Obligation for tip?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So in the thread about Door Dash’s DoubleDash option, I noticed that @aceplace57 said that he wouldn’t tip less than $7 or 8 for something inexpensive- under $14, as it was a paltry $3.50.

Now I got to wondering, why would the customary 15-20% be bad? Where’s the obligation to pay more come from? Surely there’s an element of agency involved in the part of the Dasher, who’s accepting that delivery with the expectation of getting a two dollar tip (slightly under 15%).

It’s the same idea that because being paid in part with tips sucks, we’re obligated to tip 20-25% at a minimum. I understand why we tip, but I don’t know where the obligation part comes from.

So where is the implication that we’re morally obligated to tip more coming from?

2

People can tip whatever they want. Not sure how Bill Gates entered the discussion.

Looks like Bill Gates doesn’t stint on “tips”.

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5391316/bill-gates-foundation-ending-microsoft-philanthropy-billions

3

IMHO, the “obligation” is established by whatever the accepted % is for that service. Sit down meals are 20% in the USA. Grubhub is similarly 15% - 20%. Bartenders $1-$2 per drink or %20. As I understand it, tipping is usually much less in Europe.

What I don’t understand is the “how much would you like to tip” request on every fucking device these days.

I order through a self-service kiosk? Zero. Who am I tipping? you’re IT department?

I stand at the counter and all you do is reach over and hand me an overpriced breakfast pastry? Zero. Dunkin Donuts doesn’t ask for tips. You’re in the same business.

4

I didn’t read the other thread, but it sounds like he’s saying he tips 25% or $7, which ever is more. ISTM he’s not saying he’s obligated to do it, he’s saying the way the math works out he’d be giving the driver a small enough tip that it may seem insulting. Like if you went to a diner, got a cup of coffee and some toast for $4.00, you’ll probably leave at least a few bucks, not 80¢, even though that’s 20%.

5

Agree with this, and to add - if you are doing take-out, ya know, old timey “order the food directly from the restaurant and go pick it up yourself” - there is no need to tip at all. If someone is serving you in their establishment, and that service requires clean-up, upkeep of dining equipment, staff to maintain things, etc., then a tip is warranted.

What annoys me now is the car readers start at 15% rather than the 10% from the before times, and many times that button is on the right, rather than the left side of the screen - the 25% button is conveniently on the left side, which is where people reflexively tap when quickly paying - meaning you have to work to find the lower amount button, or press the “Custom Tip” button and do more work to leave a 10% tip now.

6

To me, this just shows what a nonsense tipping is. Just make it a flat service fee.

7

I can’t say it any better than that.
i think we’ve finally reached a point in our economy that a $5 bill is almost equivalent to a dollar bill in 1995.
i remember leaving $2 and $3 tips for the waitress in 1995. IIRC that was a common tip then. Today, it’s expected to at least leave a fiver on the table for the waitress.

Delivery is more work and they’re burning gasoline. $7 to 10 (in bad weather) seems reasonable to me.

i use 25% for the larger bills at Restaurants. it was 15% ten years ago.

i’m sorry for the cheap shot at good ole Bill Gates. Sometimes I try too hard to be funny.

i may gripe about the badly designed software. But, I couldn’t do my job without Windows and Microsoft Office. Heck, I wouldn’t have a job at all without Microsoft software.

8

Only if there is an obligatory rise in waitstaff wages.

9

I wanna know where @aceplace57 lives that DoorDash is $14. It’s $30 where I live. And I usually tip 20% on that, more if it’s cold outside.

10

We can argue all we want about the fairness of restaurants (and economies/countries) offloading the cost of working-class service labor onto the consumer… but at the end of the day, I tip because the person on the other end’s ability to pay rent largely depends on it. It’s a fucked up, unfair, evil system, and we’re all victims of it, but still… my anger towards that system isn’t enough to justify me potentially screwing someone over who’s just trying to do their job and make ends meet.

I pretty universally tip 20% regardless of service level. If the service is good, I will thank them profusely and go back. If it’s especially bad, I just won’t go back. It’s not some test of their level of servitude or deference… for me it’s almost completely detached, actually.

