How much do you tip the pizza guy?

[Furry Spatula]

I delivered Pizza's for 6 months. The lack of hours made it not worth my while as i had to pay for insurance, gas, and car maintanance. Along with using my own car. Anyhow. There are 2 kinds of rich people. Those who made their money through work or inheritance, and those who made it from being cheap asses. The cheap ass rich people are those who tip worse then people in trailerparks. I'm serious.

To those of you who live in Belcara, BC. F-you, you cheap bastards. A 35+ minute round trip and I get tipped under a buck. Usually around 50 cents. We're the only delivery place there aswell. There was only one nice person there. The woman who tipped me $5 each time i delivered. Thank you .

And on the topic of average tips. Usually $2-$3/delivery is what i got at the end of the night.

And those Huge deliveries, IE 6+ larges, i love them. You get huge tips on them. $10 easy. I remeber working on boxing day. I delievered to a store at a mall. The guy ordered 20 pizzas and had them over 4 deliveries, I got tipped $40 for that, and my boss did the first one and let me keep the $10 of the tip he "earned". Long story short, big deliveries good.

 

[ozscott75]

Cultural differences is right. I don't understand this 'tip all the time, only vary the amount' mentality. If they deserve something, give them something, if they don't, don't. Staff that expect to receive a tip without doing anything special are deluding themselves, bigtime.

Who leaves a message? If the service was really bad, I'd talk to the manager, if it is just bad, I just leave.

 

[Grisu]

I don't tip. Firstly, in Switzerland the tips are included in the guys salary.

Furthermore, I don't believe in tipping a guy for doing the job he is paid for (and indirectly by me through the pizza). If he does an extraordinary job, or is especially polite I'll give a tip.

 

[Stapel]

Do american pizza guys get a salary? Or just the tip? Should you always bring your own car?

 

[Greadius]

We get paid hourly, for me it started at minimum wage.

The 'company vehicle' thing depends, but where I worked it was bring your own car.

How can you 'tip' into a salary? That isn't a tip, then, its being paid extra. I know I doubled & tripled the take of some of my co-workers after I had gotten the job down. Rewarding efficiency is the American way... in Europe you salary tips. True to form, I can tell you I'd never have hustled out of my car for a salary

 

[Grisu]

Originally posted by Greadius
Rewarding efficiency is the American way... in Europe you salary tips. True to form, I can tell you I'd never have hustled out of my car for a salary

But if you tip every guy, you don't reward efficiency, you reward everybody whether efficient or not. As I said I only tip if the guy is doing more than just doing his job (he is already paid for that)

 

[Simon Darkshade]

One does not tip, and never shall. As ozscott has said, it is alien to the culture here. Furthermore, one has not had any food or such items delivered in quite a few years. What are servants for, if not going to fetch the bloody stuff?

And, for a tip (ozscott might remember this one) Work hard and be good to your mother.

 

[Mrogreturns]

Originally posted by Simon Darkshade

And, for a tip (ozscott might remember this one) Work hard and be good to your mother.

Not only Ozscott- served the little brat right too

 

[Bamspeedy]

Originally posted by ozscott75
I've got no problems rewarding good service, but........
Why reward bad service?

If you give nothing, some may just think you are a cheapskate, or penny pincher, or think you don't realize that you should tip the driver. If you give something very small it does send more of a message. More like "I realize you may be expecting a tip, but you don't deserve much at all". At restaurants, leaving only a penny on the table sends a pretty strong message that the service was poor.

Do american pizza guys get a salary?

Minimum wage at many places. Some places a little more. Domino's pays pretty good in this town. But minimum wage ($5.15/hour) doesn't pay for the gas, oil, wear and tear on your vehicle when you drive 120+ miles/night. So tips are important.

At restaurants, companies can (and do) pay less than the minimum wage IF the waiter/waitress ends up making over minimum wage after tips are included. For service people, the minimum wage is like 50% or 75% of what the normal minimum wage is.
If the person isn't making enough in tips, the employer would have to pay them the difference to bring them back up to at least minimum wage. (But in that case, it's sometimes due to poor service, so the employer would get rid of that person).

I do agree that tips shouldn't automatically be put on bills, like some places do. You can blame the stiffers for that.

Some people just never tip, no matter how good the service is, or how much you bend over backwards for them. You could probably save their life and they wouldn't even give you a 'thank you'.

The lack of hours made it not worth my while as i had to pay for insurance, gas, and car maintanance.

Insurance is another reason people use 'beater' cars for pizza delivery, so they don't need much coverage at all.
And some just don't tell their insurance companies they are delivering pizzas with that car.

I didn't have a problem at all with hours. Since I lived in a college town, the place was open from 4PM-3AM on fridays and saturdays. 12 hours a night just driving around isn't too bad. Working at that time of the day (and on weekends), though can get boring. But when you bring home $120+ a night in tips it ain't too bad.

 

[Drewcifer]

I used to deliver pizzas, I usually recieved between $1-$2 per pizza or nothing at all. I usually tip $3 per pizza because I know how much one measly dollar can brighten someones day.

Summit Avenue is the most expensive neighborhood in St Paul and also the worst place to deliver to, I had better luck delivering to crack houses.

I worked with drivers who would pee on peoples back porches if they got stiffed.

A point that hasn't been mentioned is that pizza drivers in American cities are often targets of crime. Where I worked we delivered in the 'hood (when our city still had one). Pizza drivers were popular targets, a theif gets $30-$50 plus a meal; we risked our safety to bring people their dinner. One of my fellow drivers was held at knife point for an hour and a half.

If you have bad service a good way to get the point across is to tip $0.02, generally people know what this means. In restaurants I tip two cents for bad service, 15% for indifferent but competent service and 20% for good service.

 

[allan2]

Used to deliver pizzas too.

Even if I hadn't, I think I would still tip as generously as I do (generally between 3 and 5 bucks). I usually don't have to wait that long for a pizza, once I've done that a few times. What goes around comes around.

 

[Pongui]

I just hand the fella enough tens and twenties, thank him, and close the door. A restaurant tip is 15% here, so I'll aim for that if the bill is, say, $22.54.

 

[Hitro]

For a German I give ridiculously high tips.

 

[John Bull]

I always tip the standart restaurant tip of 10%, so I suppose that would normally be about £2.00 ($1.20ish)

 

[ozscott75]

Originally posted by Simon Darkshade

And, for a tip (ozscott might remember this one) Work hard and be good to your mother.

Here's another tip: Don't drive angry.

 

[MrPresident]

I give non-monetary rewards as tips. Basically anything I can find lying about the house that isn't mine and I don't want to be mine. Strangely we can no longer get pizzas delievered to our house.

 

[thestonesfan]

I give the guy or gal a 12 pack of Natural Light (real cheap beer) to work on for the rest of the night. It can get lonely driving around.

 

[mes17]

During my first trip to the U.K. I was in Cardiff and left a pound on the bar after paying for our Brain's Bitter. After about ten minutes the bartender asked whose pound it was. Some local claimed it was his and that he had left it there yesterday. Not wanting to start any trouble on my first day in Wales I didn't speak up. No more tips after that.

The pizza guy gets the change but never less than 10% of the bill. I usually tip for food about 15%-20%, better if the waitress is attractive or the bartender pours a good drink.

 

[addiv]

1 pizza costs around 6 euros here (so that's $6.50). So when I tip I tip around 50 eurocents per pizza, but it's not really customary to tip actually. I think I tip the pizza guy about 50% of the time, esp. if he had to go through bad weather or if the pizzas are delivered quickly.

 

[Cimbri]

I only tip the gut when the weather sucks. But then I usually give him 3$.

Cimbri