A – Z ǀ Courier – Friday

by time news

A

Outsourcing “Hey, you haven’t paid!” The visibly angry new post shop operator calls after me. I turn around and try to explain to him that we are business customers and that we can simply post our DHL parcel labels ourselves: All he has to do is scan it. “No, no, 7.90 euros!” He continues to try to explain the facts to me, in which he is apparently still an amateur. His wife then clears it up in my favor. I don’t get angry anymore. There are precarious working conditions that run through the entire process chain of “delivery”: Not only the courier, but also the local courier service (post shop) is in servant mode (➝ servants). The bakery chains, however, are even more perfidious: Instead of individuals, they harness married couples who then massacre each other before they drive the booth up against the wall. Jan C. Behmann

D

Service boats One of the characteristics of the widening income gap is the renewed bloom of servicing in the cities. Was it still customary in the 19th century for middle-class households to accommodate one or two servants in their apartments and houses, where they were responsible for the household and getting food – and depending on the mentality of the families, they were treated and rewarded well or less well -, today’s staff is involved in working conditions that are consistently precarious for everyone. Employers are tech companies that call themselves “delivery service” (Gorillas) and their time pressure, only “half” employed staff rush through the streets from apartment to apartment.

You can see an astonishing number of Indians and Pakistanis driving around with these huge boxes on their backs: modern slaves in hip clothes who are hypocritically called “drivers” – with which we would finally have arrived in antiquity. Marc Ottiker

E

Emser Depesche “Do you want to go to war with me? Yes – no – maybe. ”The matter with the Emser Depesche was a bit more complex, even if the story at the core sounds like the children’s stuff of an insulted liver sausage. It triggered the Franco-German War in 1870/71, in which Prussia won over France, which led to the establishment of the German Empire. It was about the succession: On July 2, 1870, Leopold from the Hohenzollern line announced his candidacy for the vacant Spanish throne. France saw the enthronement of a Hohenzollern in Spain as a dangerous increase in Prussian power. Even when Leopold renounced, France wanted a guarantee that excluded any future application by the Hohenzollern in Spain. The French ambassador asked the German King Wilhelm I to do this in Bad Ems. He refused and telegraphed the content of the conversation to Otto von Bismarck. The latter radically shortened the text and published it as “Emser Depesche”. France felt offended and responded on July 19 by declaring war. In Europe, the insulted French emperor was then considered a peace breaker. Successful coup – 190,000 soldiers had not died in the war. Tobias Prüwer

G

Secret A bullet hits the rider at a gallop. When he falls from his horse, someone fiddles with his tunic because he has a secret message with him. For the commander of the opposing army? In any case, it is about information of political importance. Scenes from period films or spy thrillers come to mind in the film adaptation of Jules Verne The tsar’s courier Captain Michel Strogoff is supposed to bring a secret message to the fortress of Irkutsk. For electronic transmission, secret messages are now encrypted with cryptosystems. The Spartans used wooden sticks for this (Marathon). Irmtraud Gutschke

Gorillas “You’re annoying, go somewhere else!” This suggestion could be read on a banner in the summer on a house on Muskauer Strasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The “Gorillas” food delivery service operates one of its delivery centers on the ground floor. The neighbors didn’t like the fact that the drivers sat in front of the shop and chatted while they waited for the next package of supermarket goods, which had to reach the customer by bike within ten minutes. Since then, the company has made headlines primarily with strikes. Drivers have been on strike in several delivery centers against exploitation and arbitrary dismissals. “We organize in 10 minutes” is written on the couriers’ posters. Because they organized themselves without a union, there is talk of “wild” strikes. It worked because, unlike her colleagues from Lieferando (Winners), have places with the centers where they can meet and connect. Jan Ole Arps

H

Hermes The messenger of the gods Hermes is one of the most portrayed gods in Greek and Roman mythology. In the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt – in the important sculpture collection – you can admire a beautiful specimen, the Hermes-Ludovisi, the Roman copy of a Greek statue from around 440 BC. Chr. The marble head shows the son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, whose job it was to be the courier of the gods and to accompany guests to Olympus. The dying receive the last divine messages from him. As the patron god of travelers, he likes to wear his winged hat and his sandals, which are also equipped with wings, which enable him to move faster than light. Marc Peschke

