It wasn’t as good as it sounds.
And that wasn’t the job… the job required a security clearance, and since it was the military, they can do just about anything with you.
But you had a real job, you weren’t just some pobe delivering pizzas! Tell us a story, grandpa!
-Joe
I personally don’t think Dudley is being that philosophically unreasonable. Tips should not be expected. That’s the whole point of tips. I don’t know when and why they’ve become mandatory, but for some reason they are. Like I said, I worked as a delivery guy. It was an easy job and it paid well for college. I got paid more than my mom working for more than 20 years at a factory job. It’s not that bad a job and I don’t feel sorry for young kids working it. However, I will always tip because it’s socially expected of me and because I do have a little extra pocket change and I like throwing it around. That said, I hate that it’s expected behavior. I don’t mind it so much for waitstaff (who get paid under minimum wage), but I do mind it for delivery guys and the sort who (usually) get paid a normal wage.
I don’t tip my FedEx guy. I don’t tip my UPS or DHL guy. They deliver crap to me, why shouldn’t I tip 'em? But what bugs me most is the people who don’t get tipped. What about the line cooks? The busboys (who may get some %age of the tips, or who might not)? The dish washers? I’ve seen busboys bust their ass much harder than waiters and waitresses and I know they probably will only see a small percentage of my tip, if any at all.
When I worked delivery it was unfair: I did nothing but deliver sandwiches. I didn’t have to make them, take orders, or anything. I sometimes did just because I was bored, but nobody ever asked me to, and other drivers didn’t. It was an easy-ass job, and I made more than double than the kids who were taking orders, making sandwiches, cleaning up, and really busting their asses. I don’t think it was fair I was making more, especially that much more, just because I brought a sandwich to someone, but them’s the breaks and I happened to make sure I was on the winning side of this equation.
So my main qualm with tips is not only that they are expected, but that I don’t necessarily think the hardest working or most deserving person gets them. Driving delivery is not a difficult job. Being a waiter or waitress is harder, but it still ain’t mining coal or working at the widget factory. Heck, it ain’t even being a line cook and in most jobs I know line cooks get paid jack shit–certainly less than waiters or waitresses counting tips (and how much of those tips is actually reported to the IRS? I don’t know a single waitron who reports their tips accurately). Why do we value these people’s work more? I don’t think it’s fair to value the work of somebody bringing you the product more than somebody who actually makes the product, but I guess that’s how the world, or at least this part of it, works.
On the flip side, we were having dinner out Friday night, and I tipped $20 on a $101 bill.
It showed up on my bank statement as $131, and it’s now twice that I’ve called the restaurant for resolution.
This is one of our favorite places and it’s practically around the corner from us. I’ll hate it if I have to get mad at them, and it’s only $10. But if I’d wanted to tip $30 I would have tipped that.
I think in the end, what it comes down to is your own personal level of comfort with regard to risk. In essence, the pizza guy performs largely in the function of a sub-contractor. Instead of requiring his employer to put out the capital outlay to invest in a fleet of vehicles for his employees, the American pizza guy (usually) puts his own car on the line. Along with likelihood of increased maintenance expenses, and the possibility of increased medical expenses and reduction in income, the pizza guy runs the risk of having his most valuable earthly asset (in most cases) - his car - at risk while performing his job duties. If the car is lost, so is the job.
It’s not likely to happen. But it’s not improbable, either. While everything is going your way, it’s a great job. But if you have a setback, watch out. Do you think your boss or a customer is going to replace your vehicle (or at least pay the deductible, and the lost work time finding a replacement)?
Yeah, I know you said that, but it’s very silly.
At the age of thirty two, while working my way through a second term of college for a post-bac education degree, I got a class schedule that meant I had to leave my previous job, which I’d held for six years and which I loved. For a month or so I worked delivering food (including pizza), because it was a job I could get quickly, and I needed something quickly to tide me over while I searched for something better. It was a lousy job, and the only job I’ve ever quit without notice (which I thought was justified, considering the barely legal “independent contractor” status they used for deliverers).
So was I an underachiever for going back to school and working meanwhile? Financially irresponsible? Or a kid?
And what’s your feeling about this post, and its exhortation for you to tell people up-front when your plan is to default to not tipping them? Are you honest with folks, or do you rely on their belief that you’ll follow custom in order to receive treatment that you don’t plan on paying for?
Daniel
Well, take a different perspective. When I was working food delivery, I got paid four bucks per delivery, plus tips. I got no benefits, as I was treated as an independent contractor. I was delivering over a massive area, in which some deliveries would take an hour to complete and thirty or forty miles of driving. I kept careful records, and I compared my mileage (driven in my own car) to IRS estimates of how much it cost to drive a vehicle for business purposes. I exceeded minimum wage on exactly one night, and on another night, after i deducted driving expenses, I ended up paying about twenty cents an hour for the privilege of working the job.
I quit, of course. Not all delivery jobs are lucrative, and some delivery drivers absolutely depend on tips.
Daniel
This is true, and I do believe some of the extra compensation is justified for vehicle costs (gas, wear and tear, insurance, maintenance, etc.) That said, I drove around a worthless banger of car when I was delivery so, for me, the tips in about two weeks of work paid for the cost of the car, so the risk vs reward was well in my favor.
