Tipping Confusion

For delivery drivers, every shift is a game of gig economy roulette: Will customers tip? And if they do, how much? The answers determine their livelihoods.

“It’s like gambling,” Brantley Bush, an Uber Eats driver, told my colleague Kellen Browning, a technology reporter.

Kellen rode along with drivers in wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods, pulling up to gated estates to deliver food to millionaires. Tips varied widely. Bush once received a $130 tip from Doc Rivers, the former Los Angeles Clippers coach. Some customers tipped nothing.

There is no collective understanding of what we owe delivery drivers in tips. While established etiquette governs tipping in restaurants, a clear protocol is lacking for apps. This confusion is one reason for the wide variation in the tips delivery drivers receive. Let me explain.

Undertipping on apps

Tipping for food service used to be straightforward. We added around 20 percent to restaurant bills, dropped spare change in tip jars and had cash on hand for pizza deliveries and takeout.

Tipping has not only been entrenched in American life but also formalized as part of the economy. The U.S. is unusual among developed countries in allowing tipped workers to make below the minimum wage, sometimes as low as $2.13 an hour.

Delivery apps upended these norms in two ways.

First, apps have changed the timing of a tip. Delivery services like Uber Eats and DoorDash ask people to tip when they order, unraveling the logic that a tip is compensation for good service. Customers now aren’t sure what they are paying workers for or how much they should give.

Second, apps have transformed what was once an in-person exchange into a digital transaction. This depersonalizes the tip and can discourage generous tipping. While diners in restaurants can see the work of servers, apps obscure the work of delivery drivers. Customers may not meet the driver at all, given the option of no-contact delivery.

“Drivers wonder why people aren’t tipping more,” Kellen told me. “They’ve realized most people aren’t thinking about the human element that goes into delivering their food.”

The possibility of overtipping

In the absence of clear norms for tipping on apps, many customers are picking the path of least resistance: the app’s suggested tip.

This behavior gives power to technology companies to determine the gratuity. The size and placement of a tip button on an app can influence a customer’s selection or make it harder to opt out of a tip. If no tip screen appears, customers are less likely to seek it out. This exposes workers to wage fluctuation.

These design choices don’t just affect workers; they’re also upending the customers’ experience. Digital payment platforms are prompting customers to tip in places where tipping didn’t previously exist, like supermarkets, mechanics’ garages and dog kennels. Now, many wonder: Should they tip for snacks at a convenience store? Is it rude to select “No tip” when buying groceries? No one seems to know, and new tipping guides offer directives.

Brian X. Chen, a Times tech columnist, has described these design choices as coercive. He wrote that these types of tips may be investigated as part of the government’s crackdown on “junk fees,” extra costs that businesses profit from while adding little to no value.

“Tipping has gotten out of control, and people are getting really frustrated,” Brian told me. “It’s a source of confusion that ultimately affects everyone, workers and customers alike.”

FROM OPINION

Laura Kavanagh was supposed to shake up New York City’s Fire Department. Instead she’s facing a mutiny, Maureen Dowd writes.

Frimet Goldberger makes the case for staying married to a spouse you cannot stand.

Easter is a reminder that hope takes work, Esau McCaulley says.

We imagine that the way politicians eat offers a window into who they are. Jessica Grose asks: Does it really?

The Sunday question: Can Republicans fix their abortion problem?

Swing voters will punish conservative candidates, as they did in Wisconsin last week, until the party endorses a more moderate position, like allowing abortions before 15 weeks, The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel says. But compromising will be difficult because many Republican voters and politicians genuinely support strict bans, Times Opinion’s Michelle Goldberg writes.

Advice from Wirecutter: These are the best area rugs.

Lives Lived: Benjamin Ferencz was the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials. In addition to convicting Nazi war criminals, he crusaded for an international criminal court. Ferencz died at 103.

BOOKS

On the cover: Fox News followed its viewers down a rabbit hole. The result was a lawsuit that threatens the network’s future.

Recommendation: A kinder way to get rid of bugs.

Poem: In Stacy Szymaszek’s “The Privilege of Thinking,” the city and the desert offer different visions of time.

Read the full issue.

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For

• Today is Easter.

• President Biden will visit Northern Ireland on Tuesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of conflict.

• The U.S. will release monthly inflation figures on Wednesday.

• Xi Jinping, China’s leader, will meet with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on Friday.

• The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival begins Friday.

What to Cook This Week