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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

#161

Post by kortilla »

hntrader wrote: post #158
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.

What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer. I still advocate tipping since it's a nice thing to do and probably improves your happiness, but I think it's healthier in the context of a no-tipping culture where wages are sufficient and baked into the price of the service.

> What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer.

No it’s not. You would not tip any less if you knew there were other people at the restaurant who had no intention of tipping.

It’s strictly a lost potential income to the server when they land a cheap customer. It may not actually cost them anything at all if it’s not busy and they were able to take on the additional customer without losing a potentially higher paying customer slot.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#162

Post by monksy »

baby wrote: post #125
neilv wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a reasonable comment, and seems a fairly popular idea. But is this the most important comment thread, to be voted to the top, on this particular post? The topic of the post is alleged blatant theft of tips. The question of whether there should be tips in the first place could be a diversion from the more immediate topic.

No tips = no theft and people actually get paid a wage that allows them to live well.

There's no obligation to tip. It's not theft. It's only considered to be a loss of money due to the taxman responding to a lack of reporting over tips.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#163

Post by kortilla »

melomal wrote: post #150
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.

Each time I order with Glovo I tipped with cash directly to the driver. The 'online' tip has to be one of the dumbest features ever and just stinks of something shady going on.

Or, you know, people don’t keep a lot of spare cash to tip because every other transaction is cashless.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#164

Post by katbyte »

baby wrote: post #107
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.

Agree, thanks to the tipping culture I can sit in a restaurant with my friends and be asked every 5min if everything is good. Then at the end I can decide how much they will make from me, nothing or a bunch? Maybe I’ll discriminate and judge how much they deserve based on how they look.

Ugh I hate the being asked every 5min things are good. Much prefer dining in Europe where it’s not thenorm

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#165

Post by etchalon »

kortilla wrote: post #161
hntrader wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer. I still advocate tipping since it's a nice thing to do and probably improves your happiness, but I think it's healthier in the context of a no-tipping culture where wages are sufficient and baked into the price of the service.

> What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer. No it’s not. You would not tip any less if you knew there were other people at the restaurant who had no intention of tipping. It’s strictly a lost potential income to the server when they land a cheap customer. It may not actually cost them anythi…

I think I'd probably tip more.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#166

Post by etchalon »

boulos wrote: post #149
Noos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

To be clear, in California the tipped minimum wage is at least $13/hr state wide (and $14/hr for businesses with 25 employees or more). I believe in San Francisco, it’s also just strictly the same as minimum wage of $16.07/hr (and again for larger businesses, Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory [Edit: actually, providing coverage is, not Healthy SF, that’s just the cheapest coverage and so very common], and…

And … California still has restaurants? I'm told that's impossible. Raising the minimum wage will cause all businesses to close.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#167

Post by rahimnathwani »

boulos wrote: post #149
Noos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

To be clear, in California the tipped minimum wage is at least $13/hr state wide (and $14/hr for businesses with 25 employees or more). I believe in San Francisco, it’s also just strictly the same as minimum wage of $16.07/hr (and again for larger businesses, Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory [Edit: actually, providing coverage is, not Healthy SF, that’s just the cheapest coverage and so very common], and…

"Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory"

I don't think Healthy SF coverage is mandatory. From what I've read, businesses have two other options: provide a regular healthcare plan, or set aside a fund to reimburse employee healthcare costs as they arise. Restaurants usually go for that last option.

"usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute"

I find the last part of what you wrote interesting. It's true that this isn't dictated by statute. But it would be surprising and unusual for a statue to dictate that a business must make its customers pay a specific business cost.

Of course, there are instances where businesses are responsible for collecting taxes from their customers (notably sales taxes and recycling fees) but these are explicitly taxes on consumers that the business is collecting for the government's convenience, not taxes on the business that the business is tricking consumers into paying, by making them believe they're responsible for them.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#168

Post by hntrader »

kortilla wrote: post #161
hntrader wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer. I still advocate tipping since it's a nice thing to do and probably improves your happiness, but I think it's healthier in the context of a no-tipping culture where wages are sufficient and baked into the price of the service.

> What I dislike about a culture of tipping is that in effect it's a transfer of wealth from the generous+agreeable customer to the greedy+disagreeable+shameless customer. No it’s not. You would not tip any less if you knew there were other people at the restaurant who had no intention of tipping. It’s strictly a lost potential income to the server when they land a cheap customer. It may not actually cost them anythi…

It is.

Prices for basic services are lower in tipping cultures, ceteris paribus, since staff wages are a component of price, and staff wages are lower in a tipping culture since they make part of their income from tipping.

Hence, the cheap customer benefits to the maximum in a tipping culture since the prices they're paying are artificially lower as they've been subsidised by tippers. That's why it's a transfer of wealth from the generous to the cheap.

It's got little to do with whether the generous decide to tip more in the presence of the cheap (although that may be a small part of it), it's about the indirect and hidden subsidisation through service price.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#169

Post by baby »

helmholtz wrote: post #156
baby wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No tips = no theft and people actually get paid a wage that allows them to live well.

But what about the people who have actively just been shortchanged out of 61.7M USD in tips? Surely that' the topic here?

what tips though? Who tips an Amazon delivery person?

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#170

Post by baby »

kitsune_ wrote: post #159
baby wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No tips = no theft and people actually get paid a wage that allows them to live well.

Why not both? Many people would still want to be able to tip for good service even if the employees are paid adequately by their employer, and most of those customers expect the employer to not touch that money at all.

Tragedy of the common, it just doesn't work because then workers expect it.
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