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Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

workingwa.org

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Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#41

Post by jonathankoren »

dymk wrote: post #20
awake wrote: post #2

I used to work for a delivery company with this same pay structure. This is garbage and its taking advantage of young people who are looking for jobs.

Serious question: if somebody knows that a job like this is such a ripoff (even if the rates aren't advertised, you _will_ find out soon enough, if via stories like this), why would somebody take a job like this?

Because they need the money.

People that are desperate for money are frequently exploited. Whether it's through wage theft, or unsafe employment practices, or simply demeaning behavior.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#42

Post by EpicEng »

warp_factor wrote: post #17

people should simply NOT tip. At restaurant maybe because it is socially mandatory, but anywhere else, a signal should be sent that it is stupid and doesn't make any economical sense to tip!

You're only hurting the workers; their employer's don't care.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#43

Post by lixue »

standardUser wrote: post #11

This isn't uncommon or new. Many states allow for tips to offset wages, even if wages fall below the minimum wage. Some states even have a separate minimum wage for tipper workers that is below the standard minimum wage. If you want to blame someone, I suggest looking for the actual culprit and not a law-abiding company. This has little to do with Instacart and everything to do with state wage laws.

This was posted by "Working Washington", so it seems reasonable to look at Washington state law: It requires tipped employees to be paid minimum wage. So does the rest of the west coast, including California (where Instacart has it's HQ).

https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

It is, of course, entirely possible that the worker in question is not on the west coast, but Instacart is still welcome to pay a fair wage even if not required to by law, and Instacart should certainly avoid lying about their business practices either way (from the article: "Even Instacart seems to know how messed up it is to pay workers less when they get tipped more — which is why they’ve denied the practice when speaking to reporters at Business Insider & the Miami Herald.")

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#45

Post by tedivm »

babaganoosh89 wrote: post #37

DoorDash does the same thing of “stealing” tips. Either you should tip in cash or not at all.

Not only do they steal tips, they also jack up the prices of the food itself. I make six figures and honest to god I have no idea how anyone affords to use DoorDash.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#46

Post by adetrest »

dymk wrote: post #20
awake wrote: post #2

I used to work for a delivery company with this same pay structure. This is garbage and its taking advantage of young people who are looking for jobs.

Serious question: if somebody knows that a job like this is such a ripoff (even if the rates aren't advertised, you _will_ find out soon enough, if via stories like this), why would somebody take a job like this?

Not everyone is a software developer with companies fighting over them. Some really don't have options, and the choice is either get no income and be unable to pay your bills, or get screwed over but get some money to pay the bills.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#47

Post by TomMckenny »

_t2kx wrote: post #18
tedivm wrote: post #10

There's a related blog post up on Medium by this same group (Working Washington) where they placed the same order, once with tip and once without, so people could directly compare. From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. I'm a huge fan of instacart (my fiance and I use it regularly), but this is definitely going to push me away from the platform. At a minimum I'm going…

> From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. This is 100% wage theft.

They better hope there's no binding arbitration clause.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#48

Post by mawburn »

excalibur wrote: post #27
awake wrote: post #2

I used to work for a delivery company with this same pay structure. This is garbage and its taking advantage of young people who are looking for jobs.

Is this common? When I tip it's always with the intent of helping the individual, never the company. The much larger original bill is their share, in case they've forgotten. Are cash tips an effective method of keeping grubby corporate hands out of it?

IHOP will adjust wages based on tips, they try to equal it out to minimum wage. My wife lasted about 3 weeks there. It was also by far the hardest I've ever seen her work, and for context we met in the Army.

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#49

Post by [deleted] »

standardUser wrote: post #11

This isn't uncommon or new. Many states allow for tips to offset wages, even if wages fall below the minimum wage. Some states even have a separate minimum wage for tipper workers that is below the standard minimum wage. If you want to blame someone, I suggest looking for the actual culprit and not a law-abiding company. This has little to do with Instacart and everything to do with state wage laws.

[deleted]

Re: Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

#50

Post by jolmg »

dymk wrote: post #20
awake wrote: post #2

I used to work for a delivery company with this same pay structure. This is garbage and its taking advantage of young people who are looking for jobs.

Serious question: if somebody knows that a job like this is such a ripoff (even if the rates aren't advertised, you _will_ find out soon enough, if via stories like this), why would somebody take a job like this?

Because they need to. We're talking about unskilled work. You take what you can get. Such companies know there are unskilled workers that will put up with it and take advantage of that.
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