I hesitate to use the term ‘first world problem’ because it may dismiss something just because it affects someone who is affluent and lives in a wealthy country.
But I think that this story qualifies for the label
I am astonished that anyone would order home delivery of a cup of coffee in the first place.
DoorDash or whoever should charge a service fee large enough to be able to pay their drivers a fair wage, period. If some potential customers are lost because of that, too bad. Tipping should be the icing, never the cake.
If Door Dash workers had a living wage, this would not even be an issue. If everyone had a living wage, we would not have to tip. The Federal minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. Yes, some states pay higher. I challenge anyone to live on $2.13 an hour for their work. Why are we using this antiquated idea? (And yes, I do realize the history, which is due to racism.) We did give up horses and buggies in favor of cars, and so on. This idea needs to go away. Then these kinds of disputes would not arise. If the worker is being paid a living wage, they won’t need tips -- tips will just be a nice bonus, not a necessary thing.
I should have said, the minimum wage “for restaurant workers”, just to be perfectly clear.
When you tip a delivery driver, it’s not just about them getting paid an hourly wage that’s livable. They also have to pay for gas. Plus you’re paying for a small part of their insurance. And standard maintenance like new tires, oil changes, and even car payments.
I used to have a minimum of a $5 tip and that was over 20 years ago.
It’s all part of the wasteful mindlessness that wants a medal for separating paper from glass in the recycle bin, yet hops in the huge, gas-guzzling SUV to joyride and thinks nothing of exploiting those who are bad at math by having them everything to the door.
I understand the term first world problem to have a somewhat different meaning that simply being a problem that happens to the affluent. Rather, it is a problem that is only really an issue in a setting where ‘real’ issues are rare to non-existant; trivialities that are only considered a problem because there is little else to qualify for the term. And yes, ‘the coffee place is two blocks away and no one will bring it to me’ is just such a non-problem.
#5 Katydid
Presuming the missing word is what I think it is… what is it about the delivery people which prompts you describe them as ‘bad at math[s]?’
As the other commentors have implied, this isn’t a first-world problem this is additional evidence that the American Dream is dead.
I know a person working part-time, as a second job, for DoorDash. Three evenings a week, because that’s a much time as she can spare. She does not operate near her home, she has found that if she operates in an area about 20 miles from her house she gets better tips. Just getting to the range she works in costs her ~$4 in gas, and then another ~$4 to get home. She pays for her gas and any car repairs. She doesn’t make much additional money for the amount of investment, but it helps pay the bills. I’m certain there are some people who look at working for a food-delivery service as just making some extra spending money, but in her case (and probably a lot of others) the additional money is needed to avoid going further into debt.
I don’t really have a problem if people have enough money, or are foolish enough, to want to order a cup of coffee through door-dash. I can even envision, highly unlikely, emergency scenarios where I might do so. But the cost of doing so should provide a fair wage to the delivery drivers, i.e. at a minimum a hourly wage which if worked full-time would be enough to live on; and mileage, and vehicle insurance coverage when operating a private vehicle for company use.
Anything less is taking advantage of people. The companies who are doing this are moving much of the costs of doing their business from an internal cost to an external one, part of the costs of business operations for these delivery companies are transferred to their employees. Those external costs have similar results to other externalities like pollution or health care, the owners make more money while the external costs are borne by society.
@7 flex
Exactly. In shorter terms, “Privatizing profit while socializing costs”.
@6, Holmes, yes, I did leave the word “deliver” out, thank you for understanding the message anyway.
I’m old enough that I remember the early days of pizza delivery and had friends who went into that work thinking they’d get rich off the tips. I saw first-hand how hard it was to break even, once the gasoline burned was replaced, and the more-frequent maintenance on the car (more miles equals more routine maintenance including oil changes, tire rotation, service required at mileage intervals) and how even a minor accident would wipe out any profit for the foreseeable future. Additionally, at least in the US, a delivery driver is supposed to notify their car insurance company that they’re using the car for deliveries--which then incurs a higher cost of insurance.
Recently, friends of mine returned from a trip and took an Uber (or maybe it was a Lyft--that’s not pertinent to the example) home. On the way home, in inattentive driver of a Death-Star-sized vehicle totaled their driver’s car. The company the driver worked for won’t pay the costs involved to get a new car; the drivers are classified as independent sub-contractors, as flex @ 7 and jim @ 8 also highlight.
And from what I’ve heard, DoorDash is actually one of the better of the various third-party delivery services to work for; it’s certainly better than Uber Eats in terms of how well the drivers get paid.
Me, there’s a reason that when I order remotely (via Skip the Dishes, which seems to be Canada-only) I always up the tip to 20%.
If delivery drivers were paid correctly for their labor, this would be a first world problem. They are not. It is a measure of a devolution into a late-stage capitalism/mercantile shithole country that it has become an issue. It is not a first world problem. It is a rapacious capitalism problem.
Back when pizza and american-chinese were the only restaurants that would deliver, a noticeable amount of the stated cost of the food went into the delivery of it. A restaurant who did this was hoping volume would make up for it. This was a successful model for those who could pull it off. This has not changed. A wider selection of food is available, but not every restaurant and not every thing cooked/prepared allows for this kind of price-bite and still to make profit.
Restaurants that used to have delivery drivers now no longer do. They have offloaded some of their costs to delivery services. (who fuck with their customers like Amazon does) Who have offloaded their costs to their workers. So there are more layers in between you and your food, and each layer has to get paid. (golly, prescription drugs) The price goes up!
We saw what President Carter’s deregulation of the trucking industry did. We should not be surprised at these effects.
My third and final comment.
Seachange, @11, explains it the way I wish I had. I was mostly focusing on how the delivery drivers get cheated and shortchanged, but the restaurants themselves also suffer. And the customer ends up paying more for the middleman.
The pandemic started me thinking about what I really valued/what I really wanted, and all the stuff that really didn’t matter. Since November 2024, I realized there was going to be belt-tightening because salaries are not going up as necessities in life are cut. In my household, we’ve decided to spend our money on locally-owned restaurants that we call directly with our order, without fooling around with apps and middlemen adding layers of complexity. Then (when we don’t eat there) we go pick up the food ourselves--often as part of a multi-stop outing. That takes care of the problem of over-stressed and under-paid delivery people fighting rush hour traffic to drop off cold/wrong/smushed food at the house.