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

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

#231

Post by nradov »

lenticular wrote: post #130
atom-morgan wrote: post #97

Seriously, this is the responsibility consumers have in a free market. If there's behavior you don't like, move on. You don't get to complain about bad actors when you're literally keeping them in business.

Collective action is essentially impossible among consumers though. Boycotts essentially never work. Not only that, but who are you going to use instead of instacart: Amazon Fresh? Uber? Or will you drive yourself to the store and buy it from minimum wage employees who work unstable hours? Also, what do you think the working conditions were like for whoever picked that asparagus?

Most employees of large grocery stores are paid significantly more than minimum wage.

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

#232

Post by lenticular »

oarsinsync wrote: post #217
lenticular wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreso that participating in modern society is impossible without doing business with companies who have unsavory labor and environmental practices. I'm not commenting on morality. Expecting some sort of change to come from spontaneous, collective consumer action is ridiculous. This is especially true when most consumers in America are not on financially stable ground themselves, and can't afford to spend more money…

> Expecting some sort of change to come from spontaneous, collective consumer action is ridiculous. Does that mean you believe that collective consumer action had absolutely nothing to do with Travis no longer remaining as CEO of Uber?

That had more to do with fostering a workplace culture conducive to harassment and his opening of Uber to massive legal liability from Waymo. Uber's investors forced him out, not consumers. Investors have power because there are generally few of them and they have a great deal of skin in the game. Collective action is both easier and more incentivized in that case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/technology/uber-ceo-travi...

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

#233

Post by james_s_tayler »

atom-morgan wrote: post #97

Seriously, this is the responsibility consumers have in a free market. If there's behavior you don't like, move on. You don't get to complain about bad actors when you're literally keeping them in business.

I think there is license to complain.

You're upset that the thing that solves a nice pain point for you and is very useful is doing it in a way that you find disagreeable. You don't yet have an alternative or at least it will take some amount of time and effort to find one and make the switch. You are voicing your dissatisfaction and dissapointment in the hope that the situation will be rectified and you won't have to go through the process of switching because it might be expensive (in some sense) to do so or there may be no alternative that you find compelling.

It's a two way street. If the company refuses to change and it upsets you enough, you need to move on. If you voice loud enough complaints and there are enough of them then it may cause the company to change.

Complaining is part of the mechanism that makes the system work.

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

#234

Post by sib »

aqme28 wrote: post #155
deepsun wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many many places do that. I worked in PizzaHut in NJ, and they pay you less than minimum wage initially. Then you report your earnings, and if your tips + salary / hoursworked So you have incentive to report 0.0 tips. But then our manager at PizzaHut let go everyone who reported 0.0 tips (when asked why, he said they called customers to confirm we did receive tips). And that's not only PizzaHut, that's everyone doing…

> when asked why, he said they called customers to confirm we did receive tips That would make some sense even. If a server doesn't get tips, that could be a sign that they are a bad server.

Also, that they were lying to him.

(Not agreeing with wage / tip theft, of course, but, as an employer, you need to be able to believe your employees.)

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

#235

Post by matt4077 »

atom-morgan wrote: post #97

Seriously, this is the responsibility consumers have in a free market. If there's behavior you don't like, move on. You don't get to complain about bad actors when you're literally keeping them in business.

It’s just that boycotts never work, could only ever work on consumer-facing companies, arbitrarily seek to punish the select few whose misdeeds become viral, etc.

Remember United Airlines? Yeah, neither does anyone else. Exxon Mobile? You’d first have to find out their local brand name. Etc etc

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

#236

Post by lkbm »

_t2kx wrote: post #7

How is this not wage theft? They're literally taking the tips from workers and using it to pay them. I'm tipping the worker, not Instacart.

I thought that was simply how tipping worked. Wage+tips have to average (at least) minimum wage.

It's obviously a terrible system, but is this different from how most everywhere with tipping in the US works? I've never worked a tipped job in the US.

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

#237

Post by coupdejarnac »

debt wrote: post #115

Instacart is AWFUL. They're paying shit wages and thus offering shit quality, because they're offering a service that literally is unscalable. The logistics of laser-guided-bomb-type delivery of groceries from store to fridge is asinine. Yo, grocery store shopping doesn't suck bad enough to pay someone else to do both the shopping and delivering! I'll pick up the pre-picked-up/bought groceries. I don't need you to de…

I saw the ceo speak at a YC event in NYC a few years ago, and I looked around the room and thought "what the fuck is this shit". I guess Instacart ticked the checkbox of tackling a problem that doesn't scale, something YC looks for. To me it symbolizes everything I hate about startup culture- the CEO trying to change the world by doing something mundane, the circle jerk celebrating a stupid idea and dubious ethical practices...etc.

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

#238

Post by bunderbunder »

wilkskyes wrote: post #177
bunderbunder wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent didn't say "the poor can never be at fault for anything", they listed a few legitimate examples of victim blaming. There was the "everything the fault of the poor" bit in the first sentence, but that was obvious hyperbole.

And I never said the poor are at fault for everything, but I'm being treated as such it seems. What I want to know are examples of things that the poor are at fault for.

Within the context of this conversation, the burden of figuring that out would fall more properly on you, since you're the one invoking the existence of things the poor are at fault for in order to challenge someone else.

I think, though, that, unless you're coming up with examples that specifically demonstrate that the things the parent poster listed weren't actually victim blaming, such an exercise would be tangential to the subject at hand.

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

#239

Post by matt4077 »

oarsinsync wrote: post #174
lenticular wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective action is essentially impossible among consumers though. Boycotts essentially never work. Not only that, but who are you going to use instead of instacart: Amazon Fresh? Uber? Or will you drive yourself to the store and buy it from minimum wage employees who work unstable hours? Also, what do you think the working conditions were like for whoever picked that asparagus?

Your comment suggests that it's ok to directly support bad businesses because you're probably also indirectly supporting bad businesses. If that's not what you meant, can you please clarify?

What they meant, I believe, was that calling for boycotts which never work is just a talking point against meaningful regulation.
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