No tip for you - why you shouldn’t tip delivery drivers in NYC

With the new delivery laws in NYC ($17.96 per hour minimum wage), does anyone else just not tip their Uber eats/seamless delivery guys? On the rare occasion I get a delivery person who’s actually from New York (this happens like 0.01% of the time now), I’ll make sure to tip like $10-20. And before you say “oh, this post is anti-immigrant or racist”, keep in mind that I am literally a first generation immigrant and am not white and certainly have faced racism and anti immigrant sentiment myself before.

Keep in mind, we pay an obscene percentage in taxes, and a decent percentage of these taxes go to services that subsidize these drivers, who are almost all illegal immigrants using fake names/identities and driving illegal unregistered mopeds everywhere, including on the sidewalk. So in addition to minimum wage, they’re probably getting way more than minimum wage when you take into account all the services they get for free, despite not being a legal resident of this country. 
 

I’ll be honest, before this bill passed I still no tipped my Uber eats guy and you know what? It always got delivered on time, because the supply of workers is so large (because there’s so many illegal immigrants in NYC now). I hate the mopeds driving on the sidewalk, I hate that the delivery drivers are stealing jobs that would’ve gone to actual New Yorkers, I hate that they’re getting paid minimum wage when they’re not even legally allowed to work here. They should tip us actually, because we’re the ones paying for their services while they mooch off the city without paying taxes. 

 

Also I get all my groceries delivered and it’s always such a nightmare. I actually do tip if they get my order right - but this never happens. They substitute stuff that’s completely different, say stuff is out of stock when it’s not (because they’re too lazy to deliver it) etc. I had one order where the driver said 15/20 items were out of stock. I doubt it. They were just too lazy to find everything. And I’ve had drivers give me one milk instead of three because they’re too lazy to carry three bottles. These new delivery drivers are lazy, entitled, and not in this country legally and they’ve stolen jobs and completely ruined the ability for actual New Yorkers / legal immigrants to make money delivering food by flooding the market with low quality labor. 

 
stingybaldmisanthrope

Why does not tipping make me a scum bag? Can the reddit soyboy tippers explain why you need to tip?

You also don't "need" to wipe your ass after you take a dump, but just like being a bad tipper, it's going to leave you smelling like shit.

 

I think it’s a little more convoluted than meets the eye and it’s really more of an path of least resistance / optics thing.

Sure there’s a little bit of partisan-based animosity with Red versus Blue states or cities on viewpoint of immigration. But really, if NYC or any big city wanted to drastically reduce immigration, the solution would be to just tell the southern states who are transporting migrants to the north to kick rocks and turn back around.

That doesn’t seem like it would be a likely path, for multiple reasons, so they say hey we’ll house some people and then they get stuck holding the bag when Abbott sends you 35k+ people. So now, you have a shit ton of people who are completely new to a culture, some of whom don’t even speak English, just there. This is a tough situation. So then NYC decides, yeah we’re not gonna bus these people some other “Sanctuary City” like a game of hot potato, so we’re stuck with two options.

Option A is to provide minimal support and have a bunch of disgruntled people starving in the streets, probably resulting in increased tension between them and the rest of the NYC populace. Option B is to have the feds bail them out with some cash and just try to do damage control…

 

why would you even pay legals a tip lol don't they get a salary?? why should i pay for them doing the bare minimum of their job, so stupid

 

I'll tell you my experience:

When it's a legal worker, it's usually a black person who doesn't care about the job and despises you cause you're the reason he/she has to work. They drop off the food in the lobby at best, sometimes at the building doors outside, sometimes just steal it. Very rarely they bother to take an elevator to come to my apartment. And even then, their face portrays misery, they don't say anything, just shove my bag to me and go.

When it's an illegal worker, the food is delivered to my door, the guy smiles, tells me "thank you very much Sir", sometimes they even bow.

 
stingybaldmisanthrope

I wouldn’t have an issue with the drivers if they were legal workers who paid taxes and did a good job… that used to be the case and now it’s not 

I hate to be "well, akshually" but if it's going through an app then there's documentation.  That means that there's FICA/SS and FIT at minimum.  In NYC most likely city and state. (you can get around city, but not state--not tax advice, pay what you owe)  In general illegal immigrants use a fake SSN and never file taxes.  Combine this with a "single/1" default withholding and they nearly universally overpay. Single males are also generally very light on the social safety net when not incarcerated

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Controversial

If your're actually in IB in NYC after 3-4 yrs you should be clearing ~260 if not close. A $6 tip on 200 uber eats orders would be 0.46% of your income. Its not about "principle" or "omg immigrants" you're just cheap and uncouth. Your little protest is nothing but jaded and does nothing to solve the issues you talk about all it does is fuck over some guy running around picking up your overpriced bagel or burrito. Shittiest justification for it too lol, couldn't think of something more eloquent so you resort to "muh, immigrants womp womp." 

