Your Patience Can Save a Delivery Rider’s Life

By Noel Galon de Leon

Let’s get one thing straight. The person bringing your food through a storm is not your personal servant or your emotional support worker. They are human beings, sons, daughters, and parents trying to make an honest living in a city that floods faster than you can say “extra rice.” When the wind howls through Iloilo’s narrow streets and the rain begins to slap against the windows like unpaid bills demanding attention, that is not the time to rage online because your burger got soggy or your milk tea arrived lukewarm. It is the moment to pause and realize that someone out there had to brave slippery roads, fallen branches, and reckless tricycles just so you would not have to peel yourself away from your Netflix marathon. That, my friend, deserves patience and not petulance.

In a city like Iloilo, where typhoons come as regularly as coffee breaks and flooding is practically a seasonal event, food delivery riders live a different kind of storm. While most of us stay wrapped in blankets, binge-watching our favorite dramas and pretending the world has paused, they are out there, drenched, cold, and often exhausted because bills do not wait for fair weather. Imagine navigating a motorbike through the rain-swollen streets of Mandurriao, headlights flickering as you pass by puddles that could hide open manholes. Or picture a rider waiting along Diversion Road, clutching a plastic bag of meals, hoping the delivery app does not glitch from too much moisture. These are not just inconveniences. They are daily risks taken in the name of convenience, for ours and not theirs.

Let’s be honest. Many of us become keyboard aristocrats during storms, expecting five-star service from people riding secondhand motorcycles with worn-out tires. We complain about cold fries while they shiver in wet jackets. We tap out angry messages because our milk tea pearls have turned mushy while they are out there maneuvering through blackout intersections and half-submerged barangay roads. They wait at closed bridges, uncertain if the next wave of water will block their route entirely, yet still choose to smile when they finally hand us our order. Why? Because their livelihood depends on our ratings, ratings that some of us hand out with the grace of a moody talent show judge. The least we can offer in return is empathy. Not performative pity but genuine understanding that maybe human safety should matter more than our craving for instant gratification.

We also need to understand the broader context. Iloilo City is no stranger to calamities. Every year, flooding along La Paz or City Proper traps residents indoors, and yet the apps still buzz with orders for sisig from Smallville, pancit molo from a favorite eatery near the plaza, or a box of pizza for comfort food. It is easy to romanticize the convenience, to post a “thank you, delivery hero!” on social media for likes, while forgetting that behind those hashtags are people whose motorbikes break down mid-flood and whose shoes never really dry. It is not enough to celebrate them with words. Respect means adjusting our behavior, ordering earlier when the weather looks bad, tipping better when the rain pours, and never demanding what could cost someone their safety.

When the next typhoon hits Iloilo and your cravings strike, remember this. No meal is worth risking someone’s life. Hunger can wait. Survival cannot. If you truly want to be a decent human being, wait a little longer, order earlier, or cook your own noodles for once. And if your food arrives late, soggy, or slightly off, swallow your pride before you swallow your meal. Say thank you, and mean it. Because when the rain pours and the city floods, the true measure of character is not how quickly we get our food. It is how deeply we value the people who bring it to us.

So the next time the storm clouds roll over Iloilo’s skyline, remember the riders zipping through the rain, their headlights slicing through the gloom. They are not just delivering food. They are delivering a piece of humanity, a reminder that empathy should never depend on the weather.