On DoorDash, I just tip the standard “middle” recommended tip (which is based on a variety of things, I believe, including not just order amount but distance, etc.). This is nowhere near the amount that aceplace tips, but I also would never put in a small $5 order to begin with. IMHO they’re not just driving to me exclusively; I am almost always just one order along a route with many other pickups and customers. I also try to meet them at their car instead of making them park and walk to me, to save them time.

It’s worth noting, though, that Doordash has been sued by NY for stealing tips: DoorDash to pay millions to drivers after company pocketed tips. Hopefully that practice has stopped, but it’s hard to say. So much of it is an algorithmic black box. I can only hope the Dashers are making some profit (because otherwise why would they do it), but it’s hard to say in this economy… there just might not be any better jobs available =/

I’m not rich by any stretch, but I do try to redistribute what little income I have across my local economy, even if Doordash takes its cut.

I also don’t use Doordash when I can help it (i.e. when I have use of the car or can walk in good enough weather). For takeout, I still tip 20%, even before I ever see the food.

11

I can never remember what services we are “supposed” to tip for, much less how much. I just try to avoid patronizing anything like that all to avoid the confusion. I haven’t gone to a restaurant in many years.

Just make it simple. Give me a bill with what I owe on it, no guessing.

12

Oh please.

It’s not particularly “evil”, it’s just kind of stupid. The convention is you pay 20% for your restaurant meal so that’s what I pay. Everyone should take that into account when they engage in the transaction. What is moronic, selfish, and possibly “evil” are dipshits who decide they want to tip substantially less or not at all because they ostensibly don’t believe in the process. If you don’t believe in it, don’t go to a restaurant. If you do go out to eat, assume that is just the cost.

If a person wants to go out to eat but doesn’t want to tip, there are plenty of Chipotles and Paneras around.

13

For the record I’ve never used DoorDash or GrubHub and so am not really familiar with the intricacies of putting in an order or providing tips when using these services. I have used Uber and always tip the maximum amount.

I’m not sure there is an obligation to pay more. I think, for most people, they realize that an 80 cent tip is pretty insulting even if that’s what the math dictates. Especially for something like DoorDash that requires the person you’re tipping to put in quite a bit more extra work for you personally than perhaps a barista or a waitress, who is serving multiple customers at once.

I think a lot of people who tip more than the standard 20% do so because they understand that for many service workers, those tips are their wages – their real wages, the money they need to pay rent and feed their kids. Skimping on tips is a massive douche move even if, as noted, a small tip would make sense mathematically.

An example: I sometimes stop by a drive-through coffee stand on my way to work. My usual large latte is $5.45. the barista spend maybe 5 minutes making my drink, ringing up the order, taking my money and making change. a 20% tip would be $1.09. Assuming that’s the average, and assuming that she can make 12 drinks an hour, that’s $13.08 in tips per hour. This is a big assumption as clearly she can service multiple customers at once (well, up to two, I guess) and some drinks are more expensive than mine, but there’s also lulls in the traffic and the stand can go for long periods without a customer. Still, $13 an hour is less than minimum wage here. I usually pay with a $10 bill and leave the change as a tip. $4.55 is an ~83% tip. 83% would appear to be excessive but it’s less than $5. I can afford it and the barista deserves it.

The last day of work for December I went through the drive-thru and ordered my usual. I left a $100 tip in the jar – without saying anything about it – as bit of a Christmas present. My first day back in January the barista thanked me profusely. It clearly meant a lot and did her some real good. These folks live off of their tips. And this is Oregon. Tipped workers are required to be paid at least the state minimum wage, currently $14.05/hr.

Another example. My wife and stay in hotels frequently and I usually tip the housekeepers $20 per day. Now, I can almost hear some of you gasping and clutching your pearls about how much we overtip. I’ve been told by posters on this very board that anything over $5/day is exorbitant and that housekeepers aren’t deserving of such riches.

I’ve worked as a housekeeper. Hotel housekeepers are usually given 15 minutes to completely clean and ready a room between guests. Assuming each guest leaves a $5 tip, and assuming a housekeeper can do 4 rooms an hour (which is hard to do as they need make frequent trips to the laundry room and the supply closet) that’s $20/hr in tips for doing a dirty, backbreaking and thoroughly thankless job. And of course let’s face it, most hotel guests don’t leave tips. So $20 seems fair. If I had more discretionary income than I do I’d leave more.