 

Making good money doesn't mean that you're dumb enough to choose to throw an additional tip on top of a $10 service/delivery fee for a $30 meal...When I lived in a diff city that charged a de minimis service fee on orders, I always tipped.  Have not even considered tipping since I moved to NYC

I come from down in the valley, where mister when you're young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done
 

I don't tip for delivery on UberEats anymore. I don't even know where in the app to tip cuz they removed the option

 

As someone who stayed next to a electric bike station for these workers.  I can tell you with 100% certainty that 1 "hardest working" is not even close to reality.  2 the amount paid by you to these apps is not going to them.  There are people who "rent" their profiles out to these workers and expect part of the revenues.  3 electric bikes need to be banned.  I saw 3 accidents while I was in town and zero of them involved cars.  All 3 involved electric bikes running red lights and hitting pedestrians. 

 

I don’t really care about the rest of your post but food delivery jobs in NYC are definitely not being “stolen” from anyone. It’s a shitty job with more demand than supply. It probably wouldn’t even exist without desperate immigrants to fill the role. If anything, higher wages would attract more locals to the job.

 

? You’re describing demand. Those deliverers aren’t standing outside Chick-fil-A bidding in an auction for a single order. They are each there to fulfill an individual order. There’s probably still plenty of capacity in the market for more people to do deliveries. It’s also a sector that likely sees high turnover in that people would probably quit the second they could get another job. I’m not condoning illegal immigration but this is a type of work that would struggle to fill any positions without those people, at least in HCOL places like NYC. If a native New Yorker wanted to do delivery, they could easily do it. They just clearly don’t (have you ever had a delivery from someone who wasn’t obviously a recent immigrant?).

 
Most Helpful

Completely disagree.

1) Very few New Yorkers would do food delivery for $17.96/h. You have to find the restaurant, retrieve the order, if it's not ready yet, you have to wait. Then drive your car in a bad traffic risking your life if you get into accident - factor in cost of car amortization, car insurance, gas. If you're driving a moped, you're risking your life even more. Driving moped in NYC traffic all day every day will get you killed eventually. And I don't know how some of them manage to drive their mopeds on sidewalks, cause NYC sidewalks are packed like a sardine jar. If they do manage it somehow, they'll be moving very slow and risk to bump into somebody and get knocked out for that. Then you need to go out and find the apartment - if you're on a car, you can get a ticket, if you're on moped, it may get stolen. So the job sucks, and nobody would do it if not for illegals, so they're not stealing anybody's jobs.

2) It's also a secret to me how delivery drivers manage to make any money. It literally costs me the same to order food delivery from UberEats and tip driver 10% (min suggested tip by Uber) as it is to go to the restaurant and buy the food and tip 20% to cashier (min suggested tip at the counter). But if I drive to the restaurant, I'll waste like an hour to drive back and forth and wait for my order and spend $15-20 on parking. Also factor in cost of gas, car amortization, risk to get into accident, etc.

=> Delivery drivers is one of the most underpaid professions, which is why mainly only illegals do it. People who have work authorization and other options wouldn't do this work.

If you wanna talk about who's overpaid, it's waiters. They're getting $20 in tips for carrying 4 plates and 2 glasses for like 20 feet for about 2 mins. Whereas delivery drivers get $10/h after all expenses (car amortization, gas, etc.) for risking their life in bad traffic and running around restaurants and apartment buildings.

I'll go one step further, I would give illegal delivery drivers who've been delivering for like 3+ years and made like 1000+ deliveries a citizenship cause they've proven to be hard-working people. And instead I would strip out the citizenship from black New Yorkers who spend all day harassing strangers, cat-calling women, and smoking weed, blasting trashy "music", and showing their ass (cause pants only cover ankles) in public spaces like subway cars.

 

Kevin25

=> Delivery drivers is one of the most underpaid professions, which is why mainly only illegals do it. People who have work authorization and other options wouldn't do this work.

Which is why I won't tip them because I utterly despise these criminals. They don't deserve to be in this country let alone receive an extra cent out of my pocket whilst they leach off my tax dollars sheerly by existing in within our borders. Plus the food delivery apps can gargle my gonads with all their extra fees and up charging the food items themselves, I would never even use them if I didn't have Amex credits.

