Back in the beginning of September, I signed up for gig apps. Not that I needed the extra money, but because I wanted something else to do to bring in some additional income. I’ve had an Uber Driver account since 2017 but I knew I didn’t want to drive people again. I absolutely hated it. High miles, low pay. It was not worth it. My roommate got me to sign up for it, but I couldn’t get into it the way he did. But before I get sidetracked, I got accepted into DoorDash near the end of September after being on a waitlist for about 3 weeks. Not too bad.

DoorDash is strangely fun

This may come off as a bit of a surprise, but DoorDash is strangely fun… to me. The first night I did it, I had 3 orders and made $33.15 over 1 hour 57 minutes of dash time (the time “clocked in”), and 1 hour 23 minutes of active time (the time you’re actively picking up/delivering food). What I love about DoorDash is that it gives you some alone time to rock out to music (because after all, food doesn’t care) and you get to do my favorite past time: judge people! Not only judge what they eat, but their house as well.

The other nice thing that I really like about DoorDash is that human contact is minimal. Out of all of the deliveries I have done, maybe 20% have actually had some sort of contact with the customer directly. Typically, these are pizza orders. But there have been a few fast food deliveries where I had to deliver to offices and these are obviously “hand it to me” orders.

Sidebar: Hand it to me is an order where I hand the order directly to you. Leave at door is contactless where I drop the food, take a picture, and get on my way.

And when I say it is strangely fun, it’s really addicting. When I travel to another market, I’ll find myself opening up the app to see what the market is like.

When it isn’t fun

As you can expect, after doing it for a month now, I can tell you there are some aspects that aren’t fun. First are the slow days. The other week, I had a day where I went online and I waited. And waited. I turned on YouTube and started watching a long-form video (20+ minutes). I nearly finished it and I got an offer! I took it and once I delivered, nothing else came through so I went home. That was my worst performing day. I made a whopping $6.18/hr because I was literally online for 1 hour.

There are some restaurants that make the job harder. My number 1 that I grumble about every time I get an order is Pizza Hut. It doesn’t matter when I go after accepting the order, I always end up waiting like 10-15 minutes. As you can imagine, this is a lot of unpaid time. Last night, I actually had my longest wait ever: nearly 45 minutes! I should have used the “Worry-free Unassign” where you can remove yourself after some time and it can be the next dasher’s problem. Additionally, DoorDash has some weird policies – like when you do a pizza order, you have to take a picture of your pizza bag. If it’s your first pizza order of the day, then that will be the only time you have to take the photo. That’s if DoorDash even cares. It seems to be orders that are placed via DoorDash I don’t have to take photos. Orders placed via Pizza Hut seem to require the photo more often.

To Tip or Not

Look, I’ll be honest. I think tipping is stupid. Tip culture is absolutely horrible and it’s an excuse for restaurants and businesses to avoid paying proper wages. The same goes for DoorDash. I’ll tell you a little secret. When it comes to DoorDash, tips aren’t “tips” per se. They are a “bid for service”. You might see a “service fee” and a “delivery charge” and not want to include a tip or tip even less, but none of those go to drivers. They line DoorDash’s executive’s pockets. Not mine. DoorDash pays, at minimum $2.00, known as “base pay”. If I see an order come through for $2, I won’t take it. That means there’s no tip. Same for $2.25. I have seen orders that were $6+ with no tip and I’ve taken those because at that point, it’s worth it. But here’s the thing: most orders start at $2.00, or if they’re a little farther away, $2.25. If you don’t tip, you can expect a good hour or two wait for your food. What’s happening is that your order goes out round-robin style. The dasher closest to the restaurant gets it. They decline it, it goes to the next closest and so on. If everyone declines it, Doordash generally adds 15-25 cents to the order and it starts again. So eventually the base pay can get up to $6, but that means every online dasher in the zone not already on an order has to decline it a bunch of times to the point where DoorDash adds on $4.

So what should you tip to ensure you’re not waiting long? Not 20%. In fact, keep percentages out of it because we don’t see what your order cost. Nor do we care. The rule of thumb should be, at minimum, $1 per mile from the restaurant or $5, whichever is more. If I see a $7 order come through ($2 base + $5 tip) going 2 miles, you can bet I’m going to deliver it quickly. Likewise, if you’re 10 miles away from the restaurant, $12 ($2 base + $10 tip) will get me to deliver very fast as well. And if you’re ordering from a place very far away, tip at least $2 per mile because I have to go back and I’m I’m probably out of my scheduled zone (or no zone) so I can’t get offers.

And look, I get it. You shouldn’t have to pay me. That should completely be on DoorDash. But not tipping doesn’t hurt DoorDash. It hurts me and impacts how fast you get your food.