Wrong. First, if the tips are required, then by definition they’re not voluntary.
Second, the distinction you’re making doesn’t exist in the law or in ethics. YOu know in advance taht they expect you to tip. You know in advance that if you don’t tip, they might refuse to come back to your business. They’re not increasing the price after the fact, or in between the moment of ordering and the moment of provision of service: you know up front what they expect if you want future service.
Extortion would involve them threatening you with something if you don’t pay them money. Saying that they’ll not do business with you in the future doesn’t count as an extortive threat.
You might not like the mandatory nature of their tips. That’s fine: do business with someone else. That’s the beauty of capitalism.
Fucking hell, Otto, it’s called the social contract.
If you disagree with the tip system, fine, I’d love to change it too such that the “tip” is just a delivery charge tacked upon the price of food and all of this discussion over how much to tip can be dispensed with.
But that’s just not how it works right now. When you order out, you pay the delivery guy for his services in the form of a tip. That’s the delivery charge on top of the base price for the food.
Now pay up or you can walk your lazy ass down to the sandwhich shop yourself.
FWIW, I do tip, usually around 15 - 20% for good service (and cuteness)
However, calling in the “cost of running a car” card is silly. These are not usually independant sub-contractors of the restaurant, the delivery drivers are usually employees providing the labour for a service that the restaurant provides. They are not doing anyone a favour. The restaurants cash in on a forced market, just like flower shoppes on Valentine’s Day and jewelry stores the rest of the year.
Otto, you tip when you go to restaurants, correct? So why not here?
I’m guessing that the owner or manager of this place spoke to your boss about it. And you know what? He’s right. Not tipping because, “It’s voluntary and I don’t WANNA!” is just plain rude.
You can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to order food. I suggest you brown bag it.
I think tipping is mandatory. I never leave a bar or resturant without tipping, and I tip on every drink/service I get. My tipping system works like thus:
If the bill is $5 or less, you get $1 for a drink, $2 for food.
If the bill is between $5 and $10 you get $1 for a drink, $3 for food.
If the bill is between $10 and $15 you get $1 per drink ordered, $4 for food.
Finally if the bill is $20-$30 you get $1 per drink ordered, and $5-$8 for food.
$30 and above is again a dollar per drink ordered (so if I ordered 5 beers, it’s $5) and $10 for food, adding an additional $2 tip per additonal $10 in food bill.
Guess this is as good a thread as any to post this link to the “Shitty Tipper Database”, Mike (or Warren) :p.
Actually, I somewhat agree - there should be a “delivery charge” to compensate the driver. OTOH, give the guy (or gal) a tip fercryinoutloud, especially when they’re bringing lunch to you people in offices. Particularly when it’s someone you call on frequently. And in that wintry Madison “spring” where it hits a whopping 50 degrees on a good day.
::really curious as to which restaurants this concerns::
I’m with the delivery drivers on this one. There is no obligation for a restaurant to deliver to you. If you want food you can go out and buy it yourself. Delivery drivers drive their own vehicles, pay for their own gas, and face increaed risk of being in an accident or getting ticketed. They do it for the tips.
Besides that, my experience when I was a driver was that delivering to a company usually involved anywhere from five to fifteen minutes of waiting at the front desk. I could do another delivery in that time. In other words, the drivers lose money delivering to your company. Is it any surprise that they don’t want to do so?
Calling this extortion is the most ridiculous, self-pitying hyperbole. You don’t like tipping, don’t order delivery. Restaurants are not required to deal with assholes. If you call the delivery guy a cocksucker every time he shows up, the restaurant is well within its rights to stop delivering to you unless you promise to stop swearing at their drivers. This is exactly the same thing: tips are not mandatory in a legal sense, the way paying for your food is mandatory. But they are customary, and expected, and if you’re not tipping, you’re being a giant douche. And no one should be forced to put up with a giant douche. If I were in the restaurant buisness, I’m not going to waste my time catering to misanthropic assholes who don’t tip just because they can get away with it.
I do not question that tips are customary. I do however question the nature of that custom.
I was always of the opinion that good service should, by custom, be rewarded with a tip - around 15% for good service, more if the service was exceptional, and less (or even NOTHING in truly exceptional cases) if the service was bad.
It seems to me that the nature of this custom is changing - from a custom of reward for good service, to an accepted mandatory charge regardless of the quality of service. If this is the case, it would be more honest to simply call it a delivery charge.
Now, if I ever refused a tip to a delivery person because of truly horrible service, “repeat business” would not be an issue - because I would probably not be ordering that particular service again.
