Instacart Shopper Complains About Her Tip After Having To ‘Hike’ To A Wealthy Customer’s Front Door
Empathy goes a long way, even if you’re paying for a service.
kali9 | Canva Pro After arriving at a customer's home to deliver their groceries, an Instacart shopper was shocked and discouraged to see the trek she’d have to complete to reach the front door. Not only was the home extremely large, and clearly expensive, it was set atop a massive hill, with a closed-off driveway.
The Instacart shopper was forced to ‘hike’ to a wealthy customer’s front door to deliver ‘hundred-pound’ grocery bags and only received a 5 dollar tip.
“I saw an order pop up for 13 items — $20. It was [crap], but it worked perfectly with another small ... order,” she started her post titled “The audacity of rich people."
She decided to accept both orders, the first of which consisted of six 12-packs of soda, three 12-packs of water, and a six-pack of paper towels. "I go to deliver it, and the house is a $5 million dollar house on a hill,” she wrote.
Reddit
Considering how heavy the order was, she expected to drive her car up the driveway, closer to the front door. However, when she arrived, she realized it wouldn't be that easy.
“The driveway was completely blocked off,” she wrote. “I had to walk up and down this giant steep hill on the grass.”
When she delivered the first load of groceries to the porch, the customer opened the front door — having watched the shopper struggle up the hill — to take the groceries inside. According to the Reddit poster, the customer took two pops, closed the door, and never opened it again while she was there.
After making three trips up and down the hill, the shopper hoped the customer would increase her tip. Not only did it take her significantly longer to deliver the groceries, but she was burnt out and tired from having to essentially “hike” to complete it.
However, after the order was completed, she realized the customer had only tipped her $5. While it was more than the standard 20% tip, she couldn’t help but feel disillusioned — “It was insane,” she wrote in the comments. “I can’t believe they expected me to do that. I was waiting for an increased tip, as he just saw me lugging up over 100 lbs and running back down for the next load.”
Many commenters argued it’s ‘the richest people’ who are often the cheapest — valuing their money more than human empathy and compassion.
Studies by the Chronicles of Philanthropy reveal that higher-income households are often less charitable than others, donating a much smaller percentage of their income to charity than their lower-income counterparts.
In addition to being less charitable, rich households and individuals often share a similarly misguided view of communities and groups in poverty — generally feeling more secure and confident in themselves, while simultaneously less empathetic, compassionate, and trusting to those with less money.
At the end of the day, consider this Instacart shopper’s post a reminder to be kind and compassionate. Whether you’re interacting with service workers, ordering delivery online, or simply passing by a stranger, consider how you can make their life a little bit better. For this customer, simply opening their driveway gate would’ve been enough.
“I think the word everyone here is looking for is selfish,” one person wrote under the Reddit post. “There's two kinds of people in this world: people with empathy and people without.”
Choose empathy — even if it means occasionally inconveniencing yourself or sparing a few dollars to help support someone doing you a favor.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories.