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Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#91

Post by fredophile »

refurb wrote: post #26
imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

I have a few friends in the service industry who prefer the tips model since the tips are often 200-300% of their base pay. If it switched to fixed hourly pay, they'd be taking a pay cut since there is no way their hourly pay would be $30/hr.

I think the experience is very different depending on where you work. Your friends are probably working at a relatively fancy restaurant or bar. There's no reason a place like that couldn't pay more to keep good staff if tipping went away. How many of your friends would want to work for tips if they were working at a diner in a small town?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#92

Post by Noos »

sellyme wrote: post #50
Noos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um..medium hourly income in the USA is $21 an hour or so. I live in a decently expensive state and skilled trades, managers, and various lower-tier technical people make $30 an hour, and that's double the state's upcoming minimum wage. I really don't see how you pay them that much.

> I really don't see how you pay them that much. But they're apparently already getting paid that much! Either people are drastically misrepresenting how much waitstaff take home in tips, or there's enough money in the economy to pay them that much.

I don't think they are getting paid that much. I think in general people exaggerate. Maybe at peak times it hits $30 an hour, but a lot of the week it can be dead or slow.

This is part of why we don't make sales based on commission in retail stores any more; usually sales in general aren't boing to be affected by service as much as volume of customers into the store. Same I bet w tips

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#93

Post by sellyme »

alextheparrot wrote: post #76
sellyme wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't see how you pay them that much. But they're apparently already getting paid that much! Either people are drastically misrepresenting how much waitstaff take home in tips, or there's enough money in the economy to pay them that much.

It is a difference in who decides how much they’re paid. In a traditional business their pay is at the discretion of the business and thus in competition with what could be the business’s profits. Tips are inaccessible to the business, so they get paid more closely to what consumers are ok with paying. I’m probably paying more too because of being guilted into feeling like I must tip x% because I’m directly responsib…

> It is a difference in who decides how much they’re paid. In a traditional business their pay is at the discretion of the business and thus in competition with what could be the business’s profits.

I don't really see how this is any different to me going into an American restaurant today and having the waiter's pay be at the discretion of myself, and in competition with what could be my money. At the end of the day it's still a person deciding how much money to give the waiter, knowing that they can keep any that's left over.

> I’m probably paying more too because of being guilted into feeling like I must tip x% because I’m directly responsible for the person’s wages.

Entirely plausible, but I see eliminating this consequence of tipping to be a huge positive. If a significant portion of someone's pay relies on guilt, then clearly the actual service they're providing isn't worth what they're being compensated for.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#94

Post by icelancer »

nine_k wrote: post #84
lettergram wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’ve worked a job where you got tipped, have you? It’s actually one of the few ways people can make a lot of money for doing a good job. What you describe punishes hard work, the people getting tips would hate it.

I've actually seen how a restaurant is run. Waiters put the tips into a common pot, then split equally. It was their idea. Drivers, who don't work in close proximity to each other, may have it differently, of course.

I mean, that restaurant, I guess? I worked five years as a server at three places and we never did this.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#95

Post by viraptor »

jimmaswell wrote: post #37
aledalgrande wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how comes you can get exceptional service in countries where there's no tips?

There is no culture of customer service at all in Europe from what I've heard, with apathetic to downright rude waitstaff being the norm. There's a chance it wouldn't be that way if there were tips.

> no culture of customer service at all in Europe

Extreme generalisation of 50+ countries, each having own cultural identity and internal/local differences. All from a third party you heard. Are you sure that's information worth spreading / relying on?

(tipping exists in multiple countries in Europe BTW, it's just not that common)

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#96

Post by fredophile »

Noos wrote: post #89
adammenges wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true in more or less every job, it can be done well or done poorly. Incentive should be keeping the job at all. Tips are an infuriating hidden cost.

There's actually no incentive to keep low paid service jobs for any length of time. One of the saddest things in retail for example is the longer you work, the less you actually make; retail pay is so low that your raises will be less than inflation adjusted minimum wage or new hires if you work at a job long enough! I've seen/had this happen. Bosses had to go to bat for their long term workers because even with rais…

While that does sound like a problem do you think that tipping would fix it?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#97

Post by hhw »

jimmaswell wrote: post #37
aledalgrande wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how comes you can get exceptional service in countries where there's no tips?

There is no culture of customer service at all in Europe from what I've heard, with apathetic to downright rude waitstaff being the norm. There's a chance it wouldn't be that way if there were tips.

Customer service in Japan is hands down superior to in the US.

Maybe other factors like culture matter more than tipping?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#98

Post by Noos »

BeetleB wrote: post #41
bagacrap wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the service industry there's a big difference between doing a job and doing a job /well/. Doing a job well is incentivized by tips.

Why do some jobs in the service industry have tips, and others do not? I've yet to find someone who pays tips for excellent customer service in the big mall stores. I'm sure they exist, but almost no one does it, and this is acceptable. Why?

Generally you have little to no service interaction in these stores. The people in them are order takers, not sellers; whenever they are pushed to sell, the customer finds it intrusive since normally its value-less or negative products (cough, extended warranties).

There also never is enough staff. The staff doesn't have time to provide customer service in meaningful ways; they more or less clean, stock, cashier, and do everything instead of be dedicated sales people. They literally cannot do so unless its very high value sales where the service is the key to making a big, infrequent sale over many small ones.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#99

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

refurb wrote: post #26
imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

I have a few friends in the service industry who prefer the tips model since the tips are often 200-300% of their base pay. If it switched to fixed hourly pay, they'd be taking a pay cut since there is no way their hourly pay would be $30/hr.

You guys understand that the price of meals would go up to compensate for the lack of tipping right? You’re not simply removing the cash. That extra 20% or whatever is now baked into the price. And generous tippers can still leave their extra bit.

The change is, that by default everyone earns a fair wage.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#100

Post by baby »

lettergram wrote: post #53
imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

I don’t think you’ve worked a job where you got tipped, have you? It’s actually one of the few ways people can make a lot of money for doing a good job. What you describe punishes hard work, the people getting tips would hate it.

I worked at McDonalds in the kitchen, didn’t get tipped.
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