If you go to a restaurant or place a delivery order from one, you probably know that you’re supposed to tip your server or your delivery driver. While tipping isn’t a thing in every country, it is certainly expected in the United States, and many servers and delivery drivers rely on those tips as a large portion of their income.
One security guard shared a story on Reddit about a pizza delivery driver who delivered $938 worth of pizza, breadsticks and wings to a company located on the 3rd floor of the building where he works. He wrote, “A Pizza Hut delivery person came to the building delivering a HUGE order for a group on the 3rd floor. While she is unloading all the bags of boxes pizza, and the boxes of wings, and breadsticks, and plates and napkins and etc. I took the liberty of calling the point of contact letting them know the pizza was here.”
While they were waiting for the point person to come downstairs for the order, he got to talking to her about her family and her kids. He shared, “She told me about her kids and how they play basketball in school and are going to state and another one of her sons won some UIL awards in science. You could tell how proud of her children she was. However, she revealed it’s been tough because it’s not cheap, in time or money. She had to give up her job as a teacher so she could work a schedule that allowed her to take care of her children.She said her husband works in security like I do and ‘it helps but it’s hard out there.'”
He also explained that she “was pretty excited” because she had several large delivery orders that day. He assumed that she was excited because large orders should mean large tips. For example, an 18% tip on a $938 order would be $168.
When the point person came down, the delivery driver loaded everything into the elevator, went upstairs and set everything up for the company. When she came back down, she showed the security guard a picture of her setup. She was proud of her work, but she was also a little sad. She told the security guard, “they only tipped me $20.”
Feeling bad for the driver, the security guard gave her another $50 through cashapp. He said she gave him a hug and told him she felt her day was going to get better now.
The security guard shared that this story wasn’t a way of looking for a pat on the back because he did something nice. Instead, he was trying to call out corporations and corporate employees who poorly tip delivery drivers. He explained, “I posted this to say, if someone is going to whip out the company credit card, make a giant catering order and not even give the minimum 18% tip to the delivery driver who had to load it all into their vehicle, use their own gas to deliver it, unload it and then lug it up and set it up. You are a total piece of shit. It’s not your credit card! Why stiff the delivery driver like that?!”
In response to his post, multiple people shared their stories of being poorly tipped while working as delivery drivers. One person wrote, “I work as a pizza hut delivery driver and I can tell you right now people with money tip the least. I took a $350 order the other day to a luxury hotel in their own private room and got no tip, but yesterday I took a $30 order to someone and he gave me a $30 tip just because he had put the wrong address. The actual address was less than 5 mins from the first address he put, but he was so grateful. Delivering to rich people has become a pet peeve. A lot of times they order a lot of shit and won’t tip anything. Then you got your average Joe who’s only ordering one pizza and will tip you $10.”
Another comment reads, “I used to deliver for Pizza Hut and the only time I got a nice tip from a person with money was this lady who only got delivery once a year around Christmas, order was usually around 80 dollars and she always tipped 35. Best tipping situation was for this college sports team, the coach who was signing for it just asked how much do I want, I just said 15-20 percent and ended up with a 125 dollar tip on 520 dollar order. One thing though nobody was able to tell me is what the hell the delivery fee was for, store manager didn’t know. That hurt tips a lot I think, some people thought it was given to the driver. Had one guy who stopped getting delivery after I told him the drivers didn’t get it.”
What percent do you usually tip a delivery driver? Does it surprise you that many people tip poorly on large orders? Did you know the delivery fee isn’t a tip for the driver?