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Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

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Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#241

Post by bildung »

emptysongglass wrote: post #209
ben509 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tips are fundamentally broken. If you didn't know about tips, and someone offered you a job and said, "I'll pay you crap wages, but you can ask the customers for more money. Don't worry, they'll pay or their friends won't like them," you'd think it was a scam because it's such an obviously terrible deal. Tips are an awful way to incentivize good service. I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I'v…

Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? I'm genuinely curious what you think the factors are in their difference because when I live in Denmark (as I do now) it feels like the waiter could give less of a s** whether the service is good or not whereas when I live in LA or NYC I feel like I am the golden child of thei…

Others have already said that this boils down to a mix of precarious living not existing to this degree in other countries, and cultural norms. To illustrate with a counterexample: I think I know what you have in mind as good service, but to me (who found the service culture in Denmark really great) this comes across as stalking/ not respecting the customer's privacy/ badly roleplayed friendliness/ thinly veiled upselling attempts. I can't stand it to a degree that I've actually stopped going to a local restaurant because they tried to enforce this service attitude with their employees.

There's this anecdote of Walmart opening a store in Germany and people were horrified by the greeter an the entrance, to a degree that many reported them to the store because they thought he/she was some random weirdo from the street, not an employee of the store. Ditto for baggers, the very idea was appalling for the locals, and Walmarts expansion ultimately failed because of these US service culture imports.

This boils down to the cultural norm: If the behaviour is endemic in the local culture, it comes across as natural. If not, it comes across as fake friendliness in one direction and baseless rudeness in the other.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#242

Post by lotsofpulp »

apsurd wrote: post #81
trowawee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My PM doesn’t tip me when I complete a ticket quickly; I don’t tip QA when they catch a bug in my code; the on-call engineer doesn’t tip me when some docs I wrote save them a few hours of time fixing an issue I saw during my last on-call rotation. And yet! The company seems to keep making money and doing well, and we all seem to like each other (mostly, except for that one guy, but he doesn’t like anyone).

tip based jobs are overwhelmingly minimum wage. of course we can argue whether that’s cause or effect, but the point is, it makes very little sense to compare literally “the minimum allowable threshold for legal employment” to professional salaried employees.

It makes all the sense because a common argument in favor of tipping is “it improves service” or that it “rewards good service”.

In reality, it’s a gesture of pity for those who earn little, and who we don’t want to pay properly via decent wage regulations and increase product prices, but we want them to dance for us and have them hope we will toss a few coins their way. In the process, we get to feel good like benevolent dictators who have chosen to be generous and share their wealth.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#243

Post by gambiting »

emptysongglass wrote: post #209
ben509 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tips are fundamentally broken. If you didn't know about tips, and someone offered you a job and said, "I'll pay you crap wages, but you can ask the customers for more money. Don't worry, they'll pay or their friends won't like them," you'd think it was a scam because it's such an obviously terrible deal. Tips are an awful way to incentivize good service. I'm neither qualified to judge my server's performance, and I'v…

Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? I'm genuinely curious what you think the factors are in their difference because when I live in Denmark (as I do now) it feels like the waiter could give less of a s** whether the service is good or not whereas when I live in LA or NYC I feel like I am the golden child of thei…

>>Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark?

Absolutely not in my experience. Only visited America a few times but nearly universally the service was about as good as anywhere in Europe not any better or worse, but it was made infinitely worse by the fact that no matter what, the tips were expected. It left such an incredibly sour taste in my mouth - like, the service wasn't special in any way, the waiter came, took our order, the food arrived, we had it....and now I have to leave like $10 in tips? Like, literally, honestly.....wtf. I do leave tips in europe ocassionally but only when going to really fancy restaurants when the service is exceptional. Tipping everyone everywhere every time is just....crazy.

>>I mean I even worked for a Danish guy who was Noma's head chef's former sous chef

Funny, I know a Chef who actually worked at Noma, he now runs a restaurant in the UK and I'm somewhat familiar with the staffing woes. But in summary from everything he told me - it's like any other business. If you want good employees who are engaged and doing a good jobs....you need to pay well. Pay waiters above the bottom of the barel wage...and suddenly you can find people who give a shit about the job. Pay minimum wage and you get people who'd rather spend half their time outside on cigarette breaks.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#244

Post by lotsofpulp »

xur17 wrote: post #128
accountofme wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the issue in the US is that it has only been tried at a store level rather than at a state or country level.

