Tipping is weird.
Whenever you have someone perform a service for you, whether it’s being served food at your favorite restaurant, having that late night pizza delivered to your house or getting that long needed hair cut at the salon, it’s assumed that you should reward someone for their time and effort.
Tipping is social custom that we often find ourselves stressing over. The question of when to tip and how much to tip is something every person ponders.
These customs can very from place to place. Tipping is generally less prevalent in Europe, but in America it is assumed that the people receiving services in certain cases are obligated to tip the people personally performing those services for you. If you want my honest opinion, disregard customs and simply tip whenever someone is personally serving you. If they perform a task you would otherwise have to do yourself, they usually deserve a tip.
I have a special connection to the practice of tipping, as I have worked as a JJ biker for the past 9 months. As a JJ biker, a large portion of my compensation comes from the people I personally deliver sandwiches to. Too many times have I delivered an order and the recipient smiles at me, says thank you and proceeds to tip me nothing for my services.
Seriously? I am literally risking my life, shedding blood and sweat to get your Beach Club with no mayo into your hands in less than 5 minutes from the time you hang up the phone. Yes, I expect a tip.
Biking for the JJ’s midtown location, I deliver to fraternities time and time again. After being stiffed one too many times, I had to take matters into my own hands. I’m not going to call someone out for not tipping because that’s their prerogative, but to keep myself sane whenever a frat boy stiffed me, I decided I would mark down which frat it was. I told myself that this would help me know which frats were generous and which ones were not for the future.
What ended up happening was a bit more interesting.
I began to keep a log in my phone whenever I took an order for a fraternity. I recorded the specific frat, the total cost of the order and how much they ended up tipping me. I did this for about three months and over that time frame, I delivered over 100 orders to various frats. The results were definitely worth the time and effort (and anguish) of recording each and every delivery to ease the pain of getting stiffed.
The most generous tipping frat? The gentleman of Kappa Alpha Order (KA), with an average tip of $2.50. Their average order size was $16.13.
The least generous tipping frat? The brothers of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), with an average tip of $1.36. However, their average order size was $8.11.
The highest percentage tipping frat? Pi Kappa Phi (Pi Kapp) tipped on average 24 percent of their total order.
The lowest percentage tipping frat? Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) tipped on average 15 percent of their total order.
My biggest tip? $4 on an $19.50 order from Lambda Chi Alpha.
My smallest tip (besides getting stiffed)? $.50 on a $6.50 order from AEPi, and $.50 on a $9.50 order from Pike.
Though my original intentions were to record each instance where I was tipped nothing, I did not experience this very often once I started keeping track. Only twice in over 100 deliveries was I completely stiffed: once at AEPi and once at Delta Chi.
Hard numbers don’t tell the entire story, so some analysis might provide a better picture of the frat tipping tendencies.
Let me provide some background: Frats like ATO, Phi Tau, Phi Delt, Pike and Delt were the closest to the store, so taking a delivery to them was less time consuming. Frats like KA, Delta Chi, Chi Phi were a fucking trek to get to. I really dreaded taking orders here because they were so far away. So even though AEPi tipped the least per order, they were also one of the closer Frats to deliver to (they were the closest frat to deliver to on Frat Row.)
So maybe the brothers of AEPi kept their location in mind when they tipped. Comparatively, KA and Chi Phi were the furthest away from the store, and they may have recognized this, which was reflected in their tipping practices ($2.50 for KA and $2.08 with an average order size of $8.83 for Chi Phi). Based on the amount of tip/distance traveled metric, SAE tipped the least ($1.50 per order, and they were pretty far away) and KA tipped the most ($2.50 and they were hella far away). Using the same metric, but specifically for the frats that were a lot closer, Phi Tau tipped the most ($1.78 on orders of $10.00 on average) and Phi Delt tipped the least ($1.58 on orders of $9.00 on average).
Regardless of these true figures I recorded, the moral of the story still rings true.
If someone is serving you, don’t be stingy and just tip them generously. There is a big difference between a $1 tip and a $3 tip, the same way there is a big difference between getting stiffed and getting tipped $.50.
Hopefully my mini social experiment will motivate you to treat those who serve you with a little more generosity, regardless of your Greek affiliation.
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