7 Bad Habits of Delivery Drivers

We have gotten use to the convenience of deliver right to our door, of a mostly hot and ready to eat meal. This saves us time in our schedule. For the most part it eliminates us having to rush through lunch hour or dinner hour traffic. If we have a sudden change in our schedule or work goes longer than expected or we just don’t feel like cooking today, we can usually rely on delivery of food to our door.

For me, I have a picky eater and sometimes it just brings sanity to my life to order his favorite Chinese food: Chicken fried rice no veggies with extra egg. Even his eat out order is picky, but this little $12.50 container of food brings peace to my household as there will be no fussing about, “Eat this vegetable”, or feeling like I’m “Mommie Dearest” not allowing him to leave the table until he finishes his food. But alas, I’m getting off track. While I appreciate this wonderful service, I cannot stand the shenanigans of some delivery drivers. Here are my 7 bad habits I have experienced with some delivery drivers:

Bad Habit#1 Not checking for my drinks

Why would you bring an empty cup to me and then act surprise when I ask you what happen to the drink? The very least you could do is check the order for my drink. While I don’t expect you to roam through my sealed bag, I do expect you to at least verify they give you the drink and if the cup is empty, please have them fill it. FYI: This incident was pre-covid.

Tip: Make sure you call the delivery company customer service to get a refund for your drink. As high as drink prices are when you order a specialty juice, smoothie, or tea, don’t let any of your money slip through your hands.

Bad Habit #2 Not reading the special delivery instructions, that I put in to help navigating to my home easier.

I have permanent delivery instructions listed, this is an example of the instruction; When you make the last turn onto ABC street, you will turn into the 2nd parking lot on your right. Drive Straight back and there is a Blue Honda Civic in front of my door, 1st 3 of license plate is ABC. I know the directions are good because the drivers who do read the directions always say, “Great Directions, you lead me right to your door.”

Bad Habit #3 Calling for directions but not listening.

Don’t call me for directions because you are lost on your GPS but then continue to follow your GPS when I’m giving the correct directions yet you for whatever reason keep going in circles because you want to follow the GPS which has had you lost for the last 10 minutes and now I will end up with cold food because it takes you another 8 minutes to finally hear, “Please quit following your GPS since, it’s not getting you here, this is what I need you to do”.

Tip: Call the delivery service and be compensated for cold food. I only have had to this a couple of times because of the reason above. There is a huge difference from being 5 minutes late than 20 minutes late because you don’t want to listen.

Bad Habit #4 Lack of communication

Please communicate when you are waiting a terribly long time for my order. Who knows you might get an extra tip or provide me with the ability to cancel if I will fall asleep before the food arrives to my door.

Bad Habit #5 Not reading the names and restaurant on the order.

I have gotten so many wrong orders like I ordered 3 salads from a salad market; how did I end up with Chinese food? Pace yourself, this does affect your tip, and now I have someone’s food and they have mine. We both now must wait again for our orders to be redelivered.

Tip: Lowering the tip is easier if you are dealing with a delivery service where you can adjust the tip after delivery. But in these situations, the delivery service will refund your monies but generally not the tip

Bad Habit #6 Expecting me to do your job for you

Why would you sit in your car and call me to come get my food? If I do go to retrieve my food from you that equals a negative rating, and you completely lose a tip.

Tip: I generally do request my tip back or to lower the tip because the driver has not completed the basic function of your job and that is to deliver

Bad Habit #7 My ultimate pet peeve Not following request for how to deliver the order.

This is my ultimate per peeve. When I ask for the delivery to be handed to me and the driver leaves it on the ground 6 feet from my door. “GRRRRRR!!!!” You knew it wasn’t a leave it at your door because there is a whole protocol that you have to follow so if you don’t have directions to take a picture, it was a hand it to me order.

Tip: If you have a delivery driver do this and it’s an app where you can’t control the amount of tip after delivery, you can call the company and ask for your tip to be returned because the delivery driver did not follow instructions.

Now, to some this may seem picky, however, I am a great tipper so I expect to have the common customer service that should be provided from a delivery driver.

Every Job one takes should be done with their best effort; I appreciate the time that is saved but I would appreciate it even more if I received the service that my generous tip warrants.

I have done this job before, so I know what expectations I have and use these as a guideline when I delivered to the customers and with over 22 years experience in customer service, it really just bothers me when poor service is given.

When entering a service role, you should thrive to always provide a great service experience and if you fall short of the basics of this role constantly, this should not be a role you choose.

Please let me know if you have experienced any of these shenanigans and what you did.