And instead I would strip out the citizenship from black New Yorkers who spend all day harassing strangers, cat-calling women, and smoking weed, blasting trashy "music", and showing their ass (cause pants only cover ankles) in public spaces like subway cars.

Based. But I would expand this to all the people who exhibit this absurdist behavior in NYC, not just black ones because it's certainly not exclusive to them. I get where you're coming from though. Visiting NYC last year and taking the trains was a harrowing experience compared to when I was living in Brooklyn less than a decade ago. The city desperately needs another Giuliani-esque figure (at least in their approach to crime, as a general politician he's a disaster).

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How are they leaches if they're doing dirty work for pennies that nobody wants to do but everybody wants to be done? And how exactly are they using your tax dollars? If they're illegals, they can't take advantage of any government programs.

Food delivery apps are a blessing. As I mentioned above, with Uber pass I pay about the same price for food delivery as I would pay if I was buying it in the store, assuming I would tip a cashier, which is an expectation in the modern world. Plus, I would waste a lot of time and money on driving, parking, and waiting for my order.

Yeah, sure, expand it to everybody. I just only ever see black people acting like that. If there are white people acting like that, strip their citizenship as well.

 

And instead I would strip out the citizenship from black New Yorkers who spend all day harassing strangers, cat-calling women, and smoking weed, blasting trashy "music", and showing their ass (cause pants only cover ankles) in public spaces like subway cars.

Let's expand this citizen-strip list.  I'd add the demonstrators who block highways.

 

I'm not a fan of tipping culture in general. I tip If I like the service, but am not down to subsidize someone's margins because they can't afford to pay staff full freight. 

Honestly man, I think your gripe is with the delivery businesses, not the drivers. As someone else brought up, they probably aren't paying these people min wage. There is a reason any time a city wants to classify gig workers as employees, the companies go all in to stop it.

I also don't understand why we don't fine employers who hire illegal immigrants into oblivion. Kill the opportunity, kill the wave. None of this fines are a cost of doing business bullshit, make them hurt.  

 

I can add some perspective here as a student who does delivery driving (not in NYC) often to subsidize my living costs. I average a little more than 20$ an hour before expenses and gas. Around 70% of my income comes from tips. I would assume pretty much all drivers (including myself) are on multiple apps at once and I typically have 1-4 orders in my car. When I choose to accept an order or not I can see the expected tip that the customer said they would pay. A high tip order will be accepted by a driver instantly while a low or no tip order will bounce around until someone accepts it. I and most other drivers would only accept a low paying order if it is on the way to a high paying order I'm already delivering and even then that order is a driver's last priority because of the low tip. So generally what I'm trying to say is the more you tip the faster your food will arrive. I hate illegal immigrants leeching off our tax dollars as much as the next guy but also keep in mind that those of you that order food everyday are the ones directly benefiting from the cheap labor. If all of the NYC migrants suddenly went poof I doubt there would be enough legal New Yorkers to satisfy all of the food delivery demand. Obviously the drivers would get paid more but even then I cant imagine actual New Yorkers buzzing around on mopeds to deliver your food in the same quantity as these migrants. I see it more as a failure of our government to not provide a channel for legal immigrants to come and do this work, as well as letting the illegals cross in the first place. Also keep in mind that even though these immigrants are unregistered and don't pay taxes in their name, taxes are still being paid on their labor through whoever's account they're using. Also these migrants may actually only be pocketing a fraction of what they earn because they have to pay whoever is letting them illegally use their account. With uber committing to paying 18$ an hour they'll still make something if you don't tip but if enough people stop tipping the prices will just go up to compensate. Just because these migrants aren't supposed to be here doesn't change the fact that they're already here and working hard to deliver your food. Delivery driving is a shit living even with the tips so I would tip them if you want your food to be hot, on time, and not jizzed in. Just at least don't revoke the tip after you get your order. Speaking from experience no one wants to do 30-50 mins of driving and dealing with restaurants just to have a customer change the tip value leaving me with the $2.25 that uber paid me. 

 

I will follow up later, when I have a moment.

We did research into these "gig platform" companies a while back (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc), and there is a lot more to consider in the situation, and part of the reason I tip heavy on my food delivery.

Based on the research, the delivery people are not paid how you might assume, as each company has a "creative" approach to numbers, the law, time, and doing business overall, which tends to go unnoticed.

I want to find specific details from our research, and then I'll follow up when I have a moment.

(As for the illegal "migrants" here in NYC, I have strong views against the way the city is handling it, to say the least...).

Investor (30+ years); IB/RE/PE/Corp. Exp (MD level); currently, head of boutique private equity firm; principal of family office.
 

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