Who the hell orders food for delivery and doesn’t tip? Are you working in a Junior High School? Yeah, it doesn’t say in the employee handbook that I can’t burn my desk, but if I do so I can surely expect to be fired. Not tipping the delivery driver is a violation of the basic social contract and frankly I’d be a little wary of trusting this guy with your company’s work considering he lacks a basic understanding of what is appropriate and inapproriate. It seems like when he is not immediately accountable for his actions he takes the crappy way out. What else is he trying to get a little advantage on when nobody is looking. Doesn’t seem like a winner to me.
Anyway, tipping for delivery is an honor system- they try not to sweat it when they get a little less or a little more. And that works in your favor, too- if you are a buck short you can still get your food and maybe make it up next time. Whoever was doing this was severly abusing an honor system, and because of that the restraunt can no longer work with you guys on an honor system. So they’ve done exactly what you’ve asked- formalized it.
Hey, at least you don’t have to bad. They used to refuse to delivery pizza to my house because they were afraid of getting shot. Is that also extortion?
Oh, for pete’s sake. When you order in for a group, you all throw in, what? an extra fifty cents or a buck? Well worth it, IMO, for the convenience of having food delivered. If you don’t want to pay extra, then go steal someone else’s lunch out of the fridge. But don’t stiff the poor drivers.
Shame on your co-workers for forcing business owners to “extort” tip money out of people who should know better.
The custom of tipping is set up because it has benefits for employers and customers. It makes service self-regulating by putting a large portion of the payment for service on the honour system.
We start from the expectation of tipping, but the customer is granted the option to withold this payment if the service doesn’t measure up. When the person who is directly responsible for the service falls short of the mark, their tips suffer, and they’re obliged to shape up, find something that suits their abilities better, or starve. This is good for the customer, because people jump to make sure they’re served properly, good for management, because they don’t have to bend over backwards to impress the service people with the abstract idea that the employee who serves the customer best serves themselves best.
We get better service because there’s an understanding we can pay less or not at all if the service is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the trade-off here is that this arrangement leaves the service providers vulnerable to abuse from assholes who use the nominally voluntary nature of the tip as an excuse to avoid paying the expected surcharge for services that they’ve received.
If you don’t like the tipping system, don’t use any services where tipping is expected. Write your congressman if you want to change the system, but otherwise, pay up or stay away. Anything else is basically theft.
To anyone who is calling this extortion or dissing on tipping - how about you go get a job as a pizza delivery guy and try to make enough money to pay rent/ car payments and insurance/ gas/ and other things like putting yourself through school? It’s a sucky job, and they have to deal with a lot of bullshit. I know, I worked with them for years. My brother delivered pizzas for years on top of other jobs and school. Fucking tip them.
If someone brings food to you, you tip them. If you’re at McDonalds and you get it at the counter, you don’t. They are driving, often paying for the majority, if not all of their gas, putting miles on and running down their cars so you don’t have to leave to eat. Some places pay their drives an hourly wage. Some don’t.
The people at this company must be really shitty in the tip department if the restaurant felt the need to complain their drivers aren’t getting tipped. Our drivers would just bitch and deliver stiffers’ food last in a run.
Delivery drivers are just like waiters, the company doesn’t really pay their wage - they rely on the customers to. And it’s not their fault when your food is wrong, they don’t touch it. And I imagine your company orders a fair amount of food, which is a pain in the ass for drivers to deliver. Depending on the cost of everyone’s meal, you all should be chipping in an extra dollar or so.
The more I think about this, the more I consider these restaurant owners fucking heroes.
If they did what Otto wants, and starting charging a delivery fee, us non-assholes would still be obliged to tip, because it’s customary in our society, and I’m sorry but like it or not, that ain’t changing any time soon…
So we’d end up paying more to subsidize non-tipping assholes.
I always tip delivery drivers, if the delivery is prompt. This isn’t about my personal unwillingness to tip and all the “tip or don’t order” comments directed specifically to me are pointless, since I always tip when I order food.
I’d be willing to bet that somewhere in your employee handbook it says that destroying company property is grounds for termination.
Yes, because refusing to service an area out of fear for a driver’s personal safety is exactly the same thing as refusing service because the drivers don’t think they’re getting enough tips. Moron.
Jesus. If I order takeout food from a place where I would normally tip for table service, I even tip the waiter/waitress/bartender when I pick it up. Somebody hadda put that order together. And assembling a takeout order is at least as complicated as plating it. A few bucks is sometimes a significant percentage of a restaurant employee’s daily wage; it ain’t no big deal to me if my tab goes from $30 to $35.
IMHO, the fact that the delivery guys are basically freelancers for the restaurant that actually makes the food is something that should NEVER be brought up to the consumer. Anyone receiving a delivery shouldn’t have to give a crap how the restaurant compensates their drivers. Nor should the restaurant be able to skimp on service by having drivers that don’t deal with inaccurate orders appropriately.
I agree that it’s extortion and I believe that the restaurant is offering sub-par service by outsourcing delivery.
:p.