Who’s said you’re expected to make such a guess? That’s not what you’re expected to do. You’re expected to tip the delivery people. Are you aware of that expectation?
You might not be aware how seriously a particular business takes this expectation. That’s why they’ll inform you: they’ll tell you, “You didn’t tip us last time. We don’t want to deliver to you any longer.”
You might similarly be unaware of how seriously a business takes its expectation that you not say nasty and demeaning things to its employees. Violate that unwritten social code, and they’ll similarly deny you future business.
That’s the way the world works. Ify ou’ve got an issue with it, blame society.
Well, I, for one, don’t think the restaurants were being deceptive, but I’ll stand by the poor marketing critique. “You must tip” may strike most high-minded folks as stating the obvious, but to others it’s demanding charity, which is offensive. Forgetting the rightness or wrongness of either position, slipping in a small delivery surcharge would, I’d be willing to bet, solve the problem for everyone.
Some states require minimum wage for “tipped” employees as well. In CA, a delivery driver is making at least $6.75 whether he/she is tipped or not.
There is a local pizza place that I refuse to order from. The delivery driver showed up with my pizza but couldn’t break a $20. Ummm…no, I am not giving you that much of a tip. I figured it was just that driver and gave the pizza place another chance. The second time, the delivery driver asked me, “How much of a tip are you giving me?” Ummm…at this point it’s a lot less than it would have been. I understand that tips are a social contract and all that, but when you ask someone for a tip it amounts to begging and implies that they wouldn’t do their job unless they were getting something more out of it.
Which is why the OP is offensive. It is a social contract and when the receiving end breaks the contract, the giving end doesn’t feel more like giving; they feel less like giving.
We actually studied tipping in one of my soc classes senior year in college; I’ve since viewed it differently.
You’re talking about two completely different expectations. Tipping is an optional custom (as has been pointed out in this thread before). There is a huge difference between refusing to tip someone who gets a decent wage from a restaurant (and supplements that income with tips) and refusing to tip someone who makes a decent wage only when their tips are counted as part of the equation. So I repeat my question: What am I supposed to do in such situations? Guess as to how the restaurant compensates them?
And you haven’t addressed the notion of the restaurant implying that delivery is included in the price of the order and failing to disclose that in practice, it’s really not. To me, that’s inexcusable.
This is my last post of the evening on this, as I’m headed home now. But consider this: Some people expect to leave little or no tip in exchange for poor service. By failing to disclose its compensation “arrangement” with the drivers, this restaurant effectively takes that option away from people if they’re to expect any delivery service at all. I’m fine with that, but I’m saying it ought to be disclosed prior to the order.
No, a waitress constantly attends to my needs, keeps my glass filled, checks on the quality of the food, and in general improves the quality of my meal -and the tip reflects the degree to which she accomplishes this above the bare minimum of, say, merely bringing me my food and then vanishing. A delivery dude, on the other hand, does exactly one thing: brings me my food and then vanishes. If he accomplishes this, then I would* give him exactly what he deserves for doing his basic job: nothing. He’s got a fricking employer to pay him for that. (If he doesn’t manage to bring me my food, then me and the store need to have a little talk about the store not fulfulling its agreement.)
*I actually don’t order takeout, ever. I don’t like being shaken down by the store to justify them paying substandard wages to their delivery people. If they want my business, they can pay honest wages, and include a delivery charge if they feel so inclined. Forcing a jiggered ‘social contract’ on me where I have to bribe the pizza guy so I don’t get a spit and cheeze pizza, just so that they don’t have to pay him right, is indecent. I refuse to support such an enterprise. :mad:
No, you’re supposed to tip them properly. Is it your responsibility to determine whether they make too much and tip them accordingly? No. Just give the guy the damn tip, just like you would at any other time with any other server in any other restaurant.
They have. They have said that they will no longer deliver without proper tipping of their delivery people. That’s about as explicit as it can be that the delivery cost is the tip.
We’re not talking about poor service. We’re talking about a systematic failure to tip leading the business to rethink their deliveries to a certain location.
He saves you gas, he saves you time, and he saves you the trouble of having to go over to the restaurant to get it yourself. You don’t want to tip? Go your damn self.
You’re not being shaken down. Tipping is part of the deal.
Well, it allows you to get food delivered. Restaurants rarely have the time, money or resources to run a dedicated delivery staff and without the current semi-contracted system most would opt not to offer it.
Guess? What guess? You order delivery, you pay the cost of the food plus a gratuity of about 15%. Is there some portion of this country where that doesn’t apply? Were you honestly unaware of this practice before this thread? Where does guessing enter into this?
Ahh, but now you are not only denying the delivery person their tip (that they need for a liveable wage), but you are removing the need for delivery staff entirely! Why, you’re putting some poor delivery person out of work, and stiffing him without a tip to boot!
Obviously, the social contract then suggests that you drive yourself to the restaurant, tip the now idle delivery driver, and then also pay an extra surcharge for his hourly wage to prevent him from getting laid off.
Or we can simply acknowledge that the USA tipping social contract is emotional extortion by employers at the expense of the employees reliant upon tip income.
