What’s an acceptable tip for a driver who delivers a $20 pizza?
A TikTok video purporting to show a DoorDash delivery driver in Texas swearing at a customer over the $5 tip she gave him has gone viral, sparking fresh online debate over tipping culture in the U.S.
“I just want to say it’s a nice house for a $5 tip,” the driver can be heard saying as he walks away from a home in the door camera video posted to TikTok earlier this week by a user under the name Lacey Purciful.
“You’re welcome!” the resident says, appearing surprised by the remark. “F*** you,” the driver responds before walking away.
A spokesperson for DoorDash said a delivery driver had been removed from their platform in connection with the incident.
It is a wholly disproportionate consequence. Chasing him down and yelling at him in the street might have been a reasonable course of action. Chasing him down and asking him how badly the gig employer was treating him to make him feel this way would be much better. Dismantling his livelihood just because you have so much power it doesn’t even occur to you to avoid abusing it, when his poverty is what makes your own wealth possible, is vicious entitlement.
You’re looking too far into this, my guy. This has nothing to with wealth and power and everything to do with expecting a minimum level of politeness from people I’m paying to provide me with a service. I’ve had bad days at work, and I’ve never lashed out at a customer like he has.
The only entitled person in this exchange is the delivery driver who felt that a 20% tip wasn’t enough.
It was 25%. But a 25% tip on a $20 order really isn’t that impressive. The driver does much the same amount of work as for a $100 order.
Income inequality does make it possible to hire gig-workers to run increasingly trivial errands for us, and the structures that enable that do make it possible to treat those gig-workers like shit. That does not mean you should. If you’re going to order small, you should tip big and I don’t think that is remotely controversial?
No one here treated the gig worker like shit. He got a higher than average tip, he wasn’t satisfied with it, lashed out at someone who did nothing wrong, and then he had to face the consequences of his own actions. It doesn’t matter if he was having a bad day, it doesn’t matter what happened before this.
I would fucking hope this is controversial. The very idea of tipping before I get my food is already ridiculous, and I’ve had to contact doordash multiple times to lower or remove my tip when I’ve received food in unacceptable conditions (as if the driver had tossed the bag around in his car). There is no way in hell I’m going to be paying over a quarter the price of my food on delivery.
Gotta keep the servants in line. Got it.
Everyone who makes more money than me is the wealthy and the problem: a child’s guide to class consciousness.
Are you trying to pretend the power relations were in favour of the driver here?
Get a grip.
You hyperfocus on the fact that the homeowner likely makes more money than the driver, therefore absolving the driver of any and all responsibility. Take a step back, maybe pull your head just a little bit out of your own ass, and realize that all the driver had to do to not get fired is literally just not swear at the fucking customer
I have never said the driver behaved well. Only that the customer behaved much worse.
Dude, you are way too focused on who did the thing (or rather, how much money they had) than what actually happened. You’re missing the forest for the trees.
I don’t see why that wouldn’t be controversial. You’re thinking of just wealthy people and not middle class. I would be losing money every month paying premium for small orders. I know this because i’ve done this for months (was very sick for awhile).
And since I still believe in tipping people because I understand that they’re not being paid even minimum wage, I opted to just not order at all now.