'Hungry' DoorDash Driver Tells Customer They’re Keeping Their Food Because They ‘Have No Money’
Would you report this driver or eat the cost of their dinner?
Fizkes | CanvaPro After ordering $55 worth of food on DoorDash, a customer received an unsettling message from his driver after picking up the order. Instead of dropping off the food he’d paid for, the driver instead took it because he “had no money” and was too hungry to pass it up.
“This is the first time this has happened to me,” the customer wrote in a post to the “DoorDash” Reddit forum about his situation. “I would have let it go, but it was a $55 order and I tipped $10.”
After posting his experience on Reddit, any empathetic takes or compassionate advice was quickly thrown out the window, as the majority of commenters berated the customer for even considering staying silent. From accusations of “stealing” to hopes that this driver would be kicked off the platform, the commenters were ruthless.
A ‘hungry’ DoorDash driver kept their customer’s food and then sent them an apologetic message.
“Excuse me. I’m very hungry and I don’t have money,” the DoorDash driver wrote to their customer in a translated text from Spanish to English. “I took your order … God pay you.”
While creators like Jessy on TikTok make parody videos about situations like this one, the truth is they’re happening more often than you could imagine. It’s not just low wages and poor tipping etiquette that’s prompting nearly 1 in 4 delivery drivers to eat or steal from their customer’s food, but increasing rates of food insecurity and financial instability.
An unsettling number of food service workers, from DoorDash drivers to grocery clerks, can’t even afford to pay for what they sell and deliver throughout the day, let alone a cart full of groceries. As dishearteningly ironic as that sounds, it’s the reality many people are struggling through today.
Concerned for the driver, the customer debated reporting the order, worried he’d be ‘kicked off’ the app over the incident.
Cognizant of the struggle this DoorDash driver is obviously dealing with, this customer turned to Reddit for advice on how to empathetically deal with the situation.
“I would hate for this DoorDash driver to get kicked off the app if he’s struggling,” he wrote, wrapping up his post, “but now I’m out $65.”
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Eventually, this customer did end up reporting the driver to get his $65 refund but re-emphasized in the comments that he’d desperately hoped it didn’t put the man out of a job.
Nearly 14% of households in the United States experienced food insecurity at some point in 2023. So, while this DoorDash driver’s experience might seem incomprehensible to the average person, who’s likely utilizing food delivery services at will, it’s more common than anyone would like to admit.
Of course, stealing is inherently wrong, but if this person couldn’t wait for their next paycheck and had no other option for feeding themselves or their family, would this make them a bad person? It’s the debate this customer was struggling with in his own head.
Commenters insisted that there are ‘better ways’ to feed yourself instead of stealing.
Of course, there’s always a chance that this DoorDash driver’s message was exaggerated or completely untrue — as many commenters pointed out.
“All this does is screw over the ‘honest’ DoorDash drivers, because customers will be less likely to tip well up-front in the future,” one driver in the comments argued. “I am so sick of stolen orders in my area. It’s completely out of control.”
With new regulations and “improvements” from DoorDash to crack down on irresponsible reporting, untrustworthy customers, and fraudulent “missing order” reports, it can be even harder for real reports to be taken seriously — and often takes customers much more time to report and get their money back.
With these new regulatory shifts, many DoorDash drivers and customers under the post argued that the “stealing epidemic” in many communities has only grown worse. It was tarnishing customer-driver relationships, and hurting the income and job stability of honest DoorDash drivers making a living on the platform.
So, while this moral dilemma can be explained, validated, and argued in a million different ways, it mostly comes down to honesty and accessibility.
There have to be better resources to feed food-insecure people, and that doesn’t have to be at the expense of people trying to do their jobs.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.