1100
Rodney Cheng did a comedy skit on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.
Why was the subtotal of the actual food being ordered omitted?
Likely because it would give meaningful context to the amounts of the fees, and the ragebaiting OOP wants to avoid that.
$92 assuming they’re being honest about it being New York and it’s for food delivery. Since their tax rate is 8.75% for prepared food.
The $30 in fees don’t seem unreasonable when you think about it.
A chunk is taxes and well, they’d have been there anyway so I’m not counting them.
A chunk is tip, which was voluntary so I’m not including it.
That leaves about $15 for a delivery fee, in New York. Not sure what the driver makes but a portion of that $15 is going to them.
The real question is about how this person values their opportunity cost, because they actively decided that the time they would save was worth paying the extra delivery fees and tip. They made that decision and THEN complained about the injustice of…. Their own behavior and choices?
Damn, I think I'll be in the ground before I've ever paid that much for a meal, delivery or not, lol.
Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food...cold. Solely so that they don't have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.
Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).
But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is "gig" - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person's vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure...I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we're all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.
Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let's be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn't you know it, it's the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!
Sorry. This one really gets me.
I have a ton of people around me that do it, and yep, they're mostly renters who talk about wanting to own but it being unaffordable (we're in a LCOL state), can't do things with their friends because they're broke. I'm not cheap by nature but paying delivery fees to avoid a 10 minute round trip, that would do me good because I'd be out and active for a second - just no. Then I start thinking about how much I really don't need to drive to severely overpay for low quality food that'll harm most parts of my body, and I usually cook something instead out of relatively whole foods which costs 3/4 as much and won't leave me feeling guilt.
My friends definitely think I’m weird cause I don’t use food delivery, but I see it from a germ perspective too. None of those drivers are certified food handler and their car is likely not a safe environment. I keep my cars spotless, but based on everyone’s car I’ve ever been in I’m the minority in that.
Every other point you made I agree with too, but man I just don’t see how people don’t also recognize that your food is travelling in someone else’s potential garbage. Just to save you from what? Getting up and grabbing some food yourself?
Yet another "wtf, y'all?", good point. I can't personally say that grosses me out, but I tend to be in the minority on that sort of topic myself, so I totally see what you're saying. Aint no health inspector checking these vehicles (true of traditional delivery too I suppose).
And I mean...sometimes the drivers straight up eat some food, which is awful from the standpoint of your POV, but also just... truly hilarious to me.
The need this came out of COVID and a lack of people wanting to go out. It's was a decent way to keep business open who would otherwise have to lay off all their staff. Once COVID ended, I assumed it would go away. However, money talks.
My wife was just saying how she thiks GPS is soon going to have a VIP tier to give you the best routes and the longer routes go to the people who don't pay (but still have their data harvested).
That is a good point (re: COVID) that I had lost along the way, thanks. Those services did do good during that time, you're right. I'm not so sure about the GPS thing, but hey, I never thought we'd see half the ugly shit we're seeing these days, so why not?
Funny how Chinese and pizza places could do this all day everyday and it cost 5% of the cost of the food. Not double it. Delivery food has been hit with inflation and market 'innovation' just like everything else. But let's pretend working people wanting convenience services is somehow the problem...the avocado toast on wheels argument.
People really, really need to learn to cook for themselves. Nothing wrong with the odd takeout, or even delivery but I sense a lot of people live on deliveries all the time and waste a fortune
Do Americans really get their shit delivered by car?over here it's motorcycles 99% of the time (and bicycles the other 1%)
Seems rather.... Sluggish and inefficient for delivery drivers to go by car.
I'm in a small city, with a lot of rural / suburban areas. I'm often delivering 15+ minutes away from the city center by car. A bicycle wouldn't be able to get to any of these places in any reasonable amount of time, and there's also no shoulders or bike lanes on most of these roads so it would be seriously dangerous.
We also do a lot of large grocery delivery orders (50 - 100+ items) so there's no way those can be done via bike or motorcycle.
WELL for a big grocery delivery -- Yeah. That makes sense. A lot of sense.
I was imagining like. A couple take-out boxes on the shotgun seat and someone driving a whole-ass car for those lil' boxes.
And it sounded like whatever the driver would get from this haul wouldn't even cover gas. To say nothing of the environmental angle.
There's not an option to pick what they deliver it on, it's whatever the driver chooses to use. In more densely populated areas some people use bikes.
I know there isn't
It's just that delivery cars aren't really a thing in my country. It's all motorbikes all the way.
In NYC, 99% chance it's gonna be a deliverista on an e-bike. So the screenshot is literally wrong. Elsewhere in the country - yeah...
Am in Europe and we have a delivery service which provides everything by bike. And we make sure we don't order when it's raining even though the bikers don't seem to care.
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Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility
been disabled since 2017. pays half my salary. gave up driving last year. not good at those prices. wife grows vegetables in summer.
agreed. Just because something is unsustainable if everyone were to have limited mobility doesn't mean it's unsustainable.
Never really thought of getting food delivered, with prices like that I shall continue not to.
This is dumb, hating for the sake of hating just shows a low level of thinking. Cars are very useful tools that have practical applications that aren't going away any time soon, and delivery services are an example of that.
The issue with cars is that we decided to designed our cities and towns around them at the expense of pedestrians, culture, and the environment. This has spawned societies that are plagued with long commutes, inactive lifestyles, dangerous infrastructure, smog, and an arms race to get comically huge cars. Criticizing the car industry, the car lobby, specific aspects of cars, or our urban layouts is perfectly valid. Blindly hating on cars just because they're cars is counterproductive.
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They don’t deliver on e-bikes in NYC? That’s 90% of deliveries here in dense-ish urban environments.
I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I've seen.
It's mostly scooters and e-bikes.
When you build infrastructure that requires you take cars everywhere you minimize people going to get things for themselves
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