The whole west coast and many major cities in the US have eliminated the lower tipped minimum wages.

But the societal norm is to still expect to tip 15% (although some would say 20%) in tips.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#245

Post by gambiting »

eigenvector wrote: post #197
katbyte wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well as a Canadian I’m going who the hell tips the Amazon delivery person

I agree that of all developed countries, tipping is most prevalent in the USA, but as a fellow Canadian I wouldn't assume our Amazon delivery people are being paid anymore. They are independent contractors and not subject to minimum wage laws. If anything, their effective wage might be lower because vehicle operating expenses are higher in Canada.

I understand that part, I don't understand the part where people find it acceptable to tip the delivery person. It's just not ok, unless they brought your fridge up the stairs or something then sure, I'll slip in a little something for the effort. But an amazon delivery driver? Where they drop the parcel at my door, ring the doorbell and leave? Why would I ever tip them? The same with food delivery drivers - I open the door, say "hi" grab the food and they are gone. There is nothing there to tip for.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#246

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

Noos wrote: post #117
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you know that the actual minimum wage of someone who makes $30 or more in tips a month is $2.13 right? By law, if they don't make enough tips in a week to earn an effective wage of $7.25 an hour, the employer has to pay them that much. this is all the employer actually has to pay. Everything else is the customer. Now imagine the employer has to pay $15 an hour. Thats 6+ times what they pay now if its a decently busy…

I don't understand your confusion. The amount of money the customer pays doesn't change.

I'll give an example:

$8 item + $4 (50%) tip = $12

$10 item + $2 (20%) tip = $12

$12 item + $0 (0%) tip = $12

In any scenario, the wait staff's pay comes from the customer. All we are doing is, setting the price, such that you no longer calculate the tip. If the actual price doesn't actually change, you can bake in whatever you want.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#247

Post by gambiting »

t-writescode wrote: post #173
baby wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what tips though? Who tips an Amazon delivery person?

Amazon Prime Now has a 'tip' section with a recommended amount of money to give the driver. It works out to about 10% of the price, I think, generally?

I think it's paramount that anyone using Prime Now sets this value to 0% in the app when ordering. Otherwise you're just subsidizing one of the wealthiest companies in the world. If you really want to give the delivery person a tip for whatever reason(they had to walk through mud to get to you) then give them cash. Don't pre-tip in the stupid app that clearly shows amazon "well, we don't need to pay well since clearly our customers are happy to compensate".

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#248

Post by tharax »

owlmirror wrote: post #210
efwfwef wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it before, the only way to get out of the tipping culture is to stop tipping, and to continue to fight for a raised minimum wage. There's just no way around it, that's how some other countries got out of the tipping culture too. Shaming others who don't tip, and tipping when you go out, just contributes to the problem. If people understand that tipping is actually less of a thing, then the pressure will be…

I've worked as a waiter during my university time and tips were the best thing in the world for someone that did not need any real qualifications. My wage alone would have barely covered my expenses but with tips I paid all of my living costs and could put aside a bit for my future. It was a system I liked as an employee since even when there were few customers I had not to worry too much about getting laid off immed…

You were frustrated the customer didn't pay you an arbitrary amount to live off based on their mood instead of frustrated that your boss didn't pay you a legally mandated amount to live off.

The worst part about tipping culture is that somehow bosses have convinced their staff to be upset at customers.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#249

Post by billynomates111 »

neilv wrote: post #79

One of the few things in 2020 that I felt good about was being able to tip the Amazon Fresh delivery drivers. Now I hear that those essential workers, who helped save me and my neighbors from Covid, were getting cheated out of tips, intentionally , by higher-ups at Amazon. And I'm guessing the money meant a lot more to someone who's delivering groceries in a pandemic, than it does to a trillion-dollar corporation. An…

The solution is to stop using Amazon products. The company is hugely exploitative in many ways - we should stop being surprised and just spend our money elsewhere.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#250

Post by user-the-name »

ddingus wrote: post #179
helmholtz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are they to be compensated? Appears so. A related topic might be all the people suffering the same theft while working for much smaller players. From there, it moves pretty rapidly to, "get rid of tips and pay a wage that funds people existing reasonably and showing up for work" rather than start a fairly expensive and difficult enforcement effort. Maybe the idea of just avoiding all this mess to prevent what did hap…

If I stole 61 million, I would not be politely asked to pay it back.

I would be going to jail for the rest of my life.

Who is going to jail for this theft?

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