Random question: Doordash, Ubereats, Grubhub, etc....

[BladesNBarrels]

WTF does "piping" mean, anyway?

Well, that got me curious and after Google searching, there appears to be a number of explanations.
The one description that dated back to the 1600's that seems to be likely

The derivation of this little phrase is the sizzling, whistling sound made by steam escaping from very hot food, which is similar to the sound of high-pitched musical pipes.
An early citation is given in Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Historie of the world, 1601:

"Beanes... fried all whole as they be, and so cast piping hot into sharp vineger."

[Aloha_Shooter]

I've used Uber once. Hated it -- they directed the driver to the wrong side of the mall from where I was at. He cancelled the fare after waiting for 5 or 10 minutes. I had to make another Uber reservation and it ended up being the same driver so I ended up getting charged twice for the ride and waiting an extra 20 minutes. I'd have avoided that if the mall had a regular taxi stand or if I'd had a phone number I could call but I was in another country and while I had data, I didn't have a "local" phone number. Uber and Lyft started off claiming to be ride-sharing services and seemed reasonable but time has revealed that they were really about establishing national taxi services that avoided local laws. I have to admit, that aspect has me divided because I think a lot of the local medallion laws are simple corruption to preserve effective monopolies but it seems to me that Uber and Lyft are fundamentally dishonest .

I've avoided the food delivery services like the plague once I read how they were screwing over restaurants. I also talked to a couple of restauranteurs who explained why they refused to work with certain delivery services (but said delivery services still had their restaurant listed). Chase gave us a $60/mo credit with DoorDash when I had their Sapphire Reserve card but I simply refused to use it as DD seems like a parasite on both the restaurants and the delivery drivers. I'd rather just make the food run myself than feed money to the neterati.

[BladesNBarrels]

Traveled frequently to the big cities in the 80's and 90's when the only choice was Taxi's.
After being taken on long way tours to jack up the fare, I learned to negotiate the price up front.
Had to jump out of a Taxi in New York once and tell the driver I was going to get a cop when he started to divert from the agreed route.
More options give more choices.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

The thing about the food delivery is that I wish the 'tip' was based more on the miles/effort than on the food price. What does the food price matter to the driver??? Its distance and how hard it is to park and get the food. I've ordered from places in downtown Denver that I know are hard to park and pick up, and then they aren't that close.

My mother in law has an in resturant tipping formula. 20% or $5 a head. So if you aren't drinking and its a cheap place you might not hit $25 per person. It really only comes down to lunches and breakfasts, and in reality for a family of 4-5 it doesn't matter much- but it reflects the effort, not the price of the food.