Woman Shares Letter DoorDash Driver Left On Her Car Complaining After She Tipped 37%
Should you be tipping at least $10 to your delivery driver?
TikTok Katrina Dougherty, @katrinasoldit on TikTok, posted a video on October 21st in dismay over a letter a Doordash driver left on her order.
Dougherty ordered delivery and tipped the delivery driver 37% of her total, which the driver felt was unsatisfactory and unfair.
Her DoorDash driver left her a harsh letter, bashing her 'low' tip.
She said the driver “attached the condescending letter to my order because my $5.55 tip for a $15 dollar meal (2-mile trip) was not enough [for] him.”
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous”, she says in the video, “but I didn’t complain to DoorDash.”
Even in the comment section of her video, Dougherty says, “ I didn't bother to report it. I don’t want to get someone fired, he’s obviously already struggling, this is just a wild encounter I wanted to share.”
Photo: @katrinasoldit on TikTok
So, she already understands that someone driving delivery may already be struggling financially. Would that assumption mean people should tip more?
Glamour investigated tip expectations following the pandemic, where people took to using delivery options like DoorDash and Grubhub more often than ever. John Williams, one of the many Grubhub drivers they interviewed, shared that “about 50 percent of my weekly earnings is from my tips.”
Like automatic gratuity in restaurants, would drivers be better off with a required standard and universal tip? Or, would that just make more people who choose to tip differently, or not at all, angry?
DoorDash delivery driver, Sean Fay, started a complaint on Change.org to protest the unfair “base pay and driver relations” he’d faced since he started delivery work during the pandemic.
Fay shares that he was making a decent $8-9 in “base pay”, the DoorDash wage, during COVID-19, with their extra promotional pay.
In his complaint, he says, “While I must admit I wasn't as focused on what my "Base Pay" was at the time I started, I clearly know I was not receiving orders that were lower than around $7-$8. Currently, the amount of $3, $3.50, and $4 orders I receive are at atrocious levels; so atrocious that I'm led to decline more than I accept most nights I go out.”
Fay advocates for base pay to “be raised to $5 or $6 to allow for low-paying orders to be at a better chance of being profitable for Dashers making a living.”
This increase in pay would mean that drivers would be less dependent on tips, making them more secure in their payments for orders.
After COVID-19, with delivery drivers seemingly being more important than ever, making their wages sustainable – whether that be through tipping or wages should be a bigger conversation.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango. They cover topics ranging from pop culture analysis to human interest stories. They are currently based in East Lansing, MI. Catch up with them on their Instagram or TikTok.