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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

#131

Post by BeetleB »

Noos wrote: post #98
BeetleB wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Generally you have little to no service interaction in these stores.

Actually, in stores like Nordstrom, you get a lot more service (if you want it) than at a restaurant - even when you don't want it. I avoided them for years for this reason. They have a fair number of people who spend much much more time providing these services than doing the other stuff you mentioned.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#132

Post by aqme28 »

peteretep wrote: post #3

> The FTC alleges Amazon changed the way it paid drivers in late 2016, lowering the hourly rate and then used customer tips to make up the difference. Amazon continued to tell drivers they were receiving all of their tips, even after receiving hundreds of complaints from drivers, the agency said. How is this not simply theft? Why does this attract civil charges and not criminal ones?

Possibly because of this, wage theft outstrips all other forms of theft.

http://www.tcworkerscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Wa...

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#133

Post by edgyquant »

michaelmrose wrote: post #110
edgyquant wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t every restaurant though. My ex-wife used to be a waitress and if there was a pooled tip jar she immediately began looking for a different place without one. Drivers, otoh, usually make at least minimum wage but then they need that money for gas as well.

If your wife is broadly viewed as attractive and working in the half of employees at her business which interacts with the public she may benefit more than average from tips which provides a poor justification for making a decision if the broad welfare of all employees in tipped industries is concerned.

I was only commenting on the pooling of tips which isn’t something every place does

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#134

Post by BeetleB »

maxerickson wrote: post #60
BeetleB wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not arguing one way or other, but for many, say, restaurant workers, this practice is the norm in states that allow it (I believe that would be most states). The amount the owner is required to pay a worker is pretty low, as long as they have enough tips to hit the standard minimum wage.

The FTC press release reads like they stated a wage+all the tips and then didn't disclose that they were getting a lower wage+all the tips. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/02/amazo... In a typical restaurant job, the stated wage is the legal minimum for a tipped role, and then (in theory anyway), the restaurant is required to ensure that the employee receives the normal minimum wage if they don't…

I don't disagree about the "saying one thing and doing something else" part. I was commenting on the general principle of lowering one's wages (even to below minimum wages) if the person gets enough tips, and how common that is.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#135

Post by Noos »

Noos wrote: post #98
BeetleB wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

BeetleB, Most of that old-style retail is dying out though. The department store model of Sears and Macys lost to the big-box model of walmart and best buy. These days you are lucky if there is enough staff to run the registers in a pinch; big box retail and specialty can be absurdly cheap.

Like the whole gamestop debacle-go into the store and you'll find maybe they have barely enough payroll to have more than one person in the store on non-peak days.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#136

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

baby wrote: post #127
buzzdenver wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been tried in restaurants many times and usually with negative results. People balk at higher prices on the menu.

I didn’t know tipping was a thing before going to the US so no, that’s not true in the rest of the world. And I’d argue that people who would complain about that here are people who don’t tip and save a bunch of bucks thanks to us suckers.

I think you're misunderstanding. It's not no-tips that's hard. It's no-tips when everyone else takes tips. Switching is the hard part.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#137

Post by yibg »

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.

Tips have become so detached from their original intention too. I've been to so many places (pre-covid) that asked for tips upfront during checkout before I've received any service. How would I know what the service would be like and therefore how much to tip? Might as well call it a surcharge and be done with it.

I guess same thing now with food deliveries, but at least I can change the tips (I think?) afterwards if something wasn't good.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#138

Post by underseacables »

When you think tipping, remember it’s origins in feudal Europe, and American slavery. “the Pullman Company, which hired newly freed African American men as porters. Rather than paying them a real wage, Pullman provided the black porters with just a meager pittance, forcing them to rely on tips from their white clientele for most of their pay.”

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-b...

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#139

Post by decker »

accountofme wrote: post #118
buzzdenver wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been tried in restaurants many times and usually with negative results. People balk at higher prices on the menu.

Not true. Australia does not have tipping in it's culture. We pay our wait staff fair and reasonable rates (legally mandated btw). I don't really think our food costs are too much higher than the USA. And people eat out ALOT here. Food tastes good, service is good. People want to come back. Please expand your horizons.

Never having a tipping culture is a much different thing than having to transition from one that tips to one that does not. Did Australia have tips then do away with them at some point? If so, how did they pull it off?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#140

Post by Noos »

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'm sure famously low margin, high risk places like restaurants can easily raise employee wages anywhere form 2 to 6 fold. As I said downthread, all a restaurant has to pay is $2.13 an hour if they make enough tips to earn an effective wage of over $7.25 an hr in a week. That's $290 a week for 40 hours of work pretax.

For a tech comparison look at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It probably is closer to the $2.13 minimum wage in practice than the $7.25 one for what I hear. Now imagine they had to raise what they paid to make sure its an effective $15 an hour based on spending an hour.

You think it would still exist? Would you pay that much? Or is it's value proposition precisely because you can pay them shit wages overall?

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