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Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

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Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#71
post #43
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me crazy, but when I use one of these services, I expect the service to be reflected in the price.

Thought experiment: what would happen if tipping was made illegal? Would restaurants go out of business because they couldn't pay their servers enough because their patrons weren't willing to pay when the actual cost of dishes was made explicit on the menu? Or would restaurants ditch table service? Or would waiters settle for a new lower wage?

Many countries have no-tipping cultures. Generally, more eateries are takeout or otherwise self-serve outside of the USA - not because of the tipping, but because of the hellishly low wage servers are paid before tips, allowing American restaurants to effectively pay servers peanuts when business is slow.

Other first world countries' servers are more expensive, and so less plentiful.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#72

I recently ordered from DoorDash, a similar service. The app gave me a price for the order and then had a line item called “Dasher Tip” and asked me how much I wanted to put down. I put in $20. Later when the woman arrived with the food, we stopped to talk for a minute. She was a little younger than my mom, and said she had just started working for the service after her husband died. She asked me if she could ask me…

> I had tipped her. $20. She showed me her phone with the app on our order. DoorDash told her we had tipped her $6 This is why I almost always tip in Cash. I hand it to the person, in person. San Francisco's Indian Restaurants (Indian here, and I go to the Indian restaurants here all the time, that's how I know) are notorious for not passing on any of the tips left on the card to the waitstaff, and some even don't gi…

tl;dr: it's wage theft.

I don't have experience doing it, but both of these cases are highly, highly frowned upon and likely to get quick resolution if a complaint is made to the Department of Labor.

http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/05/legal-for-your...

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/should-supervisor-sh...

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2k / week * 52 weeks = 104k

Tough to live on in SF. Wow, I'm really saying that.

Tough to raise a family on in SF -- it's an absurdly livable wage if you're willing to rent a room.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#74
post #44
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because finding a low skill job is pretty hard. Not everyone has the luxury of choice.

I've never seen this to be the case that finding a low skill job is hard. In my area tons of people refuse to work but all kinds of places are constantly hiring like restaurants, etc. Many may require passing a drug screen though which it seems most people aren't able to do.

If you think a restaurant is a low-skill job, you're wrong. It takes an assload of memorization, dealing with highly specialized systems, and its hell on the body as well. You have an incredibly high expected output, and you're not given much guidance either. The pay isn't worth the effort in the least, because its seen as "low-skill" or similar.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#75

I recently ordered from DoorDash, a similar service. The app gave me a price for the order and then had a line item called “Dasher Tip” and asked me how much I wanted to put down. I put in $20. Later when the woman arrived with the food, we stopped to talk for a minute. She was a little younger than my mom, and said she had just started working for the service after her husband died. She asked me if she could ask me…

This is very upsetting, and contradicting with their FAQ: http://dasherhelp.doordash.com/new-dasher-pay-model-faq/

In the case of Instacart, I already gave up on them. They make too many shopping decisions on your behalf. Like ring your phone, and claim "they called you", and pick replacements themselves.

I would like to know if GrubHub steals from the tip jar as well.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#76
The obvious 'fair' thing for instacart would be something along the lines of paying per item with weight taken in to account.

Every packaged item has a barcode that you can look up to see the weight.

...but of course, that would make the commercial delivery services viable competitors to instacart on big orders right? Can't have that.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the lessons of Austin's temporary Uber/Lyft kick out was that very quickly worker run ride sharing emerged to serve the need.

Except Uber/Lyft are back in Austin, and that worker run ride share didn't work.

Sure it did. People still use it.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#78
post #23
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your story is a great reminder to why tipping is pointless (among many other reasons, such as [1]) If you do decide to tip, you should hand the person you want to have the money cash -- that's the only way you can be for sure they're gonna get it. [1] http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/articles/27/

That would however mean the delivery person will believe you intend to tip zero until you actually do. Not discussing whether it is right or not, but I assume that could affect the received service.

Huh? It's very common to tip delivery people in cash. I remember not that long ago when there wasn't even another option -- you'd order the phone and then pay in cash (including tip) when the delivery driver arrived.

Re: Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour

#79
post #63
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What usually happens is that restaurants institute an across the board 18% service charge on all receipts. That covers tips for all the staff. There are a couple restaurants that have had good success with this.

There are, but at the same time there are restaurants that have had a lot of trouble with this approach because it raises the perceived price of the restaurant. It really seems damned-if-you-do.

Sure, if only some restaurants in an area do this. But what if they all did it?
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