexpected incidents were still on the road. Just three days earlier, a rumor appeared online that a permit could be obtained for 1,000 yuan, and so many people bought them that traffic jammed.
To prevent fake permits from circulating, the next day, traffic police checked much more strictly. Every vehicle had to stop for inspection, and delivery efficiency dropped significantly that day. Someone in the fleet complained, and Qiu Keli said: 'Understand each other; it's not easy for anyone.'
How to choose between protective suits, rice, and Lianhua Qingwen?
When the volunteer fleet was first established, everyone's goal was the same: to increase delivery volume as much as possible, delivering to as many families as possible. He Yanjun expected her SUV to be equivalent to 20 delivery riders, but after two days, she realized the math wasn't that simple.
The fleet's schedule for April 5 showed that after various unexpected combat attrition, only 6 vehicles remained: 2 for transporting people, 2 for delivering goods, and 2 had to be set aside to transport the mandatory Lianhua Qingwen—Hema still had over 40 stores open, and the sorting workers sleeping on the floors there required masks, protective suits, and Lianhua Qingwen as mandatory items. Someone had to deliver them. Without participating in the volunteer fleet, no one would have thought Lianhua Qingwen would take up one-third of transport capacity.
'Of course, we want every vehicle to deliver groceries to residents, but if a store or warehouse has a positive case and closes, all previous efforts are wasted. We have to strictly follow the rules,' He Yanjun said.
The central warehouse needed even stricter defense; it absolutely couldn't have a positive case. The central warehouse is the aorta; if it closes, all downstream chains collapse. This meant that the already stretched manpower had to be diverted to epidemic prevention.
The trade-off between epidemic prevention and delivery was best understood by those with experience. Qi Baoqiang, who came from Xi'an to support the Hema central warehouse in Shanghai, put it most clearly: 'Take the most extreme example: I have 50 orders of rice to deliver and 50 sets of protective suits to distribute, but I only have one vehicle. Now I can only choose the latter. It's a choice I have no choice but to make.'
A private car loaded with antigen test kits. During the pandemic, epidemic prevention supplies must be transported first.
This was Qi Baoqiang's second supply guarantee battle. When he said 'no choice' and 'have to do,' his tone was heavy, as if spitting out two nails.
For a hub like the central warehouse, self-protection is more important than supply efficiency. This was the common experience of people from Wuhan, Nanjing, and Xi'an. In Qi Baoqiang's view, the importance of protecting the central warehouse in Shanghai this time was far greater than in Wuhan and Xi'an, because the latter didn't have cross-province transport issues.
A vegetable supplier from Shouguang, Shandong, who had delivered vegetables to Wuhan two years ago, also felt the difference this time. 'Back then, everyone was focused on Wuhan, and vehicles from all over had smooth passage on the highways,' he said. 'But this time, it's blocked everywhere; you can't move at all.'
During Wuhan, the outbreak was relatively single-point. This time, more than 20 provinces and cities had outbreaks. Around Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang had cases. Everywhere was cautious and strict. Media reported that some truck drivers were hindered by epidemic measures, and 'a two-day trip took a week.'
This also affected the mindset of supply guarantee personnel. When supporting Wuhan, they thought, 'Deliver the goods first; if something happens, we'll deal with it when we get back.' But now, whether out-of-town drivers or local personnel, they had many concerns: 'If I go out, what about coming back?'
Their dilemma was justified. First, the time cost. Entering Shanghai required quarantine, and returning also required quarantine, totaling a month. Not to mention the time spent queuing for permits and stuck on highways. Psychologically, they had to pass through multiple places with constantly changing epidemic policies, which was exhausting. And with more places visited, they also worried about infection.
Some drivers felt something was wrong as they drove and demanded price increases midway. With more disputes, the flow of goods slowed.
With the upstream blocked, Qi Baoqiang could only optimize existing resources. For example, the priority of many things had to be rearranged. The epidemic prevention renovation of the central warehouse was moved up in priority, as was the material allocation for supply guarantee personnel.
For safety, Qi Baoqiang and his colleagues from across the country supporting Shanghai slept on the floor in the warehouse, trying to avoid contact with outsiders.
During the epidemic, the Hema central warehouse was the first line of defense.
'We're content. Most of the volunteer fleet colleagues sleep in their cars or on the street,' Qi Baoqiang said. Several times he woke up at night thinking of his family in Xi'an. He had only been there for a little over a week, but it felt like a long time.
A couple of days ago, Fan Xiaojie received a notice that the central warehouse needed epidemic prevention renovation, and she had to buy some hardware tools. Not far from the warehouse was a hardware street, but it was all closed. Fan Xiaojie asked friends in all groups: 'Does anyone know a hardware store owner who's locked in the store and can't get out?'
Finally, she found one from Fengxian to Minhang, then from Minhang to Jiading. The owner saw Fan in full protective gear and thought she was an epidemic inspector, so he refused to open the door.
'I tapped on the glass and said, I'm not really a 'big white' (protective suit wearer); I'm a volunteer, just here to buy tools.' After shouting for a long time, the owner was still skeptical, but finally sold her the items through the window.
Fan Xiaojie remembered that as she was about to roll up the car window, the owner suddenly said: 'You need to get more sleep.'
She didn't react: 'Huh?'
'Little girl, you're walking all wobbly. That won't do,' the owner said, shaking his head at her.
It wasn't until she was driving back to the central warehouse that she remembered she forgot to ask him if he needed anything.
Source: Writing a Story for You (ID: raistlin2017)
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