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Comment by pupppet | Hacker News Reader

Asking for tips on take-out orders is total BS and everyone's doing it now. Sorry I'm not rewarding you for a product I haven't even tried yet.

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In places where you pay upfront at the register and wait for your order, it almost feels like blackmail. Tipping happens at the time of placing the order. Not saying everyone does this but can't be sure that nothing fishy happens if someone tips low/min.

One dark pattern I saw recently was a Clover/Square POS that set 15% as a minimum, and no clearly visible option to decline.

It's usually both amusing and disappointing to visit some of the gig-worker communities (especially the doordash ones) where they complain about people not tipping enough to get their orders picked up and delivered. Those aren't tips anymore, they're bribes.

They're really more like...gas fees on the Ethereum chain, or spot electricity prices, I guess. It's a dynamically priced transaction fee based on instantaneous supply and demand. If you don't bid enough, you don't get your energy/money transfer/food.

And that's perfectly fine by me, as long as they stop calling it a tip.

Call it a 'delivery bid' and make it clear that if you don't bid enough, your order may be significantly delayed, cold, damaged or improperly handled, if delivered at all. Of course Doordash et al don't want to do that because the optics are pretty frakking bad.

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