M

Marathon The name of the marathon goes back to times when mythology and history were not yet mutually exclusive. Herodotus reports for the first time about a messenger named Pheidippides, who lived in 490 BC. In view of the threat to Athens, he was sent to Sparta, some 245 kilometers away, to get help. More than 500 years later, Plutarch mentions a messenger, Thersippus, who, after the Battle of Marathon, runs a little more than 40 kilometers back to Athens (➝Winner) to proclaim the message of the victory over the Persians. Both events are associated with futility and tragedy. The Spartans did not want to interrupt a festival that was taking place and left Athens (and the messenger) in the rain, the herald of victory collapsed dead. Much has not changed for the majority of runners at today’s marathon events, only that they no longer convey messages, but want to prove something to themselves. Marc Ottiker

O

Oma The French are masters at bringing social grievances to the cinema as comedy; they combine social criticism with black humor. In the film Welcome to the Scht’is (2008) dealt with the prejudices of the South against the North. Then came Pretty much best friends (2011) and Paulette (2012). The old woman of the same name is a representative of deep France, with all its resentments. She can’t do much with her grandson because he is dark-skinned. She is disgusted by her own situation, the small pension, the existence on the outskirts of Paris. At best she has disgust for the Arab beurs lounging on her doorstep, “they are to blame for everything”. She secretly watches their drug deals. Paulette is clammy and used to be a pastry chef, she starts to bake hash cookies herself and persuades the boss to be allowed to sell them. With a headscarf and a checked pensioner’s bag, she strolls unsuspectingly through the quarter. The cookies will soon be ripped out of her hand. The more criminal, the more amiable she becomes. Maxi linen purchase

P

Paperboy He’s a classic 1980s pop culture figure. If you previously knew those newspaper boys from film and literature who shouted “Extrablatt, Extrablatt” in the urban canyons, now their cool counterpart appeared in the world: the paperboy. He moved through the suburbs on a bicycle – preferably a fancy BMX bike – and casually tossed the rolled up newspaper into the front gardens or on the doorstep of his customers. The Paperboy became particularly well-known through the computer game of the same name, which was first released in 1984 as a slot machine game. Here the cyclist throwing newspapers moves diagonally across the playing field, a top view of the row house idyll (Gorillas). You have to steer it when delivering it, avoid dogs and avoid throwing discs. The game was popular, which is why it came out in numerous new editions on the C64, NES and Gameboy. There are also cool paper girls – but they only appeared a few years ago. Stand by Me meets war of the Worlds in the 2019 comic series Paper Girls. It is about a twelve-year-old who hands out newspapers in a suburb on Halloween evening in 1988. She is harassed by monster clown cuts until a trio of girls comes to her aid. Soon the four of them are distributing more than rolled up headlines. Because an extraterrestrial alien force is spreading on earth, which is nastier than all high school bullies – a crazy horror-mystery adventure of strong girls. Tobias Prüwer

S

winner Exarchia is the trendy district of Athens, comparable to Berlin-Kreuzberg: loud and colorful, only the streets are much steeper and narrower. It can happen that a stressed driver of the delivery services there just over your toes. The motorized two-wheeled fighters are omnipresent – and now winners of the Greek working world. In September, the provider efood 115 offered its drivers a new, nasty employment contract. But they went on strike and organized the largest demonstration of food deliverers in Greece, two-wheeled – and loud. The customers went along with it, lowered the rating finger from 4.7 to 1 and threatened to forego it. Online Delivery, the octopus behind efood, finally announced that it would offer permanent jobs to all drivers. And additional services. Wow, there are also business ties between the wife of the incumbent Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and efood. But there is another story called the Paradise Papers. Ulrike Baureithel

WITH

newspaper “Zidunge” comes from Middle Low German and means news, news. Couriers or messengers brought them to royal and princely courts: “He asks to be admitted, he has an important newspaper for you,” says Schillers The robbers. The Danish Prince Hamlet says to Polonius: “You were always the father of a good newspaper.” Today the newspaper is no longer “newspaper” (Paperboy), but messenger for masses of messages to consumers. The titles of some newspapers still refer to it. Corriere della Sera, Berlin courier, Black Forest Messenger. The messages are – in the sense of the old meaning – not always important or “good newspapers”. Magda Geisler

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