I don’t see the problem here, if you’re in the U.S. Assuming that you have to order for at least two people, you’re looking at a bill of $10 or $15 at least, you’re not expecting the driver to count forty or sixty quarters, are you? Or worse, through a mixed set of coins?
Sure, but remember, they’ll raise prices to pay for all of that. And if some do this, and others don’t, which restaurants will you go to? Which will others go to?
I see what you’re saying. From my perspective, however, I assume that I will be giving the driver a tip, since I know that that’s the local custom. If there’s a delivery charge, that doesn’t change my assumption at all: delivery charges aren’t a local custom, so I don’t know whether they invalidate the tipping custom.
That means that for a restaurant with a delivery charge, I’ll pay the delivery charge AND the tip. Which means that, all things being equal, I’ll go with the restaurant without the delivery charge.
It makes sense, then, for restaurants not to have a delivery charge.
Of course, they could say, “Delivery charge: $3.00. Our drivers are not permitted to accept tips.” If a restaurant said that, I’d probably be cool with it.
Then again, I’m cool with the current system, too.
All you’re saying, Otto, is that it should be someone else’s job to be thoughtful and considerate. You could be a nice guy and give the delivery person an extra buck or two for his services, but you’d rather sit there kicking the carpet and saying, “It’s not MY fault! MANAGEMENT should compensate their workers! It’s up to THEM, not ME!” Grow the fuck up.
If delivery places were to eliminate tips, then you’d just be paying more for your food. They have to pay the drivers. And since they’re so used to paying them hardly anything out of their pocket, the prices will go up noticeably. So if the choices are tip or delivery charge, you might as well just fucking tip.
I know a lot of pizza drivers.
They remember the people at the houses/businesses they go to.
Guess what?
If you tip reguarly and fairly, your food gets there speedy and hot. The drivers are polite and always have change. They put effort into doing their job well for you.
If you don’t tip, your food might end up being last on the run. And we make fun of you in the store and say a lot of curse words.
And the manager at the pizza joint I work(ed) at, he made the tickets that printed out to be stapled to your pizza say “Please remember, Tipping is not a city in China” at the bottom.
Fuck you, and try actually reading anything that I actually wrote in this thread.
I ALWAYS TIP. Always. The only times I’ve ever not tipped are:
when the food hasn’t been delivered in something approximating the time I was promised, and I’ve called the place back and they’ve told me it’s on its way; and
when the order is wrong and a second delivery is made (but I’ve already tipped the first driver).
Please note that this quote, attributed to me by Daniel:
was actually said by THespos.
Maybe businesses shouldn’t be relying on what they think other people think the business understands.
The incentive to the business is the money they make on the order. The incentive to the delivery driver is the money the business pays him for working there. There have been any number of threads in which the sentiment toward workers is “if you don’t like it, go work somewhere else” so I’m kind of amused that delivery drivers don’t get the same sentiment.
Well, no, they could make a delivery charge a wee bit more explicit by calling it a delivery charge.
Of course you can buy things for coins in this country, but I thought I already said that I don’t object to the idea of not paying for delivery food in coins.
My idea would probably only work, as I hinted above, if it were a small percentage, like 2 or 3% of the bill. Per order, the extra earnings would be tiny, but maybe for a delivery guy the cumulative amount at the end of the day would pay for the gas. For a typical order, maybe around $20, the average customer wouldn’t even notice it, and would probably still slip the delivery person a few bucks like they always do. It’s just a small buffer against the cheapskates.
Somewhat related question: How do you tip the delivery person? I very rarely order anything much over $30-$40, but as a f’rinstance, I might order a $15 dollar pizza on occasion, and I once ordered $150 worth of sashimi. I usually tip the pizza guy about three bucks, but I gave the sashimi guy $15. Different percentages, but it seems reasonable. The pizza guy actually carried more weight, I think, what with that big portable oven thing. It just doesn’t seem to me like the pizza guy and the sashimi guy did much of anything different, so why should one earn so much more than the other? If I’m buying pizza in a cheap restaurant, I expect different service than if I’m ordering an $80 plate of sashimi at a nice Japanese restaurant. Rarely are those expectations unmet. Delivery’s a whole other ballgame, though. Whether they’re delivering a greasy steak bomb or the poshest Asian cuisine, they’re still handing me a box at the door.
So, are “the rules” strictly tip a percentage of the order for delivery, or is the system more relaxed than for waitrons in the restaurant?
:smack: My apologies; that was a careless mistake.
I wonder, then, whether you could answer the question: what definition of extortion are you using by which this qualifies? Would my buskers also qualify?
Oh, they’re not. They’re telling you outright, and you’re pitting them for it.
It’s because you’re wrong: the incentive to the delivery driver is the opportunity to earn tips. If they show up at your business without pizza, they can’t expect money from you; if they show up with a pizza you ordered, they can.
The incentive to the business for you to tip their drivers is that this way, they don’t need to pay the drivers much. The incentive for you to tip their drivers is that this way, you get pizza delivered to you next time.
Any person in this cycle is free to break it, with varying degrees of rudeness. You’re free to not tip; the business is free to not do business with you any longer; the worker is free to quit.
