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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

#71

Post by munk-a »

EpicEng wrote: post #36
parshimers wrote: post #14

What absolute garbage, it defies the entire point of tipping. Is this even legal? If a restaurant got caught doing this, they would definitely lose many customers or even get run out of business.

It's the norm in many states, so I don't think so. I grew up in IL where waiters make something like $3 / hour. If that + tips is less than minimum wage then the company has to make up the difference. Not quite the same as they don't dock your pay if you make good tip money, but same principle.

It works out to the same end result (with the exception that waiters usually have some absolute minimum wage they can earn, so if a waiter makes 20$/hr in tips the restaurant still need to pay a bit on top of that.

One super annoying thing about this system and people choosing not to tip is a situation like this, assume a waiter is serving two customers in an hour, the local minimum wage is $9/hr and the sub-minimum wage is $3/hr, the first customer tips $4 dollars, yielding a potential wage excess of $2 (assuming a reliable rate) when the second customer tips $0 then the waiter ends up making no money beyond minimum wage. So if you're a tipper another customer that doesn't tip can cancel out your tip.

I'm not certain how these are aggregated from an accounting perspective, but I wouldn't be surprised if the window was either a full day or a pay period (in the latter case, every two weeks someone totals $3 * hrs worked, adds on total tips and verifies if that number is above $9 * hrs worked (do nothing) or is below (make up the difference out of the employer's pocket.

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

#72

Post by HillaryBriss »

adetrest wrote: post #46
dymk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Some really don't have options.

Unfortunately, in this economy, it's probably more accurate to say "most people really don't have options" rather than "some"

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

#74

Post by somethingle234 »

nsenifty wrote: post #29
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!

It is not "socially" mandatory as much as the workers suffer otherwise because they are paid less than minimum wage.

Come on. It IS socially mandatory.

People are harassed for not tipping. People look down on you for not tipping. Even, for bad service, we still have to tip.

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

#75

Post by rdm_blackhole »

I have never understood the tipping concept.

Just pay your workers minimum wages at least and make tipping optional.

I shouldn't have to tip the "employees" just because a company can get away without paying even minimum wage to its "employees".

There is something seriously broken with the whole tipping thing.

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

#76

Post by function_seven »

gowld wrote: post #55
_t2kx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

According to what ruling? It depends on the agreement between Instacart and delivery staff.

The Fair Labor Standards Act disallows this type of agreement for ordinarily-tipped jobs.

I don't know how the contractor status of Instacart drivers affects this. They're not technically employees. But the verbiage of "Tip" in the UI is a strong signal to the customer that the money is directly credited to the driver. It should bear no relation to their fee from Instacart.

This is wage theft. A horrible agreement doesn't make it right, even if it is legal.

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

#77

Post by burger_moon »

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…

I love how even knowing the company is stealing from their employees isn't enough to get you to drop using their service. I'm going to send at most 3 angry tweets about this before I forget about it and move on to the next thing to be upset about today.

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

#78

Post by jiveturkey »

Instacart doesn't list any company officers or important contacts on their website. I guess because they would end up dealing with irate customers too much.

But here are the vile people responsible for this practice: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/instacart#section-cu...

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

#79

Post by itronitron »

mawburn wrote: post #48
excalibur wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I finally understand why my former very blue-collar coworkers would never leave a tip when we went out for lunch. I guess they had better information on the local businesses.
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