Technology

I did DoorDash driving for a while and they typically only paid $1.50-$2.50 per delivery. The goal I always heard from experienced drivers was you shouldn’t take less than $1/mile for the delivery or it wouldn’t be worth your time and expenses. That meant the balance had to be paid upfront by the customer to make it worth someone’s time to deliver the order. My suggestion for customers was always to look up the distance to the restaurant and make sure the tip was at least as much as however many miles away the restaurant was.

It’s really disingenuous in the article that DoorDash and Uber are complaining about being forced to let people tip at checkout since that’s how the apps have worked anyway every time I’ve used them anyways. They complain about customers tipping fatigue and that tips should be a reward for excellent service and not a basic expectation, but that’s exactly how they’ve structured their business to operate and more generally how employers in the US have been abusing tips for decades.

These companies have been hiding where a lot of the money goes and try to improve margins by exploiting the drivers, and restaurants. I wonder if something with a more upfront billing process would attract customers, or people would leave because of the more obvious high costs? Actually tie the delivery cost to the distance from the business, and if people want to pay less they’ll have to wait for some other customers nearby to also order something and pool their fees to make it worth a driver’s time. But they’ll know that upfront, and a tip can actually be a tip.

Tips probably shouldn’t be allowed to offset an employer’s responsibility to pay employees in most situations.