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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Yes. If you business wants to collect a "tip" up front, before services rendered, it's not a tip (Doordash, Instacart, etc). If 100% of the proceeds don't get straight to the employees, but some end up in the pocket of the business, it's not a tip.

This last one is going to be to hear, but if you pay your employees below mimimum wage and allow for tips to make up the difference, well.....

Always tip, in cash, direct to the employee.

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I worry if I don't tip, they will vandalize my food. It's a hostage situation. I limit my use of the services because of it.

I've faced that after moving to SF. Stopped eating out unless its a actually special high end place or something.

I was in a rush and didn't put a tip, I found a hair in my fried rice and the tofu was not fully cooked. I'd ordered from that place a couple times before and its like $22 with tip for just Thai red curry with rice..

The prices are insane. Even if I made 10x what I make, I wouldn't eat out unless its really special.

Here's a tip: report this to the department of public health!

Sure, but this is an isolated incident. I don't want to attribute to malice what could have been a total accident that day, maybe the kitchen was just busy. However, it was coincidental that it happened at a time when I didn't tip.

I'll keep that in mind for next time though if it ever happens again! Now I kind of want to do a social experiment.. go to a restaurant like 4-5 times and then don't tip once to see what happens. If its really true service is affected that way, then its a broader problem.

Malice or not, a trend is found by data. Report it, if it's one off it's fine, if it's not it's a trend.

Will they know it was me if I report?

In australia we have no tipping culture and I've always been very against it, but I've found if I don't tip the quality of delivery driver is just abysmal, but if I do tip, I get "regular" service - ie. they come to my door in my apartment building, not just leave it in the lobby, and they usually don't completely fuck it up (ie. squished pizza from holding the box vertically).

It sucks but I just view it as an extra cost for using uber eats.

Most places allow you to give specific instructions to the driver. It's intended for things like "gate locked, text ### when you arrive" or something to that effect. But I bet you could say something like "will tip cash upon arrival" and it would have the intended effect, maybe even better than a tip in advance.

Drivers will avoid these as they interpret it “I’m going to stiff you”

Seems like a them problem and not a me problem.

Do they have an option to avoid these deliveries anyway? Where I live they're all employees (basically) of e.g. Grubhub, and Grubhub promises me delivery within e.g. 45 minutes. I had assumed Grubhub was automatically assigning a delivery worker in the area to make the delivery.

Well it’s a you problem if they don’t accept your pickup. And yes they can see the top amount. In most areas your basically bidding for their seevice

But that’s just the Grubhub/doordash branded drivers. In my area placing an order on those sites just triggers the place’S own delivery people if they normally do delivery

But you have no guarantee that your food won't be vandalized anyways when you tip before service. The bribe has no teeth. You're going to demand a refund if you notice the food has been damaged regardless if you tipped before or after.

Because online for-hire car services allow drivers to rate customers, I tip so that I don't get blackballed.

I tip up front with Uber Eats and Rappi because it usually means I get my order faster. But I have reduced tipping recently because I can see other orders are taking priority over mine.

I absolutely do not use these services unless there's a substantial coupon involved, it's madness. You get a delivery surcharge, a service surcharge, and a 20% tip to top it all or risk the food be messed with. Last order was 25 eur food and 20 eur charges for two hamburger before I went in and reduced the tip %. If it weren't for the 15e coupon I'd never have completed such a predatory transaction.

A few years ago Uber and Uber Eats in Ecuador was awesome. I could order a meal for $5-$8. Sometimes two dishes. I could take a taxi around town for $3. The promotions were dropped and the price of food increased substantially.

I contacted my senators and representatives about how the IRS should classify tips made before service. I got a call back from my senator’s office. The reasoning I presented was: that automatic gratuity for large parties is taxed differently than actual gratuity in some jurisdictions (why those have disappeared in most places), and that since the tip is used to determine order priority it is not a tip but is instead a bid for preferential service.

I also went through a call to get back a tip I made on a Chipotle order (DoorDash I believe) up front after the driver failed to find the address and then chewed me out after driving through parking lots for 5 minutes.

delivery services just need to rename it to a "bid" because that's really what it is.

Economists would probably love this, but I don't think consumers would.

Yes, and this is exactly what I proposed to my senators and representatives.

I really dislike tipping when I order my pizza deliveries. It doesn't offer me anything over giving the delivery driver a $5 bill.

Should the person greeting and seating customers get a tip? Should the people running food from kitchen to table? Cooks? If any of the above are a yes, then unless you want to tip each one in cash individually, you need them to split tips at the end of the night amongst themselves.

The fact that tips technically need to be reported to the IRS and thus your employer aside, I believe it is a legally fireable offense to pocket cash in order to avoid any policies on splitting it with others working the same shift.

A lot of restaurants do that? If it's agreed up by the employees BEFORE the transactions are taking place or even the employment decision is made, then whatever system they choose is fair (cooks or no cooks, etc). The key here is the the cooks know what they're getting into as well as the servers.

The problem is when the restaurant tries to change the rules in the middle of the game (Like the girl in Bentonville who's manager tried to confiscate a $2k tip) OR the restaurant owner sees this cash left on the table and gets a little greedy.

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