My wife is mad that I met the grocery delivery at the lobby instead of letting them come up to us
My wife is against tipping under any circumstances, aside from sitting down in a restaurant, then she'd be okay with tipping 10-15%. We're in a HCOL city in the US and do alright financially. I work and she doesn't, but she is like my secretary - helping me with admin stuff like scheduling, finding stuff online, and making calls (I hate making calls). But I do all our cooking or taking out.
Today we had a huge grocery delivery order. I feel bad for making the delivery person spend so much time if we're not going to tip him, so I waited 20 minutes at the lobby for him while doing something (not just wasting time) on my phone and met him at the lobby, then loaded everything into a trolley owned by the apartment and brought it up myself.
My wife is mad at me for "wasting time" on that when he could have come up on his own. I don't think it's right to make him spend so much time on our order if we're not going to tip him.
In the past she has gotten mad at me for tipping delivery drivers, so I thought she would be less mad if I did this instead. But it didn't seem to make a difference. AITAH for not wanting to exploit people?
Bonus AITAH:
She said "the groceries will be delivered up with no tip in future". I asked her which would upset her more - tipping and having them come up, or not tipping and meeting them at the lobby? She said “F*** you for making an ultimatum" AITAH for asking that question? Edit: it was actually “F*** this, you don’t get to issue ultimatums”.
Updates:
- This is actually a secondary account that I stopped using for more than a year at one point. During that time it was hacked and used by the person who posted that OF link. I removed all their posts when I started using this account again, but didn't see the link until today. So I’ve removed that now.
- I don't use our real ages in my posts for privacy reasons, but some subs force me to put an age so I picked an approximate age within the age range we're in.
- It's not a gig worker app, it's one of the big companies that pay their delivery drivers a somewhat reasonable hourly wage (I Googled). But I still feel obligated to tip because I'm a bleeding-heart liberal.
- She helps me with personal admin stuff, not work. I don’t own or run a business. Saying that I “exploit” her as an unpaid secretary is like saying she exploits me as an unpaid errand runner and personal chef. Couples do stuff for each other sometimes, get over it.
- She’s out of touch and she can be selfish sometimes, but she does contribute to the relationship. She just helped me get something done today which is related to my health insurance, it took hours of her time and dozens of phone calls. I could never have managed that without taking time off from work and hating every step of the process. I really appreciate what she did.