"Why Tip?"

[kane_magus]

I kind of hope this story goes viral.

Tangentially related to that, here's something that has always mystified me: when you order a pizza for delivery, they add a "delivery charge" to the final cost. I would be fine with that, except that this apparently doesn't cover driver expenses, since you are also expected to give a tip in addition to this nebulous extra charge. So what I want to know is what is the purpose of this so-called "delivery charge" then, if not to compensate the delivery driver?

Comments

[rabbitucker.livejournal.com]

The delivery charge compensates the restaurant for having to hire the driver. The driver's expenses (fuel costs, etc.) are met by the driver alone.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

It was the restaurant's choice to offer home delivery however. This kind of setup is like punishing people who decided to take advantage of a service offered.

To take it to an extreme, since having to have a parking lot for their guests with cars doubles the amount of land they have to own/lease/rent, there should be a parking fee added to those who drive down to eat rather than those who walk in. Why should pedestrians like myself have to pay the added cost of their driving customers?

In short, the delivery charge -should- be for the driver's expenses. The fact that the driver has to make a lot of home deliveries proves he's generating business (and profit). If he's not generating enough, then it's probably a bad business move to be offering home delivery.

I'm more on Kane's side with the whole tipping racket. If the majority of your pay is coming from your tips, perhaps - just perhaps, your manager is deliberately taking advantage of this to pay you as low as they're legally required to do so rather than pay you for what you're worth. (And I've seen some places where you weren't paid anything and were expected to live off of tips.)

In short (too late!) I'd be fine with them doing things like the anti-tipping article so long as the owner was paying the staff appropriately. And in general they'd have to pay more than those who prey on the tipping setup simply because few if any people would agree to work for less. (or simply wouldn't be able to afford to.)

(And I've seen some owners that control all tips gathered as well, and taking a share of it for themselves. Something to consider.)

[rabbitucker.livejournal.com]

Well, look, I'm just saying how it IS. As far as the moral and ethical SHOULDs of delivery charges, I'm with you guys.

Restaurants, as long as they are up front about the extra costs to you, can include delivery charges, parking fees, and even pay toilets. They would be well within their legal rights to do so. It would likely drive away customers and just be plain wrong, but they CAN do it. They just shouldn't, for lots of reasons.

And now for some economic navel-gazing...

There's another factor one can consider: rationing via the market. If this guy's pizza is awesome, and everybody wants it, the demand may exceed his ability to supply pies, and thus a shortage occurs. The delivery charge dissuades customers who are less willing (or able) to pay it, and demand decreases to the level at which he is willing and able to make pizzas at the market-clearing point. (Alternatively, he might just raise the base price of a pie.)

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

(Screw Comcast once again for putting both your and Mord's reply notifications in my Spam folder. -_-)

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. They're just passing the cost of whatever pittance they pay to the driver on to the customer (though Google tells me (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&biw=1680&bih=835&q=pizza+driver+rip+off&aq=f&aqi=g-v1&aql=&oq=) that apparently the driver often doesn't get even half of that "delivery fee" either, so it seems it's less to cover the cost of hiring the driver and more simply that the pizza place wants to charge more for the pizza without officially raising the displayed prices).

I'd rather they increase the delivery charge (and stop skimming half or more of it for themselves rather than the driver) to also cover the driver's gas and such and just do away with the expected tip, especially since a lot of people will screw the driver over on tips anyway*. Many other jobs with a lot of traveling involved will pay for travel expenses, or even give a "company car" for use or whatever. The least a pizza company** should do is pay for the delivery driver's gas.

As for tipping in general, yeah, I think it should be done away with altogether. It's pretty crappy that places who hire people that "traditionally" rely on tips are apparently, for some reason, allowed by law to pay them way less than minimum wage, precisely because they are expected to make it up in tips. Tipping is a poor practice mainly because a lot of people are simply dicks and don't pay a proper tip (though, to be fair, some others go above and beyond in their tip giving, but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that there are far fewer of these people than there are those who give crappy tips). As such, the whole thing should just be gotten rid of everywhere, and the prices increased across to board to make up for it (and, again, don't skim off the extra charge and still stiff the employees anyway). Sure, customers may complain about it for a while, but they'll get over it.

Note, I have never worked in a job that relied on tips, and hope that I never will, so I'm not speaking about any of this from personal experience or anything. I just think it's a shitty practice, is all.

* - Personally, for pizza delivery, I tip based on the suggestion of this site (http://tipthepizzaguy.com/), except that I usually round up to the nearest dollar. (Unless the suggested tip is less than ten or so cents over the dollar, in which case I round down. >_>)

** - In this particular case, I'm referring to the big chains like Pizza Hut and Papa John's and Domino's, rather than some small mom-and-pop place, though I'd want it to apply to them as well.