From what I see on Facebook, most people are super eager to tip servers in restaurants. Whether or not they actually do is a different story. There is a lot of debate about tipping culture with the main point seeming to be that if you can afford the luxury of eating out, you should include the tip in your budget in advance. This conversation has boiled into debating if you should tip a restaurant when you simply do pickup at the counter.
People make wildly detailed posts about why tipping is key to keep the restaurant and bar industry prosperous. People also tip hairdressers and a random list of other service jobs. When you really boil down tipping, we don’t tip all services equally.
I think you are supposed to tip the barber. However I don’t know if you tip the plumber. Recently I tried out tipping the sound engineer and that was a positive experience all around. Was I supposed to tip the Gordon Goodyear shop for dealing with my tire today? I’m not sure what the distinction is for tipping or not, but for whatever reason y’all don’t tip Uber Drivers.
This tipping thing is inconsistent
I have done a fair bit of Uber Eats and a smidge of Uber Driver. The way Uber Eats and DoorDash are designed I can see who tips ahead of time. I can’t say for certain how much the tip is, but 8$ and more for a single order implies a tip. I think people are used to tipping the delivery person so they are comfortable tipping when ordering with Uber Eats. The majority of people seem to tip the delivery person.
While a lot of people tip crappily, I appreciated all those 2-3$ tips. Just assume for an Uber Eats person to make a “liveable wage” off your order, you probably want to tip 5$. Especially if you are ordering from McDonalds, where drivers wait excessive times.
End of November I started doing Uber Driver. When I grew up, I was taught to tip the Taxi person. While some of my tips have been brokeass percentages, I have always tipped at least 2$ to a taxi/uber person. I assumed this was the custom and norm.
What I have learned doing Uber Driver is y’all Montreal folk don’t tip. Tourists love tipping. Drunk people are hit or miss with tipping. But the average person grabbing an Uber to deal with a last minute rush, is not tipping.
To be clear I do receive tips as a driver. I’m grateful for every one of them. I just don’t get why people skip tipping their drivers if we did the job correctly. Throw a dollar at it or something.
Do people still tip the taxi driver?
Clearly I’m selfishly motivated by this topic. I’m also just confused. I have always tipped my Uber Drivers since I’ve been on the app. I personally hate tipping culture and just think everything should cost more bypassing the need for gratuities.
We still live among this tipping culture. Thankfully Uber Driver does pay adequately enough that without tips the money is proper. With a few nice tips though a night can be super fire. Given I just had my first car repair cost, I’m sitting here praying for a few more of those fire nights in my near future.
Why did we stop tipping taxi drivers? Is it because they are now Uber Drivers? From what I see on Reddit my experience isn’t isolated. Who makes the rules on what businesses get tips and which ones don’t. Shouldn’t the same “don’t use the service if you cannot afford the tip” logic apply, like we claim matters with restaurants?
I know limo drivers get tipped. We tipped the limo guy 20%. It was made super clear that gratuities for the limo driver was part of the fee when we booked it.
Did I miss some social queue where taxi drivers are no longer getting tipped? Like the middle class homeowners decided it was now appropriate to skip out on this particular tip.
People don’t have to face you when they pay
At first I was going to discount the idea that people don’t actually pay you to your face with Uber. Then I remembered with Uber Eats, people have to put the tip in up front. This information is conveyed to a delivery person.
At 3:00 AM being cheap with Uber Eats is a sure way to not get anyone to deliver your food. We are taught socially to tip with food delivery. We know that restaurant will remember us. Or whatever other logic we make up in our head.With Uber Driver, people can just 5-star you and go. There’s no real transaction happening between the driver and the passenger. The person just gets out of their car and goes on their merry or not-merry way. They can just choose not to tip at this point and they will likely never see the driver again in their lives.
It took 25 trips the week after Christmas to get a single tip. After that a few more generous people appeared in my car but to go 24 straight trips without a tip is a humbling experience. You start to drive around the city and think about the customs. Or at least I do.
I leave you with a reminder that throwing even a dollar at your Uber Driver is big time appreciated.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone