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

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

#401

Post by bena »

mruts wrote: post #380
rafiki6 wrote: post #110

More evidence as to why tipping culture needs to die. Tipping fundamentally takes away the responsibility of paying someone for their work from the employer to the customer. In what other business context do I pay an employee of a company I deal with directly outside of the service industry where tipping is common? Wages are a cost of doing business. Pay the worker enough. If you want to still provide them an incenti…

Well it should start with you right? Are you willing to never tip again in your entire life? If so, let us know how it goes (or maybe is going?) Or, alternatively, maybe you don't live in a country with a tipping culture. And if so, then tipping doesn't really affect you. People like to tip. I like to tip. Waiters and waitresses like to be tipped. My wife used to work as a waitress and would clear over $300 a night i…

And that's why tipping won't die because the few people who can make bank off of sob stories and bad logic.

Sorry, waiting tables is not a really complicated skill. Tipping is not related to quality of service.

Most people don't think about tipping. They do it because it's expected and maybe the waitress is hot. If pressed, they would likely prefer not to do it.

Servers are also some of the most disingenuous people I've seen when arguing about tipping. Because that top tier knows they can make a lot of money in a low-skill job. They like to complain about how much money they make and how screwed over they are by tips, but when restaurants pay a fair wage and eliminate tips, the staff abandons them for places that do tip. Why? Money.

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

#402

Post by baddox »

tedivm wrote: post #45
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.

It becomes a bit more reasonable with 2 or more people. But yeah, even then the pricing is insane on these services. From my recent Caviar order (USD):

27.35 - actual face value of food (same as the in-store menu, at least for this restaurant) 2.32 - Tax 1.30 - "Healthy SF fee" 2.00 - Courier Bonus 4.92 - "Service Fee" (huh?) 1.99 - "Delivery Fee"

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

#403

Post by jliptzin »

I always tip in cash, except in the rare cases where I happened to not have cash on me. I am always under the assumption that this kind of thing is the default not the exception; when you add tip to a credit card who knows what happens when the mothership sucks up that cash and filters it through various middlemen before finally (if ever) getting to the person who provided a service to you.

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

#404

Post by 40acres »

Really disgusting behavior, honestly I think the "gig economy" has the right idea of where we are headed, we are moving to a service / high skill (technology) economy. Gig economy tools combine the best of both worlds, but these exploitative labor practices and low hanging industry targets have got to end.

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

#405

Post by pnathan »

Zimahl wrote: post #306
wetpaste wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a service industry job in texas that payed me around 2.50 an hour (iirc) and as long as I made enough in tips to cover minimum wage they didn't have to pay actual minimum wage. It's immoral as fuck to steal tips. I don't care if it's legal. If I'm a customer tipping the person a certain amount I want to make sure it's actually helping that person and not just lining the pockets of their employer, that's absurd.

That might be legal in Texas, but in Washington it's explicitly illegal. In the state, tips are completely irrelevant to base pay, all employees must get paid at least minimum wage as base pay. Instacart is going to get fucked very quickly by the Washington AG. This is as bad as Walmart not paying employees for overtime.

The WA AG is a bit on the antsy activist side too: this is like a great poster case for the anti-gig-worker advocates.

in any case, this is really awful for the poor drivers. I had no idea.

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

#406

Post by zjaffee »

Someone1234 wrote: post #126
babaganoosh89 wrote: post #37

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

I want the worker to receive 100% of the tip as much as anyone. But does anyone else find it obnoxious that all these digital services exist, often starting out with no tip straight pricing, then tipping re-appears, and then you suddenly need physical cash to morally use the service at all? Obviously workers should get fairly compensated. The problem is tipping culture itself, just set a price that customers are will…

It should also be noted that the need to tip for the perspective of workers having a decent standard of living varies a ton from place to place. In Seattle the tipped minimum wage is 12 dollars an hour at small employers and doesn't exist at large one's (where the minimum wage for large employers is 16/hr).

Tipping law for the most part isn't changing largely because tipped workers make more money under the status quo. For those familiar with the restaurant industry, tons of folks turn down management roles because they pay less than working the floor.

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

#407

Post by [deleted] »

perpetualpatzer wrote: post #317
passivepinetree wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you in favor of tipping? Can you justify your reasoning?

Not parent commenter, but the common argument is that for the class of service jobs where the employee's role is to interface with the customer and provide them a service, customers are in a better position to assess the employee's job performance than a manager. For that class of jobs, giving customers influence over the employee's "merit bonuses" is a more accurate system of rewarding performance and requires less…

[deleted]

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

#408

Post by dwighttk »

Waterluvian wrote: post #397
atom-morgan wrote: post #97

Seriously, this is the responsibility consumers have in a free market. If there's behavior you don't like, move on. You don't get to complain about bad actors when you're literally keeping them in business.

I wonder if we can gamify this. Where your social media profile can display badges if you don't use various services. I imagine that's next to impossible.

Virtue Signal Badges!

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

#409

Post by chrisseaton »

justtopost wrote: post #342
chrisseaton wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is 'service' seen as a separately billed item, paid for by the tip, in a restaurant in the US? Why isn't it included in the bill for the food, like everything else is?

Because standing in line for food is cheaper than having someone personaly serve it to you? You are not so much paying for a potato, as you are paying for it to be fried, packaged, and in your hand, quickly and reliably.

> You are not so much paying for a potato, as you are paying for it to be fried, packaged, and in your hand, quickly and reliably.

If the menu says friend potato, why am I paying separately for it to be fried?

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

#410

Post by Klinky »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #258
jopsen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is why you have regulation, and need unions. Consumers have enough parameters to optimize for: price of groceries, cost of delivery, fair trade, availability of products, delivery speed, convenience, availability of delivery slots, the list is long. Consumers are relatively good at optimizing for cost, not perfect -- but asking for more than that is unrealistic.

Not all customers/workers feel the same way about every business practice, so it's not fair to appropriate their decision-making power by monopolizing it through one regulatory agency or union that they may not support. People are entitled to their individual choices. If it's too much information to process, they can individually choose someone they delegate their decision making to. One way they do this is to trust…

Relying on certifications is laughable. Things like "Organic", "Fair Trade", and "Cage Free" do not always mean what you think they mean. Even what constitutes products like peanut butter is up for dispute by those trying to sell a cheapened product as the real thing[1].

Even in tech you have paper CCNA who don't know anything, but have a piece of paper saying they're certified.

You're also saying in this case it is theft, and should be handled by the legal system, which in part is legislated by labor regulations.

1. https://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/History/ProductRegulation/ucm13...

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