Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by dang » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:14 AM UTC

dzonga wrote: post #334

komali2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck it pisses me off how the conversation in America somehow shifted to make everything the fault of the poor. Service disrupted because bus driver/garbage collector / teacher/hotel employee strike? How dare those selfish underpaid and overworked peasants stand up for reasonable hours! They should consider themselves lucky they have a job at all! (It should be: how dare the corporations or federal agencies pay so li…

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#472

Post by Rapzid » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

Uber was great until they introduced tipping, and somehow now we are supposed to tip employees for delivering stuff when the entire business model of the company we are also paying is delivery?! Why are we supposed to tip door dash drivers, but not Amazon delivery drivers or FedEx/UPS/USPS? I refuse to use Door Dash due to the expectation of tipping their employees on top of the super high up-charges and service fee I'm paying FOR DELIVERY.

Tipping has ruined this whole new batch of convenience services for me.

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

#473

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

B-Con wrote: post #32

> That's right: the customer's tip doesn't get added to the worker's check — it just gets deducted from what Instacart pays. In other words, up-front tips go to Instacart, not to the worker. My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0] Gratuity/tip is a legally recognized concept. You can't just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money i…

They don't actually withhold the tip. The sentence you quoted is being sloppy. If the tip was $50, the worker would get the full $50.

The problem is that they use the tip as an excuse to pay basically nothing. It's not acting like a real tip.

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

#474

Post by macintux » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

basil-rash wrote: post #427

stonogo wrote: post #92

Why doesn't the headline read "Instacart (YC S12)"?

They don't add that to companies most people will already recognize: Airbnb: https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+ai... Stripe: https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+st... Cruise: https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+cr... etc.

“Most people” surely doesn’t apply here. I’d never heard of them, much less knew they were YC.

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

#475

Post by Pharmakon » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

debacle wrote: post #447

cribbles wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instacart delivery workers are classified as independent contractors, which allows the company to flout basic labor laws. This is commonplace in digital age 'gig economy' jobs, but dates back to the early days of food delivery - e.g., most pizza delivery drivers are classified as independent contractors. That having been said, the concept of defining contractor wages in relation to customer tips is new to me. I could…

> Instacart delivery workers are classified as independent contractors Only Instacart believes this.

They don’t believe it either, but it’s convenient lie, like corporations being people. It’s ridiculous, but as long as it’s the law and the people benefiting tip their politicians well, whomp whomp.

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

#476

Post by tareqak » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

Isn’t this similar to what DoorDash (a YC company) is doing? https://notipdoordash.com

These sorts of stories confirm my feelings about tipping that I’ve had all along: tipping is just a way to subsidize employers by pitting employees against customers and guilt-tripping the latter.

Follow-up update: Aren't all the gig economy start-ups (Uber/Uber Eats, Lyft, Caviar, Eat24/Yelp, Fiverr etc.) potentially doing the same thing? They are probably exploiting the same loop-hole in whatever set of laws. It might be just a UI update, but I remember seeing a message of the form "our drivers get 100% of their tips" in Uber Eats just yesterday, which is sort of like saying "we are following the law about tips".

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

#477

Post by danans » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

FWIW Good Eggs directly states their pro living wage (and no tip necessary) policy on their website:

https://help.goodeggs.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007378212-Do-...

I have no stake in them but it's interesting that they addressed this at all, and well before this instacart controversy.

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

#478

Post by sudosteph » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

I've always wondered why someone hasn't tried to reverse the model on these delivery service apps (postmates, doordash, instacart)

Instead of delivery people blindly accepting orders and hoping for the best, the people who are requesting the delivery should have to set a rate at order time and make the full order and destination visible so couriers can decide if it's worth it and make a counter-offer if it's too low to be worth it.

If you ever go read what the workers are saying in subreddits for these services, it's clear that the incentives for quick and accurate deliveries just don't line up with the current gig system.

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

#479

Post by jacurtis » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #306

wetpaste wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a service industry job in texas that payed me around 2.50 an hour (iirc) and as long as I made enough in tips to cover minimum wage they didn't have to pay actual minimum wage. It's immoral as fuck to steal tips. I don't care if it's legal. If I'm a customer tipping the person a certain amount I want to make sure it's actually helping that person and not just lining the pockets of their employer, that's absurd.

That might be legal in Texas, but in Washington it's explicitly illegal. In the state, tips are completely irrelevant to base pay, all employees must get paid at least minimum wage as base pay. Instacart is going to get fucked very quickly by the Washington AG. This is as bad as Walmart not paying employees for overtime.

Especially because Washington's Attorney General is particularly fond of jumping on cases like this, particularly worker rights. But he is also fond of keeping startups in line. So this is a double-whammy case for him.

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

#480

Post by weaksauce » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

kuhhk wrote: post #118

weaksauce wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% of the tip goes to the driver yes. but, that statement is completely compatible with instacart changing how much they pay their driver for that delivery down to 80 cents. I hope this was a mistake on the part of instacart.

> I hope this was a mistake on the part of instacart. According to the screenshot of Instacart's email, they confirmed this is accurate and was most definitely not a mistake. And according to the article, Instacart has doubled-down instead of apologizing.

Come to think of it their aggressive upselling techniques always left a bad taste in my mouth. I do like the service but they really need to up their pay for their drivers.