Originally Posted by
tgull
Why would you tip 20% in a restaurant and not tip 20% for some guy wandering around a grocery store with coronavirus all over the place? This is the deal, you will likely get the guy picking your groceries you do not want if you tip 5 or 10%. If someone is picking an orange for me, I am giving 20% because I know he has a better chance of being clean. 5% tip, you get what you get.
I want to tip the standard of what people tip. I don't want to undertip, but I don't see the need to overtip.
I understand exactly the risk these people are taking. However, the people working in the supermarket are taking even more of a risk. Do you tip them? I doubt it. Many of them are making much less than these Instacart drivers.
This is American tipping culture rearing its ugly head again. People tip to make themselves feel good, rather than to actually do the right thing. If you were so concerned about doing the right thing, you would tip every grocery worker you come across when doing the shopping yourself.
I do believe that these delivery people deserve extra money now compared to normally. I would much prefer they were just paid what they're worth, and the prices were adjusted up a bit, and the whole tipping thing was out of the equation. Since that's not the case, I will tip whatever is standard. I've never used any service like this because I normally hate them, so I didn't know (and still don't know) what is standard. I assumed the default 5% was standard, but maybe not.
So I'll kick it to 10%, and I'll adjust it up if either:
1) It really does get me a delivery slot faster (I still have to research this)
-or-
2) I get the same driver in most cases (or I can control it) and I think they're doing a good job