What I don’t like is the “please leave a tip” screen that pops up on pretty much every POS system that I encounter these days. I’m not going to leave a tip at the local convenience store or gas station. I’m not going to leave a tip when I’m ordering from an e-commerce website. I will, however, happily leave a decent sized tip at my barber or a fast food restaurant. Yes, even if I’m using a kiosk or the app to order. Someone is cooking my food, packaging it up, and getting it ready for me to pick up or better yet, bringing it to my car. They certainly deserve tips for doing all that. If I call in an order from a local restaurant to go pick up, I leave my standard tip as well because, again, someone, or more than likely several someones, cooked and prepared and packaged that food for me to come get. It’s not like that, because I didn’t sit at a table and require the services of a dedicated waiter, nobody did anything for me.

I can only remember once in recent memory where I didn’t tip. My wife and I tried a new restaurant and the waitress was so incredibly awful that I was and am convinced she was deliberately trying to piss us off or get us to leave. First, she didn’t bring us part of our order. I had to stand up, walk across the dining room, and get her attention because she simply was not coming by our table. Then, after reminding her about the order she still didn’t bring it to us and when we finally left – never having received the appetizer and one drink – she wouldn’t take it off the bill. I could’ve gone all Karen on her and demanded to talk to a supervisor but I just said “fuck it” and left no tip. I figured I’m not paying for labor when she didn’t do anything to earn it.

But that’s one time in… forever? I don’t ever remember not tipping another service worker.

So to circle back to the OP, I think the obligation to tip more – again, if there is one, which I’m not sure there is – comes from an understanding that when we engage these kinds of services that we become part of this weird economic engine wherein the livelihood of those works rests on us, the customers, not being stingy douchebags. Again, I’m not sure there’s an expectation to tip more on small purchases but rather this is born from a kindness most of us can get behind.

14

Well, I do think it’s evil… we are the only developed country that has a mandatory tipping culture AND no national healthcare. It’s a pretty lonely Venn diagram.

That’s why it’s abnormal. Almost anywhere else, it’s just part of the menu price and already socialized costs.

15

In the case of food delivery services (which I never use, for the record), there is less connection between the total price and the amount of server effort than in a restaurant. Yes, it takes about the same amount of work and time to bring a $10 entree from the kitchen to the table as a $50 one. But the restaurant server will probably make numerous trips for a single meal, may offer recommendations, and will generally have more of a relationship with the customer than a delivery person, who is usually one and done.

Since a small total for delivery involves almost exactly the same amount of effort as a large total, a flat delivery fee would be fairer than a percentage.

Customers who recognize that fact give a proportionally larger tip for small orders.

16

That’s where it gets tricky… DoorDash already DOES charge a delivery fee (which can be discounted or waived with a membership). AND a service fee. AND they raise menu prices, sometimes without informing the restaurant. But of course, they are completely non-transparent about where all that money goes — whether any of it goes to the Dashers or just their investors. Part of the lawsuits was about this, where they would secretly decrease the base pay in ratio to how much tips they got: when a customer tipped more, the Dasher would earn lower base pay; technically they “kept” all the tips still (Doordash’s weasel words at the time), but their base pay was lowered by a corresponding amount so they didn’t end up with any more take-home pay.

17

Ah, not using it, I didn’t realize that. It confirms my disinclination to start.

18

I forgot to mention that in some places (mostly Seattle), a few coffee shops and restaurants have already started going down this route: They put up signs that say something like “You don’t need to tip here. We believe in living wages for our employees and our menu prices already reflect that.” There’s no tip jar, just happy-seeming employees who offer good service.

19

I have Dashpass.
$9.99/month with the monthly plan or $96/year ($8/month)
delivery and handling fees are waived on orders over $12

Much better deal than Uber Eats.
Uber One is the same at $9.99 and annual memberships at $96.
Minimum is $15 to waive fees
I cancelled Uber One

I didn’t use it often enough.

20

Interesting. I didn’t know about that service. But I am trying to cut down, for a lot of reasons. I’ve decided for every time I want to order delivery and don’t, I’m going to donate $10 to the ACLU. It’s just a better way to spend my money.