On demand food delivery is a premium luxury service (though the platforms have done their best to market it as otherwise). Please tip accordingly. These people work their asses off and are generally from a very low income background. If you have problems with that, go to the grocery store.
I stopped automatically tipping in New York City and the Bay Area. They earn a minimum wage now [1]. If they go above and beyond, sure, I'll tip. But if they just do their job, there are now regulations that have them get paid.
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/dca/news/018-24/mayor-adams-first-a...
It's more that they're regulated, the price of the delivered food is already high, and I'm not putting a premium on their labour above e.g. the folks who prepared the food.
Different contexts. Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. And delivery drivers in New York and California are making well above the federal minimumw wage. Most importantly: a restaurant tip is split between skilled servers and kitchen staff. It's going to multiple people, each of whom have developed a specialised skill that adds value to my experience. None of that is true for someone carting my food to my home.
Absent regulation, I think tipping drivers and delivery staff is good. With regulation, the tradeoff has sort of been made for me.
This is the one thing that really irks me. This is a known thing. But everyone seems to think the solution to that is "well, the customer should fix that". Any attempt to try to fix that through Departments of Labor is met with reasons why not. Servers don't want to report their employer, etc.
And then that leads to tropes like "If you don't tip well, I am being taxed to serve you". No, you're not. The IRS taxes you on an estimate of your tipped income - if you can show that it was less than that, then that's what you get taxed on. The reality is that the IRS's estimate assumes that you get 8% tips (when was the last time you ever saw that?), so most servers are undertaxed on tipped income, and don't want to rock that boat.
Last time I mentioned this here, a few people piped up that this "didn't matter", because there is "no way to document cash tips for the IRS"...
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf - fill this out, once a month. It takes a good three to four minutes.
I live in Oregon and employees here make a minimum of $14.70/hour and $15.95 in the Portland Metro area before tips. California and Washington have slightly higher minimums, seemingly state-wide. There are other states listed that are not as generous.
I tip but am sympathetic to my relatives who don't. Many places expect you to pay and tip, then take your drinks and food to the table, bus your tables, etc.
Absolutely with a roommate.
As HN frequently points out "your business model is not my problem".
Either don't tip, or don't use the service. If you do tip, you're contributing to workers being exploited.
It is problem with business taking advantage of low income groups and business should be guilt into doing the right thing. Not people for not tipping.
If a company can't exist/ will be bankrupt ( or whatever the greedy business owners complain) if they can't provide livable( not minimum wage that was set 10 years ago and never account for inflation) wage to workers they should not exist in first place.
Tipping just enables this exploitation and at the same time paying billion of dollars to shareholders . I have read news about companies, owners taking share of the tip.
delivery drivers should protest and make sure government to pass bills to stop this exploitation.
these business are taking advantage of situation of vulnerable people who either have to sleep hungry and not exploited or be exploited but have a meal. No idea how we can as a society make it better.