some buncha nerds

At this latest conference, a number of people were asking me about the status of my book and I confessed that it had not come along as quickly as I hoped because real-world things keep happening that were forcing me to reconsider or grapple with what I had planned to write: the proliferation of Gen AI, policies and laws limiting access to social media, Trump and his bullshit, and JK Rowling and hers.

One of my colleagues suggested that I write this somewhere in my book. I decided this was a good idea and added it to the acknowledgements section as a way to acknowledge the things that hindered the writing before I acknowledge all the people who have helped me along the way. Below is a draft of this anti-acknowledgement:



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I just returned home from my last conference of the academic year. I was in San Diego sharing an AirBnB with two academic friends and due to a logistics mix-up, we ended up having to use Uber quite a bit to get around. At one point towards the end of the trip, I asked my friends their approach to tipping and rating Uber drivers. This is because they seem more comfortable using Uber and Lyft than me and also had a lot of opinions about a number of App-based things that I don't use or don't use as much and I thought they would have good advice. 

To my shock I learned that neither of them tips, except of exceptional service and they only leave ratings if there is a problem! They were adamant about this. I felt a little crazy because I do tip and give maximum ratings as much as possible and I wondered if I had been doing it wrong all along.

I also learned that they had never heard of tipping hotel cleaning staff (e.g. leaving a tip in the room whenever you have it cleaned). That one I learned about when I was older and started reading travel guides about tipping in different tiers of hotels for the different services. They also seemed to object to tipping cab drivers too and said that they tipped people like their hair dressers, who they had an ongoing relationship with. 

I was really beginning to doubt myself since there were other things this weekend that left me feeling like an oddball that didn't know social rules, so I reached out to another friend to ask about Uber tipping and she was adamant about tipping and rating at all times, My husband was also surprised to hear about the no-tipping tendencies of my friends and pointed out that the algorithms food delivery services deliberately lower the base pay drivers receive to make them more more reliant on tips. He surmised the same model was probably at play with Uber. 

I'm not alone in my preferences but I wonder just how much more common my friends' nontipping/non-rating practice is than my tipping/rating practice. 

How often and how much do those of you who use services like Uber and Lift rate and tip? And what factors affect your choice to do so or not?