A rant

@Chary
You make good points. Issue is, I deliver for a company with a premium product. It's common for a delivery to be anywhere between $50-$100. Most (not all) people who are willing to pay for the product can afford $2 for a tip. When I take a $100 delivery to a house worth 3 million, it's a little frustrating to be stiffed

But yes, it would be great if I was just paid more by the company but welcome to corporate America

Okay, yeah, I was assuming you were working with cheapo food delivery. That's completely different lol. Yikes.

I BELIEVE those bad behaviour and bad vicious cicle only contribuited to pay less WAGES in NA, cauz tipping ur waiters or delivery boi is out of question here in EU, if a campany can't afford to pay minimun wage ur workers and they have relie on tips for surviving, then those companies has no reasons to exists.

I own a store in a local big commercial center and there are 2 restaurants here, they pay 1500EURO avarage their waitresses, and they rarely get tips (only few cents if there are any), and somehow those restaurants/bar/caffe' survive through pandemic! and ITALY is not even the wealthiest EU member, place like Germany, France or Denmark rarely or never give tips to waiters.

i mean 1500€ as low entry wage per month is not highest one, but they can easily live through cauz we have base commodity, service and flat rent are more cheaper than NA. believe or not, NA's Pure-capitalism just love squeezing ur workers.

@Chary how much is the delivery charge? I was thinking that delivery is usually a convenience, and if you can afford the luxury of having something delivered then you can afford the tip. But I suppose if you can’t afford a vehicle then delivery might be your only option for big grocery orders or something, and then it might be justifiable to not tip.

@relauby
HEB (local grocery chain) will charge you 15% default tip, with a $5 shopper's fee and a $5 delivery charge.
Doordash now defaults to 25% or 30% iirc. The fees range from 0 to $20 on top of that. You can pay 10/mo to nill most delivery fees, but you'll still pay a 10% service fee.
Uber, again, 15% service fee, deliver fees of up to $25 (again nil if you pay monthly for a sub)
Central Market (think: whole foods) will charge you $12 for delivery, $10 for shopping order fee, and $15 tip, the latter of which is unable to be edited.
Favor has no delivery fee in most cases, but a mandatory $10 tip for grocery orders.

If I wanted to stock up, get $150 worth of groceries and not risk myself going outside, it'd be $32 extra. Or, $10 and a little shame.
Making a $13 coffee delivery order with DD would cost me $19 with tip and fees.

A big problem I have with tipping for delivery services is that you have to do it in advance. How do you know that they are going to do a job worthy of 25% before they even do it? The original point of tipping was to reward your server for providing good service. If the server performs well, they get extra, if they perform poorly, you can reduce their tip accordingly. Of course you don't tip tons of other jobs, you just leave good/bad feedback other ways. As others have mentioned, service in countries without tipping is at least as good as it is in the USA.

Semi-related delivery services rant: The delivery services themselves do basically nothing and steal all of the profit. They don't pay the delivery driver, you do with tips (which they also sometimes steal). They take a 20-30% cut from the restaurant, and they charge you up to 50% extra in service fees that they also keep. By the time they are done, a $15 order is easily over $30, so I avoid them as much as I can. Of course now we are expected to tip for pickup too...

@krakenx
I'm a big proponent for cash tips at the door. If your food is late/cold/wrong, don't tip. If it's timely and everything is as it should be, hand your driver a couple dollars. That way, you're not tipping for shoddy service and the companies aren't taking any cut from the tip

Maybe thats why people quitting in mass at the moment. Its just a better option to live on the state.

About delivery drivers, Most times I use GrubHub, and on others Uber Eats, but many occasions they don't deliver, and I watch the driver passing my place. And that's with a tip. And then I have to msg the company where's my food? I mostly get my money back, But I'm still stuck being hungry. so WTF.

@OldBoi and that is a reasonable reason to not tip. I don't blame you for that

The idea of "lol well they're paid bad so they deserve a tip" has never struck me as an intelligent response to why tipping exists. First of all in, sane countries, and hell i'm pretty sure some sane states, you're paid minimum wage no matter what. You might be quoted a wage below minimum wage, and told tips make up the difference and then some, but if they don't then the employer makes up the difference.
Frankly even that is a stupid system, but it's less stupid than just paying someone slave wages no matter what they're tipped.

The answer isn't "Oh just blindly follow culture". Uh, no. Why should people pay for someone else's employees? That makes literally no sense. You paying for the meal is what should be paying their paycheck. A tip is supposed to be extra. It's just a bullshit scam and people fall for it hard. I do still tip, but generally not based on %. The system won't change if people just cover their eyes and blindly keep tipping, and accepting tip jobs. Though that's asking a lot of America and its government.

Delivery is about the same boat. What exactly am I tipping for? Your excellent bag grabbing skills? Your impeccable ability to drive a vehicle without crashing? Your stunning skill following a GPS trail to my exact location?
I worked on a retail floor for 5 years, and in that time I loaded treadmills, barbeques and pools solo. I'd bring them to vehicles, and load them. I've loaded 90+ bags of manure into a truck on several occasions. 30 bags of bark mulch. I've had to remove a barbeque piece by piece out of a box and fit it into a tiny ass car...TWICE. I got tipped a grand total of once, by a really nice old lady who gave me a toonie. No one in retail has their hand out expecting a tip. Why the fuck do people doing delivery and waiting tables expect one? Every no-skill job is hard and requires a lot of effort.
I happily tip hairdressers because it's a job that requires skill and compassion to do well. When they do a good job I happily tip around $10-20 on a $15 haircut because it's crazy to me they get paid so little for their time.

If delivery drivers aren't paid enough, it's 100% on the employer to pay them more. Unlike wait staff where there is an actual level of attentiveness and going "above and beyond", most deliveries to most people are incredibly simple things. Saying "it's a luxury bro" is stupid. It's a SERVICE. I am paying the service whatever I am to do the service they claim to provide. Delivery costs should be higher if that's what it takes. It should be baked in. You don't build someone a house for $20 and pray to god they're nice enough to tip the $300,000 it cost you and your crew to make it. And if it kills the service, well shit I guess it wasn't a viable service. But don't goddamn undercut yourself and then try and guilt trip customers into making up for your own incompetence.

/rant

Nevermind. Don't tip your delivery drivers

So what if you deliver a 100$ product to a 3 million dollar house ? Does the clerk at the grocery get any more money if they DO THEIR JOB AT THE AGREED WAGE and they serve a billionaire ? No. Why would you be entitled to ask for more money than the price someone agreed to pay because your job involves moving around?? Anyone can do your job. Did you put extra care in that particular delivery ? Did you make my experience so much better that I'm like , wow , this person deserves an extra because he just did his job , which is really basic by the way as it's just carrying an item from point A to point B, in such a special way!

You want a tip ? Here's a tip (advice) for you, get a new job.

I really posted more as a "do it out of kindness" thing even if it doesn't make a ton of logical sense. If someone comes knocking at my door with food in 110 degree heat, I'm happy to have a fiver on hand to for the poor kid.