An Uber Eats driver on the verge of homelessness recently shared a heartbreaking plea online in which he urged anyone who uses the food delivery app to please tip the person responsible for bringing them their meal.
Riley Elliot from Seattle, Washington, quickly went viral for his emotional TikTok video and has since been overwhelmed with love, support, and even donations from those who were touched by his story.
In his original video, Elliot details a less-than-ideal delivery he had just completed that day for Uber Eats.
“‘Y’all I wish that people who order Uber Eats or Doordash understood what it’s like to be a driver,” he begins the TikTok video .
He goes on to explain that the customer he was delivering food for refused to come down and retrieve their order.
Since there was no parking on this particular customer’s street, Elliot was slapped with a $3 parking ticket.
At the end of the delivery, he was paid only $2.50 by Uber and received just a $1.50 tip from the customer. With the cost of his parking ticket taken into account, Elliot made just $1 for that 45-minute delivery.
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And with his current financial situation, that’s simply not going to cut it.
Despite working multiple jobs, Elliot can still barely afford to feed himself and is facing homelessness.
“I’m about to be homeless for the [third] time since May,” he says in his video. “And it’s all because people don’t tip their delivery drivers.”
“How hard is it to throw us five bucks?”
As of writing, Elliot’s original video has been viewed over 3.2 million times on TikTok.
It was later shared to Twitter , along with the driver’s Venmo and Cash App information so anyone who wishes to help him out financially can do so.
As the Seattle Times reported, Elliot was stunned when he received more than $40,000 in tips from people all over the world who had been touched by his emotional plea.
Among those generous donors were the Seattle Sounders soccer team.
The team sent Elliot $500 after the club’s social media manager spotted the driver wearing a Sounders jersey in his video.
That initial donation then spiraled into a spontaneous tip challenge where Elliot says supporters for the Sounders, Los Angeles FC, and Portland Timbers sought to one-up each other via donations made to his Venmo and Cash App accounts.
Now Elliot and his fiancé are in the process of packing up their things, but not because they’re now homeless.
Rather, thanks to the generosity of so many strangers, the pair are able to move to a new apartment together without worrying about being unable to pay their rent.
In fact, the donations were so overwhelming that Elliot was able to spread $12,000 to people in need of paying electric bills or buying medication.
He’s continued to utilize the momentum of his own virality, and regularly appears on TikTok and Twitter to advocate for others in need of strangers’ generosity.
“The last two days have just been me living my dream of being able to help people in need,” Elliot told the Seattle Times . “My whole body has just been buzzing with positive energy from all of these people.”
h/t: Seattle Times