I’ve stated it many times already. The entire premise of your post is that tipping is the expectation, and that is the problem. Tipping should be considered extra for a job well done.
I know I’ve written this 18 different fucking ways now.
I’m sure this is a situation where your mileage definitely varies. But in a city like Chicago, where delivery routes are pretty busy, compact, and usually pretty well tipped, it’s not that bad being a delivery driver.
Certainly not a job I would want to maintain a family with. But as a second job, or part time job through college, one can do a lot worse in many cases. I got $7 an hour in 1997, plus I’d walk out with about $50 in cash every night. For a college student, that’s a veritable gold mine, in my opinion.
edit: Actually I lied about not getting pissed when somebody didn’t tip me. There was exactly one time I got miffed. Two high school girls called from WAY outside the delivery area (like about 15 miles out) and begged and pleaded with me to get a delivery (the guy who answered the phone had them speak directly to me). At first I refused but, promised that it would be made worth my while, I said okay, I would take it with the last run. When I got there, they somehow realized that they didn’t have enough money, ran around the house scraping every last penny until they got exactly the right amount. I didn’t say anything, just thanked them and walked out, but I was fuming.
I’m guessing those bangers didn’t have airbags.
Hey DudleyGarrett . You still haven’t explained how this statement of yours:
doesn’t jibe with the image of you as someone who has contempt for service personnel?
Nope. I don’t believe I owned a car with an airbag until three years ago. In '97 I believe I was driving an '89 or '90 Chevy Cavalier. It’s actually not fair to call it a “banger.” It was a perfectly decent car, didn’t require much maintenance, but didn’t really have much resale value.
I hear you. I went through an '88 Mazda 626 and at least half of an '88 Toyota Tercel. I just mentioned the airbags as shorthand for the whole assumed risk thing.
And I’m neither denying nor ignoring it. The thing is, if that’s the entire premise of my post, it’s a correct premise. Tipping is expected by the restaurant owner and the waiter, and you know that. You go into the transaction with them knowing what they expect of you.
Under these circumstances, what should be the case is immaterial: all that’s material is that you go into the transaction with certain expectations of them, which they know, and they go into it with certain expectations of you, which you know. If they decided to make your BLT with broccoli, limburger, and treeroot, you’d have a legitimate gripe against them, because they knew that you expected them to make a bacon, lettuce, and tomato, and they didn’t tell you that they intended to make something else. THey would have deceived you.
Just as you deceive them if you know what they expect from the transaction and you complete the transaction in a way that you can only do based on their incorrect expectations.
If you want to experience the eating-out-experience without tipping being an expectation, you have the power to make that happen. ALl you have to do is to spend five seconds informing the staff at the beginning of the meal that they should not expect a tip.
If you refuse to do so, the only reason for making such a refusal is to obtain services that you would not be able to obtain if their expectations had been corrected.
Daniel
I’m not the one who expects honest, hardworking individuals to cater to my every whim, and then short-change them.
Or the one making assumptions like:
And yet, I’m the one being “uber-douchy.” :dubious:
Tipping isn’t part of my culture and I have issues with it in the US where it encourages establishments to pay their workers less, have a lot of cash floating around etc - but I don’t have to deal with this. What I would really like to request is that if you come from a tipping culture, DO NOT assume that all cultures tip. Australia has started to and it is not uncommon now in NZ - this is because tourists have encouraged it. STOP IT.
Thanks, guys. Up until now I was pissed that I cannot get anything delivered to my house because it’s juuuuust out of delivery range of every restaurant in town. Now I’m grateful that I never have to worry about this highly controversial and important issue. I’ll just pick it up on my way home, much easier, no ballsack on the pizza, no complicated mathematics. Whoo.
You do, of course, drop some dollars in the “tip jar” on the counter, don’t you? :dubious:
Sydney and Melbourne are not the only inhabited places in Australia. A common mistake made by Americans, though. All your cites say are that if you’re dining in a 5 star restaurant in Sydney (or possibly Melbourne), then maybe a 10% tip, at the diner’s discretion, and only for excellent service, and even then, it would only be appreciated, not de rigeur.
In other words, for people outside Sydney (and, to a lesser extent, Melbourne), Tipping is not expected or (as a general rule) practiced, and even in those cities I’m willing to bet that tipping is only expected from people who flash their cash around- John and Sue Average having an anniversary dinner at The Rock Pool would not be expected to tip the waitstaff, for example.
We went through this in a previous tipping thread, DrDeth. You don’t live here, as far as I’m aware you’ve never even visited Australia, yet you keep trying to “prove” that we tip here. We live here, we know the customs, and we’ll thank you to stop trying to tell us how things supposedly are in a country you’ve never been to. The Aussies in the last thread told you the same thing, we’re telling you the same thing in this thread.
I don’t go into threads insisting everyone in the US owns a gun, for example- I don’t live there, I can’t speak authoritatively about firearm ownership rates there. I’ll thank you to exercise the same courtesy in relation to this particular discussion.
I agree with MelCthefirst- if you want to tip in the US, fine. But don’t try and make tipping an expected practice in places like Australia or NZ, especially when staff get paid perfectly well anyway. A waiter in Australia would earn a lot more than a waiter in the US, for example, at least on an hourly basis. They don’t need tips for doing the job they were hired to do in the first place.