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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

#561

Post by muzani »

function_seven wrote: post #76
gowld wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

Logically, independent contractors should get paid more, not less, than full time employees, because they don't get the other benefits.

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

#562

Post by foobiekr »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #364
halr9000 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even going to send an angry tweet. I'm going to keep ordering. If a driver takes the job, at the price Instacart wants to pay, it's on the driver, of course. And this works until it doesn't! Once people quit driving for IC, THIS is the market price signal which will cause the system to reconfigure. If IC can't get drivers, they must pay more! I have zero illusions that enough people understand the free market…

Instacart is defrauding their customers, who believe the tips are going to the driver, not straight into Instacart's pocket. Customer awareness is the free market solution to this, if that's the hammer you want to use to fix everything. Maybe grade school should focus on reading comprehension.

The proof of the sketchiness is that if you call the DoorDash support line, their phone reps are carefully trained with exact wording to be as misleading as possible about this. If you bring up the way payments depend on tips, they will carefully reiterate the talking points.

You can learn a lot from how companies feel about their practices by looking at how they train the customer support personnel with talking points to avoid admitting certain of them.

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

#563

Post by tlow »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #528
maxerickson wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you maybe need to write a book about why you think a server sharing their tips around is equivalent to a corporation reducing wages based on tips. I don't see how any shorter treatment would be a sufficient explanation. I mean, imagine the scenario where the server just buys a line cook a drink to say thank you. Fraud!

> I mean, imagine the scenario where the server just buys a line cook a drink to say thank you. Fraud! That would be a case of the server getting the money and deciding to buy something for the cook. Whereas in an actual tip-sharing restaurant, the server gets his share of the tip pool after the cook's share has already been taken out. He doesn't get a choice in the matter. This is generally not what the people givin…

>This is generally not what the people giving the tips have in mind.

Can you substantiate that in any way with any kind of evidence or is it a baseless claim?

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

#564

Post by mannykannot »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #504
mannykannot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while it is not as important an issue, I, as a tipper, feel that I have been defrauded when this happens (now that I am aware that this does happen, I assume that it has probably been done with some tips I have made.) To be clear: this is not an alternative way of looking at the issue, it is an additional indictment stemming from the practice.

> I, as a tipper, feel that I have been defrauded when this happens It is standard (though not universal) practice for restaurant staff to pool and divide tips, which would appear to be the same thing from a defrauding-the-tipper perspective. I'm more upset about this line from Instacart: > We include tips in the calculation [of pay for deliveries] so that you can get a more accurate picture of what your earnings wil…

There are issues with tip pooling, but there's one thing that I am absolutely sure of: my tip was not intended for the person's employer, and certainly not for anyone who claims to have arranged for the work to be done by a nominally self-employed contractor.

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

#565

Post by boucher »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #457
mruts wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It does. Most people I know in SF, including me, don't tip. Waiters here are way more used to it and don't necessarily expect it.

You are simply wrong. It's trivially easy to disprove your several comments about SF tipping culture with a few google searches.

Don't confuse the fact that nobody has confronted you for the idea that waiters don't expect you to tip them.

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

#566

Post by jogjayr »

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…

> Are you willing to never tip again in your entire life?

I would happily do that if I knew the server would earn a living wage even without my tip.

No one is talking about making tipping illegal. Killing tipping culture means not making food workers dependent on customers' largess and generosity to make a living wage.

Even in most countries without a tipping culture, you're free to hand over additional money to your server or cook if you feel like it. No one is stopping you.

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

#567

Post by lightedman »

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.

Tip taking is also illegal by CA laws. Instacart is about to really get nailed.

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

#568

Post by the_clarence »

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 think this is a good step towards de-incentivizing people to tip for everything.

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

#569

Post by the_clarence »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #458
MisterTea wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a minimum I'm going to be tipping in cash. Do the right thing. Take a stand for human decency and make a compromise by closing your instacart account now . Absorb the inconvenience and do your own shopping. And make sure to tell instacart to (insert profanity of choice) if you can while closing your account. That behaviour is low down and dirty. Shady craigs list used car dealer level stuff. I just walked three…

You didn't explain why that's "the right thing". Making sure the worker is paid well is the most important part. It's also possible that instacart will lose money on the sales where they can't scam tips; that means you can use the service and pay the worker well and punish instacart and increase the incentive for them to change their policy.

exactly. Most people don't tip on Instacart so doing the right thing would be to make sure they pay their employees well.

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

#570

Post by the_clarence »

tdeck wrote: post #560
throwaway415415 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a no tipping movement in san francisco that has worked quite well. People don't tip anymore here and it is not socially accepted to do it.

As an SF resident I don't seem much evidence of this movement. I get prompted to tip very frequently for counter service, even at food trucks. People must be tipping if that's the case, although I don't watch other patrons.

generally people don't give tips for these things. It's just the default for a lot of these square point of sales. I don't know why square would do this honestly, this is just encouraging wrong behavior.
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