Delivery driver explains how tipping can impact how quickly you get your food to your door

A DoorDasher has explained how low tips for services can impact the delivery speed for people’s orders.

In a controversial TikTok, Jay, who goes by @jaylenheree wrote a caption over his video that read: “A customer cussed me out because her food was two to three hours late .... because she tipped $5 on a $300 order.”

The video received over 621,000 views and thousands of comments.

Check out the original video here.

According to him, service and delivery fees only cover the cost for the customer’s order notification to be sent to the drivers’ phones. But drivers choose the orders they want to pick up.

“We have choices of orders we want to take. If we don’t want to take your order we’re not taking your order. So you saying you’re not tipping won’t affect me for two reasons,” Jay said in the video.

He continued: “Chances are we don’t live in the same city and another chance I would never take your order, to begin with. Eventually, you’ll get your food.”

TikToker talks about people not tipping DoorDashers and shows a mapPhoto courtesy of @jaylenheree/TikTok

DoorDash will raise the base payout for the order if Dashers keep declining to deliver it. And yes, the customers will eventually get their food, although it might be a bit cold and soggy.

In conversation with indy100, a DoorDash spokeswoman noted that the company “ensures fair and equitable earnings opportunities for all Dashers.”

“When placing an order, customers select their tip amount. Before accepting or declining an order, Dashers see a guaranteed minimum amount they will earn, and after they complete an order, they see the full pay breakdown for that delivery in their app, including base pay, promotions, and 100 per cent of their tips,” the spokeswoman said.

Jay mentioned in the comments that the order in question was from a Texas Roadhouse and that the customer lived 10 miles away from the restaurant.

In a subsequent video about the situation, Jay reiterated that when took the Texas Roadhouse order, it was already two to three hours late because Dashers weren’t interested. By the time he took it on, it was a $25 offer because of the increase in the base payout.

“If a customer doesn’t want the tip, that’s totally fine; that’s up to them, he said.

Despite the order being two to three hours late, Jay had only had the customer's order for 30 minutes when he got yelled at for lateness.

The situation was out of his control though.

The lack of tips and the previous base payouts, as a result, wasn’t enough of an incentive for people to take the order.

People were grateful for the explanation because some were unfamiliar with the intricacies of DoorDash.

“Thank you for explaining this because I got so heated thinking you waited too just to p*** her off,” someone wrote. Jay responded to the comment, writing, “Yeah, I would never do that. If I didn’t want to do the order, I wouldn’t accept it, to begin with.”